The argument that immigration doesn't affect the jobs market I think is incorrect.
The real effect has been on productivity. Why should I increase my productivity with a piece of machinery, when there is a surplus of cheap labour which can do the job and are easy to get rid of (much easier than a large or specific capital asset). And if that surplus keeps growing, then it's much easier to put off capital investment because wages for manual tasks are depressed. Productivity increases drive wage increases or consumer choice through price competition. We imported our 'competition' through China pricing, but that gain is now over.
Also, the tax take from a minimum wage worker is fairly low. If that minimum wage worker requires housing but cannot afford it, the state will subsidise his low wage to pay his rent, put his children through school, look after his health, and pay his pension. The employer benefits, not the employee - as he no longer has to pay a wage commensurate to the cost of living - he does not have to raise his productivity to afford it.
Minimum wage worker on a 40hr/p/w - £15,600 Tax threshold £11,500 Ni Threshold 8164. Total earnings related taxes = £1710
Then the question has to be, how much do the services that this individual has access to cost? How much is lost to the exchequer because productivity investment has been diverted into low tax yield employment? How many more people are on minimum wage because of the ever increasing labour force?
You should add say £1500 to the above for Vat and excise duties. If it's a single man, the state is ahead. A family with 3 children at school less so. Perhaps this has a bearing on the Government's attitude to family rights.
The underestimation of the costs of immigration on the education sector is huge, IMO.
As an example, we're quite literally employing Romanian/Polish/other language teachers to teach English to those who don't have it as a first language.
"...the failure of the Remain campaign to win the referendum lies firmly on the shoulders of one man – Cameron. His combination of arrogance, lack of attention to detail, his unwillingness to take on party colleagues for fear of provoking rifts following the vote, and ultimately his failure to understand the way in which the EU system functions, or for that matter the people who run it, were more weakening to the Remain campaign than the arguments promoted by the Leave side."
I know it was a tough sell, but the way Cameron completely abandoned his deal from the EU was also a factor. Blair 2002, with the same fundamental deal might have had it worded slightly differently (emergency brake?) and just gone into full sales mode. There was stuff in there that suggested supertanker Europe did and does find a lot of merit in our ideas and would alter course, but the idea that a few negotiation sessions would entirely remould the EU into Britain's fantasy trading bloc was always for the birds.
Cameron and the government's position was clear before the referendum. The fact that many fellow Conservatives attacked him and his position continuously meant that it was impossible to get a Blair-style message over.
Blaming Cameron for holding, and the result of, the referendum is almost farcically one-dimensional and childish. It's classic blame-avoidance and Monday-afternoon quarterbacking.
The argument that immigration doesn't affect the jobs market I think is incorrect.
The real effect has been on productivity. Why should I increase my productivity with a piece of machinery, when there is a surplus of cheap labour which can do the job and are easy to get rid of (much easier than a large or specific capital asset). And if that surplus keeps growing, then it's much easier to put off capital investment because wages for manual tasks are depressed. Productivity increases drive wage increases or consumer choice through price competition. We imported our 'competition' through China pricing, but that gain is now over.
Also, the tax take from a minimum wage worker is fairly low. If that minimum wage worker requires housing but cannot afford it, the state will subsidise his low wage to pay his rent, put his children through school, look after his health, and pay his pension. The employer benefits, not the employee - as he no longer has to pay a wage commensurate to the cost of living - he does not have to raise his productivity to afford it.
Minimum wage worker on a 40hr/p/w - £15,600 Tax threshold £11,500 Ni Threshold 8164. Total earnings related taxes = £1710
Then the question has to be, how much do the services that this individual has access to cost? How much is lost to the exchequer because productivity investment has been diverted into low tax yield employment? How many more people are on minimum wage because of the ever increasing labour force?
You should add say £1500 to the above for Vat and excise duties. If it's a single man, the state is ahead. A family with 3 children at school less so. Perhaps this has a bearing on the Government's attitude to family rights.
