I'd be devastated if the Union dissolves, and I still think there are creative and relevant ways in which it can be renewed for the 21st Century (whatever happens we are all hugely interconnected on these islands, have been for thousands of years, and none of us are going anywhere) but if EU membership was the only thing holding us together then it was already dead.
I think the response to Brexit has been the more problematic part, which is why I supported Theresa May's Deal.
EU membership wasn't holding the Union together but the experience of Brexit has certainly led many Scots to reappraise the Union.
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Of course, official bilingualism in Canada (which is necessary for all Governments documents, etc) has helped bind Quebec more tightly to the rest of Canada.
It has created a large body of middle-class professionals in Quebec who spend their life translating documents from French to English (and vice versa) -- who would have zero job prospects in an independent Quebec.
Hull/Chapleau (other side of the Ontario boundary from Ottawa) was perhaps the only majority French-speaking riding that voted "Non". It is packed with people employed by federal government agencies to translate documents.
The others that voted "Non" were the heavily Anglicised Eastern Townships, West & Central Montreal and the Inuits of Nouveau Quebec.
Official bilingualism always works to erase the desire for separation.
(The same of course has happened in Wales -- bilingualism has created middle class people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
UK swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 5%.
Wigan swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 8.5%.
UK swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 4.5%. Uxbridge and South Ruislip swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 2.1%. Richmond (Yorks) swing from Labour to Tories in 2019 3.3%.
Boris and Rishi are holding the Conservatives back!
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
Germany will become the first country in the EU to use the same experimental drug which was credited with helping former US president Donald Trump recover from Covid.
Health Minister Jens Spahn did not confirm the name of the drug manufacturer but said it was the same drug used on Mr Trump.
The experimental antibodies treatment will help protect high-risk patients in the early stage against a serious deterioration, Spahn said.
He told the Bild newspaper that the country had bought 200,000 doses and would start using it next week.
That's the Regeneron antibody cocktail, it costs hundreds of dollars per dose, that order of 200k will have cost ~$100m and it's efficacy isn't clear either. Convalescent plasma cocktails haven't proven to reduce death rates and the Regeneron antibody cocktail is still in efficacy trials. The Germans would have been better off investing $100m in vaccine manufacturing capacity.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
Well there's no one who wouldn't agree that our vaccination strategy is very good so far. However it does not appear to be having much of an effect in the polls and unfortunately we don't yet know if it's going to free us from this COVID nightmare.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
Germany will become the first country in the EU to use the same experimental drug which was credited with helping former US president Donald Trump recover from Covid.
Health Minister Jens Spahn did not confirm the name of the drug manufacturer but said it was the same drug used on Mr Trump.
The experimental antibodies treatment will help protect high-risk patients in the early stage against a serious deterioration, Spahn said.
He told the Bild newspaper that the country had bought 200,000 doses and would start using it next week.
That's the Regeneron antibody cocktail, it costs hundreds of dollars per dose, that order of 200k will have cost ~$100m and it's efficacy isn't clear either. Convalescent plasma cocktails haven't proven to reduce death rates and the Regeneron antibody cocktail is still in efficacy trials. The Germans would have been better off investing $100m in vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Isn't there also concern these antibody plasma treatment increase the likelihood of further significant mutants across populations?
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
Well there's no one who wouldn't agree that our vaccination strategy is very good so far. However it does not appear to be having much of an effect in the polls and unfortunately we don't yet know if it's going to free us from this COVID nightmare.
If it doesn't, we're all going to have much, much bigger problems than wrangling over the popularity of Lisa Nandy or indeed anyone else.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
No democracy in Scotland, we are being held hostage by a right wing Junta.
Bonkers. Is there an Ergot of Turnip?
Can the Scottish Government say increase National Insurance or Corporate tax levels?
If it can't - it's not in full control of taxation let alone anything else.
I'd personally be fairly relaxed for the constituent parts of the UK to have their own taxation regimes, if it was part of a new federal UK settlement that kept us together.
The problem is where one constituent part fucks up that taxation programme, raises far less than expected (by, for example raising CGT rates and greatly reduces the overall tax take by companies or individuals moving to anther UK country) and then expects the central UK Govt. to come to their rescue.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Germany will become the first country in the EU to use the same experimental drug which was credited with helping former US president Donald Trump recover from Covid.
Health Minister Jens Spahn did not confirm the name of the drug manufacturer but said it was the same drug used on Mr Trump.
The experimental antibodies treatment will help protect high-risk patients in the early stage against a serious deterioration, Spahn said.
He told the Bild newspaper that the country had bought 200,000 doses and would start using it next week.
That's the Regeneron antibody cocktail, it costs hundreds of dollars per dose, that order of 200k will have cost ~$100m and it's efficacy isn't clear either. Convalescent plasma cocktails haven't proven to reduce death rates and the Regeneron antibody cocktail is still in efficacy trials. The Germans would have been better off investing $100m in vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Isn't there also concern these antibody treatment increase the likelihood of further significant mutants across populations?
Not so much for monoclonal antibodies as they are derived from a vaccine response rather than the disease itself, however, it could prove to be the case that they also lead to viral mutations in the short term.
I've got a meeting with a world leading viral immunological specialist in a few days and I'm going to ask all of these questions in mutation and vaccine evasion.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
You flipped the discussion to that from HYUFD's contention that Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better than her. You didn't even establish what he was saying they would be better at before attacking him for his Essex-acquired ignorance.
Guardian still repeating that 33% claim. Again irresponsible reporting.
Amazingly there looks to be a 60% reduction in *cases* 22 days after the first jab of Pfizer in Israel vs the rest of the population. That will feed through to an absolutely massive reduction in hospitalisation, we should get the data fairly soon from the Israelis and from our own efforts. Hopefully by this time next week.
We will look at the data from Israel very carefully. But considering no one knows for sure, there is some silly politics playing divergence going on with this one.
True, there hasn’t been much trialing efficacy of these vaccines 1 jab 12 weeks apart, but in fact that means no one knows for certain it won’t work. It’s how vaccines for SARS previously behaved being used to drive the decision making, and no one has much to back up an argument that the decision is wrong.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
UK swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 5%.
Wigan swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 8.5%.
UK swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 4.5%. Uxbridge and South Ruislip swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 2.1%. Richmond (Yorks) swing from Labour to Tories in 2019 3.3%.
Boris and Rishi are holding the Conservatives back!
I'm sure we had a thread on here about how Boris was going to lose his seat....