The underestimation of the costs of immigration on the education sector is huge, IMO.
As an example, we're quite literally employing Romanian/Polish/other language teachers to teach English to those who don't have it as a first language.
Which is crazy. Immersion is the best way to learn a foreign language. Admittedly, that can be hard in classes where ESL kids are the majority.
Austerity might be painful - but we aren't balancing the books yet so we still don't know.
Voters feeling sorry for themselves - well we lived high on the hog for too long running up huge debts. We get all we deserve.
How did you live high on the hog? I can't remember doing that.
I lived under successive governments spending more than they took in - leaving a huge debt to the next generations. Utterly selfish.
High on the hog, implies some kind of lavish lifestyle. That was not a thing. I think my hospital got a linear accelerator for cancer treatment. Doesn't seem too opulent. The idea that we lived through a period of decadence is a touch OTT.
'All around the world political loyalties are breaking down'
... Except in Britain, which in 2017 saw the traditional two party system stronger than it has been in 40 years
Beneath the surface, there are huge shifts in loyalties taking place. Look at the number of seats where the Tories did better than in 1983 (eg Mansfield, Amber Valley, Stoke Central, North Warwickshire, Bolsover, Stevenage) and where they did worse than in 1997 (eg Hove, Southgate, Kensington, Canterbury).
Look at the wild shifts in fortunes in Scotland since 2010.
Overall, the Tories have gained 20 seats from Labour, since 2010, but lost 36, and gained 28 from Lib Dems and SNP, while losing 1.
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Remember the golden rule....
PB Tories never learn, always wrong?
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
The golden rule of Brexit is that anything which gives Remainers cheer ends up undermining their cause.
Source?
One of my own.
Examples:
Obama and his 'back of the queue' Punishment budget Theresa May as leader The HoL stalling The Article 50 court case The Lancaster house speech James Chapman The Florence speech
The argument that immigration doesn't affect the jobs market I think is incorrect.
The real effect has been on productivity. Why should I increase my productivity with a piece of machinery, when there is a surplus of cheap labour which can do the job and are easy to get rid of (much easier than a large or specific capital asset). And if that surplus keeps growing, then it's much easier to put off capital investment because wages for manual tasks are depressed. Productivity increases drive wage increases or consumer choice through price competition. We imported our 'competition' through China pricing, but that gain is now over.
Also, the tax take from a minimum wage worker is fairly low. If that minimum wage worker requires housing but cannot afford it, the state will subsidise his low wage to pay his rent, put his children through school, look after his health, and pay his pension. The employer benefits, not the employee - as he no longer has to pay a wage commensurate to the cost of living - he does not have to raise his productivity to afford it.
Minimum wage worker on a 40hr/p/w - £15,600 Tax threshold £11,500 Ni Threshold 8164. Total earnings related taxes = £1710
Then the question has to be, how much do the services that this individual has access to cost? How much is lost to the exchequer because productivity investment has been diverted into low tax yield employment? How many more people are on minimum wage because of the ever increasing labour force?
Have a look at the population figures that I posted. We do not have an ever increasing Labour force. That is projected to be more or less static even under current rates of immigration. Population growth over the next 2 decades is almost exclusively in the over 75's.
This is not unique to the UK. Apart from Africa and the Middle East the population pyramid is more or less changing in the same direction worldwide.
But is it not the case that we are at the end of a large period of workforce growth, say between 2000 and 2015? What about figures also for low skilled entrants to the UK jobs market?
Looking at the shape of the population pyramid, that does not seem to be the case over the last fifteen years, and certainly is not looking forward.
The average migrant is more skilled than the average Briton, albeit often initially employed in areas that do not use the skill set.
Advocates of lower immigration as a cure for societies ills do need to come up with a better way of a shrinking workforce supporting an increasing number of over 75's.
I've never quite got why Alastair finds the citizens of nowhere meme so irritating but it clearly rankles. If only Goodhart had used the phrase citizens of the world instead.
He was describing a class of people who are capable and have been willing to move and go out into the world to make a success of themselves and thus, in an Adam Smith way, a success of the country as well. Once you have demonstrated that willingness to change and start again the same mind set makes you much more open to other change as well. Those who are more hesitant about change and less willing to move are inevitably more focussed on more parochial matters.
This by no means implies that the citizens of somewhere are less important or less valuable or have less fulfilling lives. But I think Alastair misses that it is them that Goodhart is trying to explain and give value to. The citizens of the world have an obvious value and don't need a justification.
There was a time when many ambitious Scots went abroad or even just to England to make something of themselves and achieve success or riches. It is the decline of that ambition and drive that is a major part of Scotland's problems right now.
It also refers to those who leave their home community to move to tax havens. That includes Brits who move to Monaco or Jersey and oligarchs who come to London.
Companies need to remember they have stakeholders not just shareholders; business owners that they owe part of their success to the community and environment in which they operate
In my view, the phrase was a fair one and applied to both companies and individuals, but the trouble is it sounds much more personal when directed at the latter.
Is Toyota a citizen of nowhere? And if so is that good or bad?
@Anna_Soubry: 1/2 Hugely heartened by PM’s refusal to back #Leave. We’ve respected #EUReferendum result as promised
@Anna_Soubry: 2/2 Brexit ideologists should do the same. On June 8 people rejected their no deal #HardBrexit.
By voting overwhelmingly for parties backing a hard Brexit.
That is a total fantasy! 83% may have voted Tory or Labour, but you have no means of extrapolating intentions regarding hard Brexit. You can probably assume that the majority of UKIP votes were for the cliff-edge.
'All around the world political loyalties are breaking down'
... Except in Britain, which in 2017 saw the traditional two party system stronger than it has been in 40 years
Beneath the surface, there are huge shifts in loyalties taking place. Look at the number of seats where the Tories did better than in 1983 (eg Mansfield, Amber Valley, Stoke Central, North Warwickshire, Bolsover, Stevenage) and where they did worse than in 1997 (eg Hove, Southgate, Kensington, Canterbury).
Look at the wild shifts in fortunes in Scotland since 2010.
Overall, the Tories have gained 20 seats from Labour, since 2010, but lost 36, and gained 28 from Lib Dems and SNP, while losing 1.
Doesn't really compare well to bigger movements in the 80s, 90s or 00s.
Harvey Weinstein's having a rather dramatic fall from grace, isn't he?
Makes you wonder how many others there are out there...
Perhaps someone could come up with a kind of anonymous and confidential reporting system, where accusers are notified when a critical level of other complainants is reached - to encourage them to go public...
My late father in law worked in New Zealand for 3 years on secondment in the early 90s. He absolutely loved it and would probably have emigrated had it not been for the pull of family. It was, on his description, a much more equal and egalitarian society. That was quite a long time ago though and NZ have been through significant changes since to allow themselves to compete. Those rats are perhaps picking up speed.
I have spent much of my life working overseas and living there for short periods. But I never considered anywhere but England my home and always made sure that there was a happy taxman in England as far as both personal and business taxes were concerned.
The problem we have now - and this is directly related to the 'citizen of nowhere' idea - is that we have too many people who want to be internationalist and European whilst they are supposed to be contributing and then want to be British when they are ready to get something back from the State. This applies across the board to all age groups. Citizenship is about rights and responsibilities and it does strike me that there is a small but vocal group of people who are quick to shout about their rights but less willing to consider their responsibilities.
If Brexit is betrayed, a Corbyn landslide is guaranteed. Leave voters will sit on their hands in their millions.
If Brexit happens then Tories out of power for generations.
Is this some ludicrous game of hyperbole? Even in Canada, when the Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats, it didn't take generations for them to recover.
If you want to look at what happens when people are "cheated" (Meeks' header), look at Scotland.
The Scots were cheated out of devolution in 1979, despite the devolutionists winning the referendum fair and square.
How did that work out? Many would say it added fuel to the sense of grievance and injustice, and led ultimately to the SNP becoming the largest party in Scotland.