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
I think it is relevant. Surely a personal vote would have helped buck the trend, not go in the opposite direction?
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
You flipped the discussion to that from HYUFD's contention that Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better than her. You didn't even establish what he was saying they would be better at before attacking him for his Essex-acquired ignorance.
I don't need an excuse to attack him for his Essex-acquired ignorance though
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
I don't think the list of reserved matters has been amended recently.
More half truths Rob, they have taken back powers with UK Internal Bill, despite Scotland voting against it. They control any changes and nullify and Scottish powers.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
I don't think the list of reserved matters has been amended recently.
More half truths Rob, they have taken back powers with UK Internal Bill, despite Scotland voting against it. They control any changes and nullify and Scottish powers.
Which parts have been amended? As I said in the other reply, I can't see any recent amendments to the act.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
I think it is relevant. Surely a personal vote would have helped buck the trend, not go in the opposite direction?
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
Internal Market Bill, wasn't it?
Which didn't amend the Scotland Act, so it didn't add to the list of reserved powers.
Guardian still repeating that 33% claim. Again irresponsible reporting.
Amazingly there looks to be a 60% reduction in *cases* 22 days after the first jab of Pfizer in Israel vs the rest of the population. That will feed through to an absolutely massive reduction in hospitalisation, we should get the data fairly soon from the Israelis and from our own efforts. Hopefully by this time next week.
We will look at the data from Israel very carefully. But considering no one knows for sure, there is some silly politics playing divergence going on with this one.
True, there hasn’t been much trialing efficacy of these vaccines 1 jab 12 weeks apart, but in fact that means no one knows for certain it won’t work. It’s how vaccines for SARS previously behaved being used to drive the decision making, and no one has much to back up an argument that the decision is wrong.
I can share some anecdotal, knowing some people given jabs. I have formed an opinion the Oxford vaccine leaves people feeling a bit more sick, like drunk and hung over, than the Pfizer one does. I put this down as being good, you know they have stabbed something in you and your body is aware of it?
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
I think it is relevant. Surely a personal vote would have helped buck the trend, not go in the opposite direction?
46.7% of Wigan voted for her.
Red wall voters definitely hate her.
Cons + Brexit Party got 45%. Red Wall voters definitely hate them.
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Of course, official bilingualism in Canada (which is necessary for all Governments documents, etc) has helped bind Quebec more tightly to the rest of Canada.
It has created a large body of middle-class professionals in Quebec who spend their life translating documents from French to English (and vice versa) -- who would have zero job prospects in an independent Quebec.
Hull/Chapleau (other side of the Ontario boundary from Ottawa) was perhaps the only majority French-speaking riding that voted "Non". It is packed with people employed by federal government agencies to translate documents.
The others that voted "Non" were the heavily Anglicised Eastern Townships, West & Central Montreal and the Inuits of Nouveau Quebec.
Official bilingualism always works to erase the desire for separation.
(The same of course has happened in Wales -- bilingualism has created middle class people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
Isn't that logic a bit stretched? The Irish are de facto officially bilingual - and so would an independent Wales. So no change there surely.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
Vaccines is a thing the government has done well. Though the UK may be heading for the curious combination of first to end the pandemic / proportionately most deaths on the way, thanks to the things the government has done badly.
In any case, there's a big gap between making one good big decision and a vision to improve the lot of the people in the longer term.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
UK Internal Market Bill does it for them , despite being voted down by Scottish parliament.
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Wouldn't work. YOu'd need Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, and Ulster Scots as well.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
I'm pretty sure you also said that Boris's use of the royal prerogative wasn't unlawful. Funny how that turned out.
It's almost like you're not a constitutional law expert?
I said that the first hearing of the case in the Queens' Bench (a very strong bench at that) had upheld Boris' position.
The Supreme Court took, er, a different path...
I ally myself with the Queen's Bench decision.
That's not how the law works. The Supreme Court's decision is what the law is. What the High Court said is neither here nor there. It was overruled.
Kind of puts your other opinions into perspective really.
My opinion is that in the particular instance of that case, the Supreme Court chose to be a law-making body. And a party pledging to trim the ability of the Supreme Court to make law in place of Parliament subsequently won an 80 seat majority.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
UK Internal Market Bill does it for them , despite being voted down by Scottish parliament.
You answered "yes" to the question of whether or not the UK government added to the list of reserved powers. It'd be nice to see this amendment to the Scotland Act, because it certainly isn't on legislation.gov.uk.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
I don't think the list of reserved matters has been amended recently.
More half truths Rob, they have taken back powers with UK Internal Bill, despite Scotland voting against it. They control any changes and nullify and Scottish powers.
Which parts have been amended? As I said in the other reply, I can't see any recent amendments to the act.
Uk Internal Market Bill removes powers of Scotland to change anything it wants , 3rd time lucky you will read the post, DESPITE cross party voting against in Scottish parliament.
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Wouldn't work. YOu'd need Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, and Ulster Scots as well.
In the days of satnav, why do we need signs? Just set your satnav to the language of choice and voila! (Other languages are available....)
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
Internal Market Bill, wasn't it?
Which didn't amend the Scotland Act, so it didn't add to the list of reserved powers.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
You flipped the discussion to that from HYUFD's contention that Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better than her. You didn't even establish what he was saying they would be better at before attacking him for his Essex-acquired ignorance.
I don't need an excuse to attack him for his Essex-acquired ignorance though
Epping is in some ways the Tory equivalent of Bootle.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
Internal Market Bill, wasn't it?
Which didn't amend the Scotland Act, so it didn't add to the list of reserved powers.
Usual Tory play dumb act ( hopefully you are not as dumb as you make out) when they know all along the real answer. Westminster uses every opportunity, they have renaged on almost every supposed unwritten constitution item against Scotland , ignore the wishes of the Scottish people and their parliament.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Lol - Wigan is typical of the UK of course so you are spot on. Loving the sharpness of your political antennae. Explains so much.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
Vaccines is a thing the government has done well. Though the UK may be heading for the curious combination of first to end the pandemic / proportionately most deaths on the way, thanks to the things the government has done badly.
In any case, there's a big gap between making one good big decision and a vision to improve the lot of the people in the longer term.
They have to hope their gamble on the 12 week gap between jabs does not backfire.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
Internal Market Bill, wasn't it?
Which didn't amend the Scotland Act, so it didn't add to the list of reserved powers.
Well that's just entirely wrong.