Cheat the Leavers out of their victory, if you want. The long-term consequences will be just as severe.
Perhaps someone could come up with a kind of anonymous and confidential reporting system, where accusers are notified when a critical level of other complainants is reached - to encourage them to go public...
Perhaps the 1922 committee could commercialise their system?
My late father in law worked in New Zealand for 3 years on secondment in the early 90s. He absolutely loved it and would probably have emigrated had it not been for the pull of family. It was, on his description, a much more equal and egalitarian society. That was quite a long time ago though and NZ have been through significant changes since to allow themselves to compete. Those rats are perhaps picking up speed.
I have spent much of my life working overseas and living there for short periods. But I never considered anywhere but England my home and always made sure that there was a happy taxman in England as far as both personal and business taxes were concerned.
The problem we have now - and this is directly related to the 'citizen of nowhere' idea - is that we have too many people who want to be internationalist and European whilst they are supposed to be contributing and then want to be British when they are ready to get something back from the State. This applies across the board to all age groups. Citizenship is about rights and responsibilities and it does strike me that there is a small but vocal group of people who are quick to shout about their rights but less willing to consider their responsibilities.
I might disagree with you on many things, Richard, but we agree entirely on this.
My late father in law worked in New Zealand for 3 years on secondment in the early 90s. He absolutely loved it and would probably have emigrated had it not been for the pull of family. It was, on his description, a much more equal and egalitarian society. That was quite a long time ago though and NZ have been through significant changes since to allow themselves to compete. Those rats are perhaps picking up speed.
I have spent much of my life working overseas and living there for short periods. But I never considered anywhere but England my home and always made sure that there was a happy taxman in England as far as both personal and business taxes were concerned.
The problem we have now - and this is directly related to the 'citizen of nowhere' idea - is that we have too many people who want to be internationalist and European whilst they are supposed to be contributing and then want to be British when they are ready to get something back from the State. This applies across the board to all age groups. Citizenship is about rights and responsibilities and it does strike me that there is a small but vocal group of people who are quick to shout about their rights but less willing to consider their responsibilities.
Yes I worry about this too...
I don't think the situation is as bad yet as you suggest... but it will get there. I know lots of young people moving to Dubai for instance because they can save lots/there is no tax.
But they expect to come back to the UK and have a well-funded NHS when they get there...
Austerity might be painful - but we aren't balancing the books yet so we still don't know.
Voters feeling sorry for themselves - well we lived high on the hog for too long running up huge debts. We get all we deserve.
How did you live high on the hog? I can't remember doing that.
I lived under successive governments spending more than they took in - leaving a huge debt to the next generations. Utterly selfish.
High on the hog, implies some kind of lavish lifestyle. That was not a thing. I think my hospital got a linear accelerator for cancer treatment. Doesn't seem too opulent. The idea that we lived through a period of decadence is a touch OTT.
And you did use the word 'we'.
Yet the government has still borrowed over a trillion quid during the past decade and the UK had a cumulative current account deficit of £480bn during the past five years.
All that imported consumer tat and foreign holidays didn't come free.
Mr. Mortimer, a significant factor in education cost is that Pakistanis engaging, over generations, in repeated marriage to first cousins has reduced the genetic variance between said cousins to something akin to siblings, and is producing more and more genetic defects, including learning difficulties.
I've never quite got why Alastair finds the citizens of nowhere meme so irritating but it clearly rankles. If only Goodhart had used the phrase citizens of the world instead.
He was describing a class of people who are capable and have been willing to move and go out into the world to make a success of themselves and thus, in an Adam Smith way, a success of the country as well. Once you have demonstrated that willingness to change and start again the same mind set makes you much more open to other change as well. Those who are more hesitant about change and less willing to move are inevitably more focussed on more parochial matters.
This by no means implies that the citizens of somewhere are less important or less valuable or have less fulfilling lives. But I think Alastair misses that it is them that Goodhart is trying to explain and give value to. The citizens of the world have an obvious value and don't need a justification.