Section 52 of the UK Internal Market Act 2020 explicitly amends Part 2 of Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998.
Section 54 of the UK Internal Market Act 2020 explicitly amends Schedule 4 of the Scotland Act 1998.
Furthermore Section 10, disapplies section 30A of the Scotland Act 1998 when applying the new provisions, which talks of legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament.
The same is true in section 18 which disapplies section 30A of the Scotland Act 1998 in regards to services.
Germany will become the first country in the EU to use the same experimental drug which was credited with helping former US president Donald Trump recover from Covid.
Health Minister Jens Spahn did not confirm the name of the drug manufacturer but said it was the same drug used on Mr Trump.
The experimental antibodies treatment will help protect high-risk patients in the early stage against a serious deterioration, Spahn said.
He told the Bild newspaper that the country had bought 200,000 doses and would start using it next week.
That's the Regeneron antibody cocktail, it costs hundreds of dollars per dose, that order of 200k will have cost ~$100m and it's efficacy isn't clear either. Convalescent plasma cocktails haven't proven to reduce death rates and the Regeneron antibody cocktail is still in efficacy trials. The Germans would have been better off investing $100m in vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Isn't there also concern these antibody treatment increase the likelihood of further significant mutants across populations?
Not so much for monoclonal antibodies as they are derived from a vaccine response rather than the disease itself, however, it could prove to be the case that they also lead to viral mutations in the short term.
I've got a meeting with a world leading viral immunological specialist in a few days and I'm going to ask all of these questions in mutation and vaccine evasion.
If you could precis their response on here, that would be ace.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Lol - Wigan is typical of the UK of course so you are spot on. Loving the sharpness of your political antennae. Explains so much.
Yes. The guy who lives in Spain is always on the pulse of UK political thought and opinion. Get a grip.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
Internal Market Bill, wasn't it?
Which didn't amend the Scotland Act, so it didn't add to the list of reserved powers.
Overrides it, so same result, no?
Not in Tory logic Carnyx. Truth and reality are alien to them, they follow Boris's example ie no paperwork , no sea border , etc , etc
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
You flipped the discussion to that from HYUFD's contention that Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better than her. You didn't even establish what he was saying they would be better at before attacking him for his Essex-acquired ignorance.
I don't need an excuse to attack him for his Essex-acquired ignorance though
Epping is in some ways the Tory equivalent of Bootle.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
I'm pretty sure you also said that Boris's use of the royal prerogative wasn't unlawful. Funny how that turned out.
It's almost like you're not a constitutional law expert?
I said that the first hearing of the case in the Queens' Bench (a very strong bench at that) had upheld Boris' position.
The Supreme Court took, er, a different path...
I ally myself with the Queen's Bench decision.
That's not how the law works. The Supreme Court's decision is what the law is. What the High Court said is neither here nor there. It was overruled.
Kind of puts your other opinions into perspective really.
My opinion is that in the particular instance of that case, the Supreme Court chose to be a law-making body. And a party pledging to trim the ability of the Supreme Court to make law in place of Parliament subsequently won an 80 seat majority.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
Internal Market Bill, wasn't it?
Which didn't amend the Scotland Act, so it didn't add to the list of reserved powers.
Well that's just entirely wrong.
Section 52 of the UK Internal Market Act 2020 explicitly amends Part 2 of Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998.
Section 54 of the UK Internal Market Act 2020 explicitly amends Schedule 4 of the Scotland Act 1998.
Furthermore Section 10, disapplies section 30A of the Scotland Act 1998 when applying the new provisions, which talks of legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament.
The same is true in section 18 which disapplies section 30A of the Scotland Act 1998 in regards to services.
Thanks, I guess the legislation website isn't as well maintained as I had thought it was. What is the amendment to Schedule 5? That's the reserved power list.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
I think it is relevant. Surely a personal vote would have helped buck the trend, not go in the opposite direction?
46.7% of Wigan voted for her.
Red wall voters definitely hate her.
Cons + Brexit Party got 45%. Red Wall voters definitely hate them.
So Con + Brexit Party got 45%. Lisa Nandy got 46.7.
Red Wall voters objectively and factually do not hate her. The numbers are right there in front of you.
We're running at over a thousand deaths per day and the twats are talking about easing lockdown. FFS.
Do they have any concept of how fucked we currently are?
At a guess, I'd say some of the opponents have a libertarian monomania around tearing down all the restrictions, others are worried merely that the Government will swing into overcautious territory and we'll all be locked down tighter and for longer than is actually necessary. Personally, I suspect that easing will be very tentative indeed and that substantial chunks of the economy (notably hotels, pubs and restaurants) will be kept firmly closed until the entire adult population has been lanced. This is probably the sort of thing that the latter group of opponents is afraid of as well: first jabs for all the young and fit might very well not be completed before August or September.
Because Captain Cautious keeps merrily voting with the Govt, or decisively abstaining, the only opposition to Govt is coming from the backbenches.
We cannot stay locked down for longer than the spring when at the same time lots of people will have acquired protection from vaccines.
Even if we continue to do well and get to the end of phase one at some point in April, the script for extreme caution has already been written. It is likely to include the following themes:
1. The vaccines are not 100% effective for the old and vulnerable, and Covid remains a threat to the young more generally as well. If we open too much up we still run the risk of overwhelming the hospitals 2. If there is widespread transmission of Covid amongst the young then the risk of a disastrous new variant emerging increases. It also leaves a lot more people potentially vulnerable to Long Covid, the evidence of the seriousness of which continues to increase 3. The NHS is knackered, the staff are exhausted and the routine treatment backlogs are enormous. We need to keep the pressure firmly off them, to allow them to recover and start to catch up
Conclusion: we've already been going through this for over a year now. An extra few months isn't going to make that much of a difference, and at the end of it everyone will have been jabbed and we can all be let out to play a lot more safely.
I reckon primary schools, gyms and hairdressers upon completion of phase one; shops about a month later, if there's no sign of a major disease spike; but pubs, restaurants and holidays are off until everyone's been lanced at least once, at a guess by the end of July or possibly a bit later.
There will be no hospitality sector to reopen without proper support. Which there isn't now.
Daughter has received £4000 since being closed again, for the third time. That's it. She cannot even sell alcohol on a takeaway basis, unlike before.
How is her business supposed to survive until May let alone July on that? It can't.
I am not arguing for early lifting of restrictions. I have 2 sons and a husband laid low with it.