There was a time when many ambitious Scots went abroad or even just to England to make something of themselves and achieve success or riches. It is the decline of that ambition and drive that is a major part of Scotland's problems right now.
Citizens of Nowhere Vs Citizens or Somewhere isn't a clear divide but a spectrum. Very few people actually fit the true no affiliation to any country image, but there are many more who head towards that direction. Many more of us are in the middle
That's a very fair point.
I often think of my mother when I hear the phrase. She fled Iran before the revolution and as an Iranian in the UK she much preferred the modernity here compared to the provincialism back there. But now she is very attached to her Yorkshire community and complains about immigration of hijabis as it reminds her of the religious trends and societal pressure to be devout in 1970s Tehran. Does that make her cosmopolitan or provincial? I don't know.
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Once a narrative takes hold that the government doesn't believe in it, and there is no conceivable alternative government that does believe in it, what else is left?
Harvey Weinstein's having a rather dramatic fall from grace, isn't he?
Makes you wonder how many others there are out there...
Perhaps someone could come up with a kind of anonymous and confidential reporting system, where accusers are notified when a critical level of other complainants is reached - to encourage them to go public...
Well, the 'casting couch' is hardly a new concept.
People need to understand that if you manage someone, or have power over someone, then you need to be extremely careful how you treat that person - not just for their sake, but your own. Lord Rennard is a classic example.
Basically: you need to be professional.
The opposite is also true: if someone has every willingly used sex with a boss or person of authority in order to gain, then the are partially responsible for this toxic environment.
(Says someone who ended up marrying someone he had project managed).
David, you are well wrong , it is fact that people are realising they should not have to leave to have opportunities, that Scotland should not just be a shooting range for rich twats. We should not have to leave our families due to fact that we are ran badly from London. If only we had had enough Scots with a backbone in 2014.
When ambitious Dundonians went to India and what is now Bangladesh to build the jute trade they came back and built what was then the largest factories in the world in Dundee to process it. When ambitious Clydesiders went into international trade they helped to create a huge shipping industry to provide the vessels for that trade. When ambitious bankers from Edinburgh....damn, that was going quite well until then.
Anyway, I am not suggesting that these Scots had to leave permanently but that the whole country gained from their entrepreneurial spirit. Scotland has a major problem with the lack of such a spirit today. The public sector is far too large and offers too many cosy billets to make the risks worth running. We do not have a viable economy as a result which means we can thank the good sense of those who recognised that in 2014.
Thank goodness you decided to keep your no doubt exceptional talents here to balance out we stolid, unambitious stay-at-homes.
Lower unemployment, lower youth unemployment, higher growth, trade surplus rather than deficit; seems like the UK could do with some more of Scotland's 'problems'.
"...the failure of the Remain campaign to win the referendum lies firmly on the shoulders of one man – Cameron. His combination of arrogance, lack of attention to detail, his unwillingness to take on party colleagues for fear of provoking rifts following the vote, and ultimately his failure to understand the way in which the EU system functions, or for that matter the people who run it, were more weakening to the Remain campaign than the arguments promoted by the Leave side."
I know it was a tough sell, but the way Cameron completely abandoned his deal from the EU was also a factor. Blair 2002, with the same fundamental deal might have had it worded slightly differently (emergency brake?) and just gone into full sales mode. There was stuff in there that suggested supertanker Europe did and does find a lot of merit in our ideas and would alter course, but the idea that a few negotiation sessions would entirely remould the EU into Britain's fantasy trading bloc was always for the birds.
Cameron and the government's position was clear before the referendum. The fact that many fellow Conservatives attacked him and his position continuously meant that it was impossible to get a Blair-style message over.
Blaming Cameron for holding, and the result of, the referendum is almost farcically one-dimensional and childish. It's classic blame-avoidance and Monday-afternoon quarterbacking.
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Remember the golden rule....
PB Tories never learn, always wrong?
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
The golden rule of Brexit is that anything which gives Remainers cheer ends up undermining their cause.
Source?
One of my own.
Examples:
Obama and his 'back of the queue' Punishment budget Theresa May as leader The HoL stalling The Article 50 court case The Lancaster house speech James Chapman The Florence speech
Whatever happened to James Chapman ?
It wasn't long ago that he was being eulogised by certain people here.
Remind me how many fewer votes Mrs May won in 2017 than Mr Cameron in 2015?
Oh, wait...
CON vote up 5.8% LAB vote up 9.8% therefore swing to LAB which came from Remainers as the latest GE analysis is showing
OTOH, the Conservatives have crushed the most unequivocally anti-Brexit party, the Lib Dems, in their heartlands. Think of the number of West Country seats where they're now a distant third.
Both Labour and the Tory party went into the election explicitly promising Brexit would be completed and that it would include leaving both the Single Market and the Customs Union - That is a fact.
Over 80% of the voters voted for parties that supported a hard Brexit - That is another fact.
If you really believe Corbyn would have got anywhere near the level of support he did if he had backed Remain then you are truly deluded. Exactly how many of those UKIP supporters do you think would have returned to Labour had they not supported a hard Brexit. Corbyn knew this. It seems it is only the Remoaners who are in denial.
GOVERNMENT plans for leaving the EU without a trade deal seem to involve living in a 14th century agrarian society, experts have noted.
Concerns have been raised over initiatives such as working 16 hours a day in the fields to grow enough food and using prayer to cure illnesses after the NHS has collapsed.
Economist Donna Sheridan said: “Total economic meltdown followed by living in filthy hovels with your pigs was probably not what most people voted for in the referendum.
“I’m particularly concerned about replacing high-tech manufacturing and financial services with growing cabbages. I also believe there is no significant overseas market for ‘swords and big catapults’.”
If Brexit is betrayed, a Corbyn landslide is guaranteed. Leave voters will sit on their hands in their millions.
If Brexit happens then Tories out of power for generations.
Is this some ludicrous game of hyperbole? Even in Canada, when the Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats, it didn't take generations for them to recover.
If you want to look at what happens when people are "cheated" (Meeks' header), look at Scotland.
The Scots were cheated out of devolution in 1979, despite the devolutionists winning the referendum fair and square.
How did that work out? Many would say it added fuel to the sense of grievance and injustice, and led ultimately to the SNP becoming the largest party in Scotland.
Cheat the Leavers out of their victory, if you want. The long-term consequences will be just as severe.
Austerity might be painful - but we aren't balancing the books yet so we still don't know.
Voters feeling sorry for themselves - well we lived high on the hog for too long running up huge debts. We get all we deserve.
How did you live high on the hog? I can't remember doing that.
I lived under successive governments spending more than they took in - leaving a huge debt to the next generations. Utterly selfish.
Better not to visualise public debt simply as the government being bedazzled by flash trinkets and gadgets but as an integral part of the international system that moves value to the time when it is needed: mortgages that anticipate a few short decades of earning and pensions that draw from them, the need to move huge amounts of capital safely over 40, 50, 60 years. The demand for this is increasing rapidly, the supply, not so much.
In judging government debt, or indeed, the private debt that is the true elephant in the UK room, it is the whole system that needs to be considered and, ultimately, the question that needs answering is this: what sweat pays that debt? Often it very may not even be a UK citizen working off a UK debt.
Nations and geographies do not age or die and it is entirely possible to run near continual deficits as long as that central question of sweat can be answered.
@Anna_Soubry: 1/2 Hugely heartened by PM’s refusal to back #Leave. We’ve respected #EUReferendum result as promised
@Anna_Soubry: 2/2 Brexit ideologists should do the same. On June 8 people rejected their no deal #HardBrexit.
By voting overwhelmingly for parties backing a hard Brexit.
That is a total fantasy! 83% may have voted Tory or Labour, but you have no means of extrapolating intentions regarding hard Brexit. You can probably assume that the majority of UKIP votes were for the cliff-edge.