I am arguing that there needs to be:-
1. A proper generous support package to the affected sectors to cover the next 6 months, to be renewed if the epidemic is not over by then. 2. Continuing focus on improving vaccination rates - the one thing the government is doing well on. 3. Clear communication about the need to comply with social distancing / hygiene etc even after vaccination until there is better evidence about vaccination's effect on transmission. 4. No travel abroad without vaccination. 5. No inbound travel without vaccination and effective quarantine in hotels, properly enforced at the border.
Sorry to hear that the illness has visited your family. We've dodged the bullets so far but this remains a constant source of anxiety in my life. As for your suggestions, and based on past experience...
1. Not happening. Probably. The Government has prioritised whacking hospitality to suppress the disease for most of the pandemic, there have been no serious initiatives to help it since EOTHO last Summer, and you just know that the scientists will do their pieces at the first hint of reopening. And restaurants have neither the extent of public sympathy nor a popular Rashfordesque figurehead to baseball bat the Treasury into submission on their behalf 2. Looks like we can at least rely on this if there are no disastrous setbacks 3. Clear communication from this lot? We'll get a display of humility and sensitivity from Donald Trump before that happens 4. and 5. I'm cautiously optimistic that the Government will at least budge on the borders, but again (a) they've not done so yet, and the flow of vast numbers of people into the country continues unchecked for now, and (b) they have previous for being inexplicably mad keen on getting folk to go on sunshine holidays, so it's not in the bag
I've enormous sympathy for the owners of many, many viable businesses that are at threat of going under because of the restrictions, but which the Government appears to have lumped in with failing retail chains as part of the inevitable Schumpeterian cycle of creative economic destruction. I strongly suspect that they've had enough of spraying around money, concluded that big chains like JD Wetherspoon and Greene King, and smaller concerns with deep pockets or generous bankers, can get through without any further help, and that consequently they're going to abandon the others to sink or swim on their own.
But maybe I'm being excessively pessimistic and cynical? We'll know more when the Budget comes around.
I think they are a truly "fuck business" government. It explains their stupid Brexit deal. I'd like to hear someone who thinks this deal is wonderful explain why it is a good thing for a government department to advise British companies to set up operations in the EU in order to get round the problems caused by the government's own policy.
As for hospitality, they probably care only about big brewers and developer friends who can buy up a lot of properties on the cheap.
They have not had enough of spraying money around. They are more than happy doing so when it comes to spraying money at friends of theirs and Tory donors. The rest of us can get stuffed as far as they're concerned.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
And the Brexiters saying that most traffic is flowing well fail to admit that the traffic that isnt' flowing (either because of Brsexit problems or because it is paused) disproportionately hits small and medium enterprises as far as I can see - for instance in their reliance on small consignments meaning that certtain businesses are being refused by hauliers/couriers to stop problems with mixed loads.
Perfectly illustrated by the lady on R4 this lunchtime explaining that it’s now more expensive for her to ship direct to consumer in the EU than to send the same thing to the US. With whom we don’t have a ‘free trade’ agreement.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
Vaccines is a thing the government has done well. Though the UK may be heading for the curious combination of first to end the pandemic / proportionately most deaths on the way, thanks to the things the government has done badly.
In any case, there's a big gap between making one good big decision and a vision to improve the lot of the people in the longer term.
They have to hope their gamble on the 12 week gap between jabs does not backfire.
It won’t. It’s based on some sound science and decision making.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
The whole conversation is a red herring. Even if you model voting as a binary contest, the comparison of national and constituency swing is much more likely to confuse as enlighten. Let's take a simplistic example to illustrate.
We have a country with 2 constituencies of equal size, and two political parties.
Election 2022 (Feburary) Harpenden South East: Sensible Party: 99% Very Silly Party: 1%
Luton: Very Silly Party: 99% Sensible Party: 1%
Election 2022 (October) Harpenden South East: Very Silly Party: 50.5% Sensible Party: 49.5%
Luton: Very Silly Party: 99.5% Sensible Party: 0.5%
In the above example, the national swing is 25%. But in Luton, the swing is 0.5%. So in this example, it looks like the Sensible Party has done a lot better there than it did in the country overall. But have they really? In both cases, they've lost half their voters.
A much better comparison would be to compare groups of constituencies, say all the constituencies where Labour had between 60-70%, and see how each of those constituencies fared. And even then, it's right to emphasise who won as much as how much they won by or the swing. All of these things are important if your aim is to get a robust sense of performance. Sadly, that's not what most people are aiming for.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that false? Didn't the UK government add to the reserved powers list in order to prevent the Scottish Parliament from having power over things that would have become devolved post-Brexit?
yes
Which part? I just looked through the Scotland Act, and there has been no amendment affecting that schedule since 2019 which was for some very minor amendments relating to social security.
UK Internal Market Bill does it for them , despite being voted down by Scottish parliament.
You answered "yes" to the question of whether or not the UK government added to the list of reserved powers. It'd be nice to see this amendment to the Scotland Act, because it certainly isn't on legislation.gov.uk.
You can dance on the head of a pin if you want Rob, I answered yes to whether powers had been removed and it is indeed yes. The Internal Market Bill overrides the Scotland Act and therefore removes its Powers, you can twist words, lie, tell half truths , obfuscate all you like. They HAVE removed powers from Scotland.
PS:, for dummies, the original question which was not your rigged one trying to dance on the pin of a head and limit it to a specific single point. "brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement"
Guardian still repeating that 33% claim. Again irresponsible reporting.
Amazingly there looks to be a 60% reduction in *cases* 22 days after the first jab of Pfizer in Israel vs the rest of the population. That will feed through to an absolutely massive reduction in hospitalisation, we should get the data fairly soon from the Israelis and from our own efforts. Hopefully by this time next week.
We will look at the data from Israel very carefully. But considering no one knows for sure, there is some silly politics playing divergence going on with this one.
True, there hasn’t been much trialing efficacy of these vaccines 1 jab 12 weeks apart, but in fact that means no one knows for certain it won’t work. It’s how vaccines for SARS previously behaved being used to drive the decision making, and no one has much to back up an argument that the decision is wrong.
I can share some anecdotal, knowing some people given jabs. I have formed an opinion the Oxford vaccine leaves people feeling a bit more sick, like drunk and hung over, than the Pfizer one does. I put this down as being good, you know they have stabbed something in you and your body is aware of it?
On the contrary that's another tick for the Pfizer. No hangover with the best stuff. It's the plonk you need to be careful of.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
We are doing very well so far, lets hope it continues. It is a tactical response to a problem though, not a long term plan.
And she stupidly denied it and there appears to be evidence to the contrary - which just keeps the story going.
That's always a mistake, if you are correct. Opponents will always seek to stir things up, but denials of things that happened will catch the attention of more than those regular opponents, and keep it a story long past the point it initially would be.
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Of course, official bilingualism in Canada (which is necessary for all Governments documents, etc) has helped bind Quebec more tightly to the rest of Canada.
It has created a large body of middle-class professionals in Quebec who spend their life translating documents from French to English (and vice versa) -- who would have zero job prospects in an independent Quebec.
Hull/Chapleau (other side of the Ontario boundary from Ottawa) was perhaps the only majority French-speaking riding that voted "Non". It is packed with people employed by federal government agencies to translate documents.
The others that voted "Non" were the heavily Anglicised Eastern Townships, West & Central Montreal and the Inuits of Nouveau Quebec.
Official bilingualism always works to erase the desire for separation.
(The same of course has happened in Wales -- bilingualism has created middle class people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
Somehow I can’t see Boris fronting a campaign to big up Gaelic. Though it might be amusing to watch HYUFD throw himself enthusiastically into it.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
I think it is relevant. Surely a personal vote would have helped buck the trend, not go in the opposite direction?
46.7% of Wigan voted for her.
Red wall voters definitely hate her.
Cons + Brexit Party got 45%. Red Wall voters definitely hate them.
So Con + Brexit Party got 45%. Lisa Nandy got 46.7.
Red Wall voters objectively and factually do not hate her. The numbers are right there in front of you.
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Of course, official bilingualism in Canada (which is necessary for all Governments documents, etc) has helped bind Quebec more tightly to the rest of Canada.
It has created a large body of middle-class professionals in Quebec who spend their life translating documents from French to English (and vice versa) -- who would have zero job prospects in an independent Quebec.
Hull/Chapleau (other side of the Ontario boundary from Ottawa) was perhaps the only majority French-speaking riding that voted "Non". It is packed with people employed by federal government agencies to translate documents.
The others that voted "Non" were the heavily Anglicised Eastern Townships, West & Central Montreal and the Inuits of Nouveau Quebec.
Official bilingualism always works to erase the desire for separation.
(The same of course has happened in Wales -- bilingualism has created middle class people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
Isn't that logic a bit stretched? The Irish are de facto officially bilingual - and so would an independent Wales. So no change there surely.
In Canada, I think it has helped the country stay together by creating bilingual speakers who have an interest in the status quo.
Every federal document (even in Alberta or BC or Newfoundland) must be in English/French.
I think at the height of the pandemic, the Canadian Government distributed PPC materials (probably made in China) with instructions in English only. They were taken to court by Francophones.
Absolutely everything the Federal Government does must be in English and French in EVERY Canadian province, even the ones where only a tiny percentage are French speakers.
It is a goldmine for the Canadiens who are truly bilingual.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
I'm pretty sure you also said that Boris's use of the royal prerogative wasn't unlawful. Funny how that turned out.
It's almost like you're not a constitutional law expert?
I said that the first hearing of the case in the Queens' Bench (a very strong bench at that) had upheld Boris' position.
The Supreme Court took, er, a different path...
I ally myself with the Queen's Bench decision.
That's not how the law works. The Supreme Court's decision is what the law is. What the High Court said is neither here nor there. It was overruled.
Kind of puts your other opinions into perspective really.
My opinion is that in the particular instance of that case, the Supreme Court chose to be a law-making body. And a party pledging to trim the ability of the Supreme Court to make law in place of Parliament subsequently won an 80 seat majority.
Your opinion is irrelevant. The law is the law.
More accurate to say that his opinion is of no more relevance than that of any other single voter. After all, the electorate does have some indirect influence in changing laws.
I'm pretty sure you also said that Boris's use of the royal prerogative wasn't unlawful. Funny how that turned out.
It's almost like you're not a constitutional law expert?
That's a bit harsh - the matter was clearly in dispute and a sufficiently strong case had been made that senior judges felt that it wasn't. Armchair commentators can be forgiven for thinking it.
I always thought the question of legality was secondary, as I considered it was the wrong thing to do whether or not it was lawful. I cannot say I was particularly convinced by some of the Supreme Court judgement, which is unusual, like how prorogation being a process done to parliament rather than a process of parliament.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Lol - Wigan is typical of the UK of course so you are spot on. Loving the sharpness of your political antennae. Explains so much.
Yes. The guy who lives in Spain is always on the pulse of UK political thought and opinion. Get a grip.
I voted for the party with the 80 seat majority so ..yes.. i guess I must be. You, on the other hand.......seem a little too close to the red wall to notice how blue it's become - even in the likes of Wigan.
I'd be devastated if the Union dissolves, and I still think there are creative and relevant ways in which it can be renewed for the 21st Century (whatever happens we are all hugely interconnected on these islands, have been for thousands of years, and none of us are going anywhere) but if EU membership was the only thing holding us together then it was already dead.
I think the response to Brexit has been the more problematic part, which is why I supported Theresa May's Deal.
EU membership wasn't holding the Union together but the experience of Brexit has certainly led many Scots to reappraise the Union.
Guardian still repeating that 33% claim. Again irresponsible reporting.
Amazingly there looks to be a 60% reduction in *cases* 22 days after the first jab of Pfizer in Israel vs the rest of the population. That will feed through to an absolutely massive reduction in hospitalisation, we should get the data fairly soon from the Israelis and from our own efforts. Hopefully by this time next week.
We will look at the data from Israel very carefully. But considering no one knows for sure, there is some silly politics playing divergence going on with this one.
True, there hasn’t been much trialing efficacy of these vaccines 1 jab 12 weeks apart, but in fact that means no one knows for certain it won’t work. It’s how vaccines for SARS previously behaved being used to drive the decision making, and no one has much to back up an argument that the decision is wrong.
I can share some anecdotal, knowing some people given jabs. I have formed an opinion the Oxford vaccine leaves people feeling a bit more sick, like drunk and hung over, than the Pfizer one does. I put this down as being good, you know they have stabbed something in you and your body is aware of it?
On the contrary that's another tick for the Pfizer. No hangover with the best stuff. It's the plonk you need to be careful of.
As they got their vaccine, some were told don’t drink, one was told don’t drink for two weeks. But some weren’t advised so went home and had a drink.