I was not the one trying to draw unsupported conclusions from the election results. That was the idiotic Anna Soubry. She is the one claiming the loss of the majority was due to people not wanting Brexit. Conveniently ignoring all those UKIP supporters who voted Labour safe in the knowledge they had promised a hard Brexit.
Sunday's thread should contain a reference to Caesar's stunning performance at Dyrrhachium, where he was outnumbered by 50% but still managed to inflict double the number of casualties on the Optimates, which led to the war ending battle of Pharsalus.
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Remember the golden rule....
PB Tories never learn, always wrong?
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
The golden rule of Brexit is that anything which gives Remainers cheer ends up undermining their cause.
Source?
One of my own.
Examples:
Obama and his 'back of the queue' Punishment budget Theresa May as leader The HoL stalling The Article 50 court case The Lancaster house speech James Chapman The Florence speech
Whatever happened to James Chapman ?
It wasn't long ago that he was being eulogised by certain people here.
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Remember the golden rule....
PB Tories never learn, always wrong?
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
The golden rule of Brexit is that anything which gives Remainers cheer ends up undermining their cause.
Source?
One of my own.
Examples:
Obama and his 'back of the queue' Punishment budget Theresa May as leader The HoL stalling The Article 50 court case The Lancaster house speech James Chapman The Florence speech
One I would add to that list is the IMF. I seem to remember great excitement among remainers on this site when the IMF gave its opinion.
Harvey Weinstein's having a rather dramatic fall from grace, isn't he?
Makes you wonder how many others there are out there...
Perhaps someone could come up with a kind of anonymous and confidential reporting system, where accusers are notified when a critical level of other complainants is reached - to encourage them to go public...
Well, the 'casting couch' is hardly a new concept.
People need to understand that if you manage someone, or have power over someone, then you need to be extremely careful how you treat that person - not just for their sake, but your own. Lord Rennard is a classic example.
Basically: you need to be professional.
The opposite is also true: if someone has every willingly used sex with a boss or person of authority in order to gain, then the are partially responsible for this toxic environment.
(Says someone who ended up marrying someone he had project managed).
We have another thing in common then. I married my trainee.
Both Labour and the Tory party went into the election explicitly promising Brexit would be completed and that it would include leaving both the Single Market and the Customs Union - That is a fact.
Over 80% of the voters voted for parties that supported a hard Brexit - That is another fact.
If you really believe Corbyn would have got anywhere near the level of support he did if he had backed Remain then you are truly deluded. Exactly how many of those UKIP supporters do you think would have returned to Labour had they not supported a hard Brexit. Corbyn knew this. It seems it is only the Remoaners who are in denial.
Had the Conservatives gone into the election promising not to implement Brexit, UKIP would have won far more votes than in 2015, and probably picked up a lot of Coastal seats.
That would be the attack Caesar launched with veteran troops against Pompey's newly-raised legions, which ended with Caesar's beloved and trusty Tenth legion running away and Pompey winning the battle?
Both Labour and the Tory party went into the election explicitly promising Brexit would be completed and that it would include leaving both the Single Market and the Customs Union - That is a fact.
Over 80% of the voters voted for parties that supported a hard Brexit - That is another fact.
If you really believe Corbyn would have got anywhere near the level of support he did if he had backed Remain then you are truly deluded. Exactly how many of those UKIP supporters do you think would have returned to Labour had they not supported a hard Brexit. Corbyn knew this. It seems it is only the Remoaners who are in denial.
Had the Conservatives gone into the election promising not to implement Brexit, UKIP would have won far more votes than in 2015, and probably picked up a lot of Coastal seats.
It would have been a Tory UKIP deal rather than Tory DUap
Mr. Mortimer, a significant factor in education cost is that Pakistanis engaging, over generations, in repeated marriage to first cousins has reduced the genetic variance between said cousins to something akin to siblings, and is producing more and more genetic defects, including learning difficulties.