My take was the don’t drink message was based on immunity and allowing vaccine to work, not a glass of wine on top of this will make the feeling next few days even worse. Or I could be wrong. Or it could be both!
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
I think it is relevant. Surely a personal vote would have helped buck the trend, not go in the opposite direction?
46.7% of Wigan voted for her.
Red wall voters definitely hate her.
Cons + Brexit Party got 45%. Red Wall voters definitely hate them.
So Con + Brexit Party got 45%. Lisa Nandy got 46.7.
Red Wall voters objectively and factually do not hate her. The numbers are right there in front of you.
You're carrying this straw man a long way.
Nobody said she was hated.
Nobody even said she wasn't popular.
Nandy is NOT hated in Wigan. That's a ludicrous assertion by whoever is asserting it.
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Of course, official bilingualism in Canada (which is necessary for all Governments documents, etc) has helped bind Quebec more tightly to the rest of Canada.
It has created a large body of middle-class professionals in Quebec who spend their life translating documents from French to English (and vice versa) -- who would have zero job prospects in an independent Quebec.
Hull/Chapleau (other side of the Ontario boundary from Ottawa) was perhaps the only majority French-speaking riding that voted "Non". It is packed with people employed by federal government agencies to translate documents.
The others that voted "Non" were the heavily Anglicised Eastern Townships, West & Central Montreal and the Inuits of Nouveau Quebec.
Official bilingualism always works to erase the desire for separation.
(The same of course has happened in Wales -- bilingualism has created middle class people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
Somehow I can’t see Boris fronting a campaign to big up Gaelic. Though it might be amusing to watch HYUFD throw himself enthusiastically into it.
Mr Redwood's singing of Hen Wlad fy Nhadau comes to mind, for some strange reason.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
Vaccines is a thing the government has done well. Though the UK may be heading for the curious combination of first to end the pandemic / proportionately most deaths on the way, thanks to the things the government has done badly.
In any case, there's a big gap between making one good big decision and a vision to improve the lot of the people in the longer term.
They have to hope their gamble on the 12 week gap between jabs does not backfire.
It won’t. It’s based on some sound science and decision making.
emphasise "some", many think differently and it is open to debate at present, no evidence or science to prove it is valid at present. Fingers crossed but far from certain, and based purely on crap government wanting to try and be popular by jabbing more people quickly rather than based on solid scientific evidence. Time will tell.
Guardian still repeating that 33% claim. Again irresponsible reporting.
Amazingly there looks to be a 60% reduction in *cases* 22 days after the first jab of Pfizer in Israel vs the rest of the population. That will feed through to an absolutely massive reduction in hospitalisation, we should get the data fairly soon from the Israelis and from our own efforts. Hopefully by this time next week.
We will look at the data from Israel very carefully. But considering no one knows for sure, there is some silly politics playing divergence going on with this one.
True, there hasn’t been much trialing efficacy of these vaccines 1 jab 12 weeks apart, but in fact that means no one knows for certain it won’t work. It’s how vaccines for SARS previously behaved being used to drive the decision making, and no one has much to back up an argument that the decision is wrong.
I can share some anecdotal, knowing some people given jabs. I have formed an opinion the Oxford vaccine leaves people feeling a bit more sick, like drunk and hung over, than the Pfizer one does. I put this down as being good, you know they have stabbed something in you and your body is aware of it?
On the contrary that's another tick for the Pfizer. No hangover with the best stuff. It's the plonk you need to be careful of.
I've been told that the Pfizer vaccine tends to leave you with an aching arm for a day or so, but that's it.
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
If that really were the case (and in reality I don't think we're quite there yet) then would you be surprised? The logical destination of open-ended devolution is the destruction of the British state. We've already had Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish national parties for decades. At some point an English equivalent was bound to appear as well.
That was either going to emerge de novo or come from adaptation by an existing party. Looks like it's going to be the latter. The Tories have a long history of adaptability and strong survival instincts, so it's no surprise that it's them. Labour's dominant North London tendency, on the other hand, is not only reflexively anti-nationalist (which, as distinct from anti-patriotism, is a good thing) but it also harbours the intellectual hatred of England infamously identified by Orwell. Labour is basically the Guardian comment section made flesh. It's a fatal flaw, and the longer the British state continues to rot the more obvious that will become to everyone.
Labour needs Scotland and Wales to have any realistic chance of getting power over England. The English Tories can bury English Labour if the Union falls. And with each election in which the Scottish people reject the Union by voting in secessionist Governments, the temptation for the English right to declare the Union a busted flush, to abandon it themselves and to act in its own manifest self-interest can only grow stronger.
We are all on Tam Dalyell's motorway with no exits. The destination is inevitable. It's merely a matter of how quickly we run out of tarmac.
The solution is devomax for Holyrood and an English Parliament in my view, or at least regional assemblies, within a Federal UK
Referendum coming whether Westminster agrees or not, Sturgeon says.
😦. A line of tanks just passed my house heading North.
What HY would call a Catalonian illegal ref scenario. So which country will Nicola have to flee to and hide in, Belgium?
What kind were they? Maybe going to the scrapyard.
That's being a bit rude to Scotland....
No: quite serious point (if a bit unseriously put). MoD is likely to scrap the UK's main battle tanks ie Challenger 2s. I was wondering if what Gealbhan saw was Warrior APCs or somethijng on wheels.
I said yesterday that given I am baffled at the need to display photos of such calls to prove they happened I would respect the first govenment proven to have taken ones in advance or reusing photos for that purpose. I'd respect faking it as well, for the ballsy pointlessness, so I hope that is true. That'll teach them to not stick a flag behind and go for an artsy mirror shot.
She is hapless, Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper would be better
Nandy holds a "red wall" seat. She knows more about them than you do, Essex boy.
She had a 9%+ swing against her at the GE - majority down from 16k to under 7k - in Wigan!
And yet she still got a higher share of the vote in Wigan than the Tories got in the GE as a whole. If she isn't popular by your metric, neither is the government.
Not at all - she was defending one of Labour's safest seats and halved her majority. Wow! you go girl!
And yet, she's still more popular in Wigan than the Conservatives are in the country as a whole.
I love that you guys are proving my point for me.
Yet proportionally she did a lot worse at the election.
No she didn't. She did a lot better at the election. 3.1% better in fact.
She is objectively more popular in Wigan than the the Conservatives are in the country as a whole. That's an undeniable fact.
You guys might not like what she says, and she may be less popular than she was, but she's objectively still popular.
So the suggestion that the likes of Essex Boy knows more about what "red wallers" want than her is laughable.
But the swing against her was much worse than overall. Of course she would do better in an absolute sense if she's defending one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan?
I was saying she did proportionally worse than in the rest of the country. I don't think that is a particularly contentious assessment given the swings.
But just to check, are you saying she isn't popular in Wigan, since that's what we're discussing.
I'm saying she did proportionally worse than her peers. A starting position of one of the safest Labour seats certainly helps in an absolute sense.
Answer the question: is Lisa Nandy popular in Wigan or not?
Or what? lol. I was pointing out that proportionally she did much worse than her peers.
And I was pointing out that whether she did "proportionally worse than her peers" is neither here nor there when that wasn't what we were discussing.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
I think it is relevant. Surely a personal vote would have helped buck the trend, not go in the opposite direction?
46.7% of Wigan voted for her.
Red wall voters definitely hate her.
Cons + Brexit Party got 45%. Red Wall voters definitely hate them.
So Con + Brexit Party got 45%. Lisa Nandy got 46.7.
Red Wall voters objectively and factually do not hate her. The numbers are right there in front of you.
You're carrying this straw man a long way.
Nobody said she was hated.
Nobody even said she wasn't popular.
Nandy is NOT hated in Wigan. That's a ludicrous assertion by whoever is asserting it.
Nobody did. Gallowgate argued against that nobody. That's why I called it a straw man.
Brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement
Not in law it doesn't.
I'm pretty sure you also said that Boris's use of the royal prerogative wasn't unlawful. Funny how that turned out.
It's almost like you're not a constitutional law expert?
I said that the first hearing of the case in the Queens' Bench (a very strong bench at that) had upheld Boris' position.
The Supreme Court took, er, a different path...
I ally myself with the Queen's Bench decision.
That's not how the law works. The Supreme Court's decision is what the law is. What the High Court said is neither here nor there. It was overruled.
Kind of puts your other opinions into perspective really.
My opinion is that in the particular instance of that case, the Supreme Court chose to be a law-making body. And a party pledging to trim the ability of the Supreme Court to make law in place of Parliament subsequently won an 80 seat majority.
Your opinion is irrelevant. The law is the law.
The law is what it is at any point in time. At the time of the Queen's Bench decision, that Boris was entitled to use his powers was the correct interpretation of the law. Agreed?
Or is the flaw utterly unsettled until all possible avenues of appeal have been exhausted?
The Quebec precedent is often brought up - of support for independence ebbing away/collapsing following a second referendum defeat.
Does anyone have an explanation for why this happened? I can think of a few possibilities, but I have no knowledge.
Was there infighting in the independence movement?
Was the next generation of independence politicians relatively less impressive?
Was it simply a loss of confidence among supporters following two defeats?
Were there constitutional changes that satisfied some independence voters?
Economic changes?
The precedent is brought up so often that someone must have at least a good idea why it happened.
Quebec is of course visibly distinct from the rest of Canada -- much more so than Wales, Scotland or even the Republic of Ireland are from England. It has a different language, culture, educational system and legal system from the rest of Canada.
With all these advantages, it should have left. But it has one big, big, big problem that Scotland or even Wales does not have.
The boundaries of Quebec are very unclear.
Quebec entered the Canadian Federation as settlements confined to the St Lawrence river-- and received former Hudson Bay Company territories (Prince Rupert's Land) to administer as part of the Federation. The territories (now called Nouveau Quebec) are of course empty of people -- mainly indigenous Inuit live there -- but they are resource-rich.
Whether Quebec could enter the Canadian Federation as a small province and leave it as a much larger province was always very unclear.
In the 1995 referendum, there was a majority among French speakers to leave, & the English speakers voted to stay. No surprise. But the allophones voted to stay, including the Inuit of Nouveau Quebec.
The reaction of Parizeau (the Parti Quebecois leader) to the referendum loss was to blame the allophones. These remarks were widely regarded as xenophobic and antisemitic.
Quebec may well still leave Canada (especially if the Scots are successful in leaving the UK).
But, they won't leave with the present boundaries of the province of Quebec intact. That is the problem Quebec has.
Nowe that is an interesting and useful contribution (even if the Scots and Welsh also score on many of your points). Most illuminating, and much better than facile analogies of polling history.
Imagine if the rest of the UK adopted bi-lingual signage to keep the Welsh happy.
Of course, official bilingualism in Canada (which is necessary for all Governments documents, etc) has helped bind Quebec more tightly to the rest of Canada.
It has created a large body of middle-class professionals in Quebec who spend their life translating documents from French to English (and vice versa) -- who would have zero job prospects in an independent Quebec.
Hull/Chapleau (other side of the Ontario boundary from Ottawa) was perhaps the only majority French-speaking riding that voted "Non". It is packed with people employed by federal government agencies to translate documents.
The others that voted "Non" were the heavily Anglicised Eastern Townships, West & Central Montreal and the Inuits of Nouveau Quebec.
Official bilingualism always works to erase the desire for separation.
(The same of course has happened in Wales -- bilingualism has created middle class people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
Isn't that logic a bit stretched? The Irish are de facto officially bilingual - and so would an independent Wales. So no change there surely.
In Canada, I think it has helped the country stay together by creating bilingual speakers who have an interest in the status quo.
Every federal document (even in Alberta or BC or Newfoundland) must be in English/French.
I think at the height of the pandemic, the Canadian Government distributed PPC materials (probably made in China) with instructions in English only. They were taken to court by Francophones.
Absolutely everything the Federal Government does must be in English and French in EVERY Canadian province, even the ones where only a tiny percentage are French speakers.
It is a goldmine for the Canadiens who are truly bilingual.
Ah, that's interesting. Of course, they can't vote if they are not living in Quebec, but there is still some effect you think?
They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the fuck small business government. And extraordinary thing for a party which claims to revere Thatcher.
This is not the Conservative Party. They were purged by Cummings and the loyalty pledge to Brexit and Glorious Leader for the 2019 election.
What we have now is a party of English Nationalists. They kept the name, but that is about it.
To be fair to Cummings, his departure has probably made things worse, not better.
OK, he was in many ways a nasty piece of work. He was less capable than he thought he was, and borderline bonkers.
He did, however, have a coherent plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain, especially outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge golden triangle. That vision was that as many of us as possible would get qualifications in maths and physics and then set up tech firms, supported by government bungs and low regulation enabled by leaving the EU. In that way we would all become millionaires.
Admittedly, it was a fairly unworkable plan, but it was a plan. Apart from "keeping a circle of grateful minions around Boris", what's the plan now?
Respond to the daily headlines. Create a culture war. Turn people off Labour. Thats it.
Plus vaccinate faster than any major nation on Earth. Little things like that.
Not sure what that's got to do with Labour or the culture war. Care to elaborate?
Eh? The claim from @Stuartinromford was that there was no 'plan to improve the lot of the people of Britain' after Cummings; @noneoftheabove claimed in response that all the government had was playing the headlines and culture war; I pointed out that we had plans for many other things as well, which right now involves being a world leader in vaccinations. Come on, PB legal eagle.
Vaccines is a thing the government has done well. Though the UK may be heading for the curious combination of first to end the pandemic / proportionately most deaths on the way, thanks to the things the government has done badly.
In any case, there's a big gap between making one good big decision and a vision to improve the lot of the people in the longer term.
They have to hope their gamble on the 12 week gap between jabs does not backfire.
It won’t. It’s based on some sound science and decision making.
Certainly I think people are being willfully misleading or willfully misconceiving the basis of it.
It being a calculated risk is not the same as it having been a complete guess for instance. Gamble may be the right word in a sense, but its not a gamble taken with no consideration of factors and probabilities, even if it did backfire.
Comments
It has created a large body of middle-class professionals in Quebec who spend their life translating documents from French to English (and vice versa) -- who would have zero job prospects in an independent Quebec.
Hull/Chapleau (other side of the Ontario boundary from Ottawa) was perhaps the only majority French-speaking riding that voted "Non". It is packed with people employed by federal government agencies to translate documents.
The others that voted "Non" were the heavily Anglicised Eastern Townships, West & Central Montreal and the Inuits of Nouveau Quebec.
Official bilingualism always works to erase the desire for separation.
(The same of course has happened in Wales -- bilingualism has created middle class people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
Uxbridge and South Ruislip swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019 2.1%.
Richmond (Yorks) swing from Labour to Tories in 2019 3.3%.
Boris and Rishi are holding the Conservatives back!
Is that where you attack with pawns?
The problem is where one constituent part fucks up that taxation programme, raises far less than expected (by, for example raising CGT rates and greatly reduces the overall tax take by companies or individuals moving to anther UK country) and then expects the central UK Govt. to come to their rescue.
I've got a meeting with a world leading viral immunological specialist in a few days and I'm going to ask all of these questions in mutation and vaccine evasion.
True, there hasn’t been much trialing efficacy of these vaccines 1 jab 12 weeks apart, but in fact that means no one knows for certain it won’t work. It’s how vaccines for SARS previously behaved being used to drive the decision making, and no one has much to back up an argument that the decision is wrong.
My assertion was that Lisa Nandy is popular in Wigan. All your nonsense about swings is irrelevant to that. She got a higher percentage of the vote in Wigan than the Conservatives got in the country as a whole.
If she isn't popular, neither is the government.
Referendum coming whether Westminster agrees or not, Sturgeon says.
Red wall voters definitely hate her.
In any case, there's a big gap between making one good big decision and a vision to improve the lot of the people in the longer term.
Section 52 of the UK Internal Market Act 2020 explicitly amends Part 2 of Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998.
Section 54 of the UK Internal Market Act 2020 explicitly amends Schedule 4 of the Scotland Act 1998.
Furthermore Section 10, disapplies section 30A of the Scotland Act 1998 when applying the new provisions, which talks of legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament.
The same is true in section 18 which disapplies section 30A of the Scotland Act 1998 in regards to services.
What HY would call a Catalonian illegal ref scenario. So which country will Nicola have to flee to and hide in, Belgium?
Red Wall voters objectively and factually do not hate her. The numbers are right there in front of you.
With whom we don’t have a ‘free trade’ agreement.
Driving in Wales is confusing and harder work.
Do they have more accidents?
We have a country with 2 constituencies of equal size, and two political parties.
Election 2022 (Feburary)
Harpenden South East:
Sensible Party: 99%
Very Silly Party: 1%
Luton:
Very Silly Party: 99%
Sensible Party: 1%
Election 2022 (October)
Harpenden South East:
Very Silly Party: 50.5%
Sensible Party: 49.5%
Luton:
Very Silly Party: 99.5%
Sensible Party: 0.5%
In the above example, the national swing is 25%. But in Luton, the swing is 0.5%. So in this example, it looks like the Sensible Party has done a lot better there than it did in the country overall. But have they really? In both cases, they've lost half their voters.
A much better comparison would be to compare groups of constituencies, say all the constituencies where Labour had between 60-70%, and see how each of those constituencies fared.
And even then, it's right to emphasise who won as much as how much they won by or the swing. All of these things are important if your aim is to get a robust sense of performance. Sadly, that's not what most people are aiming for.
PS:, for dummies, the original question which was not your rigged one trying to dance on the pin of a head and limit it to a specific single point.
"brexit significantly changes the nature of the union constitutional settlement"
Though it might be amusing to watch HYUFD throw himself enthusiastically into it.
Nobody said she was hated.
Nobody even said she wasn't popular.
Every federal document (even in Alberta or BC or Newfoundland) must be in English/French.
I think at the height of the pandemic, the Canadian Government distributed PPC materials (probably made in China) with instructions in English only. They were taken to court by Francophones.
Absolutely everything the Federal Government does must be in English and French in EVERY Canadian province, even the ones where only a tiny percentage are French speakers.
It is a goldmine for the Canadiens who are truly bilingual.
So, infinitesimally relevant.
I always thought the question of legality was secondary, as I considered it was the wrong thing to do whether or not it was lawful. I cannot say I was particularly convinced by some of the Supreme Court judgement, which is unusual, like how prorogation being a process done to parliament rather than a process of parliament.
My take was the don’t drink message was based on immunity and allowing vaccine to work, not a glass of wine on top of this will make the feeling next few days even worse. Or I could be wrong. Or it could be both!
Time will tell.
It’s a vampire phone. Simples.
Or is the flaw utterly unsettled until all possible avenues of appeal have been exhausted?
now Boris phone truthers.
Maybe Sturgeon can help them with their own illegal poll! 😏
https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1353336293560897536?s=20
https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1353336294768848898?s=20
It being a calculated risk is not the same as it having been a complete guess for instance. Gamble may be the right word in a sense, but its not a gamble taken with no consideration of factors and probabilities, even if it did backfire.