It's certainly a problem, but a 'significant factor'... what cost would you ascribed to it, Mr.D ?
I have a little knowledge of primary education in Yorkshire, and (equally anecdotally), many of the most significant problems in terms of SEND, and certainly (extreme) behaviour problems, manifest in what is somewhat inaccurately described as the 'white working class'.
(As an example, fetal alcohol syndrome is quite differently correlated in terms of culture.)
Very good thread header, exploring several explanations to attempt to explain where we are now. I would have liked to have seen Alastair explore one more important avenue in his piece - The media, both MSM and Social.
In the past ten years there have been great changes in both forms of media. Memes and slogans have become king and are used to discourage and close down discussion and objective thinking. Examples being "Corbyn is unelectable", " Fake News", "the one per cent" and more recently, "Venezuela".
Journalists have generally become less objective, more partisan and less subtle about it. Social media, thanks to it's easy and simple "sharing" facility is 99% memes and only 1% sensible and objective discussion.
Both forms of media sow the seeds of hated and discontent like never before. Is it any wonder, therefore that this is reflected when people get their one chance every few years to make their voices heard in an election?
That would be the attack Caesar launched with veteran troops against Pompey's newly-raised legions, which ended with Caesar's beloved and trusty Tenth legion running away and Pompey winning the battle?
Both Labour and the Tory party went into the election explicitly promising Brexit would be completed and that it would include leaving both the Single Market and the Customs Union - That is a fact.
Over 80% of the voters voted for parties that supported a hard Brexit - That is another fact.
If you really believe Corbyn would have got anywhere near the level of support he did if he had backed Remain then you are truly deluded. Exactly how many of those UKIP supporters do you think would have returned to Labour had they not supported a hard Brexit. Corbyn knew this. It seems it is only the Remoaners who are in denial.
Had the Conservatives gone into the election promising not to implement Brexit, UKIP would have won far more votes than in 2015, and probably picked up a lot of Coastal seats.
It would have been a Tory UKIP deal rather than Tory DUap
Not 100% confident you have thought that one through...
Mr. B, I don't know about cost but the proportional difference (between general population and those with learning difficulties) is significant. As you say, foetal alcohol syndrome will have almost precisely the opposite divergence between general and specific populations.
Austerity might be painful - but we aren't balancing the books yet so we still don't know.
Voters feeling sorry for themselves - well we lived high on the hog for too long running up huge debts. We get all we deserve.
How did you live high on the hog? I can't remember doing that.
I lived under successive governments spending more than they took in - leaving a huge debt to the next generations. Utterly selfish.
Agreed. The selfishness runs much deeper than just national overspending though - it’s completely permeated the economy.
The solution offered by the Conservative party (until TM’s speech last week, at least) was to load this excess public debt directly into the next generation via targeted austerity - tuition fees, delayed pensions and withdrawing as much as possible of the welfare state from them during their working lives.
They’ve also allowed private companies to honour existing, massively expensive pension obligations for older workers, contributing only a small fraction for younger workers.
The UK housing stock (now valued at 4x the total national debt) is the final major bung from the young to the old. If the population increases, you build more houses. You can’t not. But a couple of generations decided NIMBY with the added bonus that they wouldn’t have to pay to build the new houses & they’d get to pocket the asset price rise after engineering fake scarcity.
Insane and utterly selfish.
That’s what 6 decades of have cake & eat it exonomics has bequethed to the next generation.
I do genuinely appreciate TM’s actions on this. Tuition fees are a small but significant step.
However on immigration I would point out that the issue is as much cultural as economic with concerns about ISIS terrorism as much a force in the rise of the far right in Europe as the undercutting of wages and a desire for immigrants to commit to the culture and traditions of the country they have emigrated too.
On class politics it is not so much an ABC1 C2DE divide as an ABC2 and C1DE divide. At the last general election the Tories still won upper middle class ABs, albeit by less than Cameron did and they also won skilled working class C2s by more than Cameron had. Lower middle class C1s were split while Corbyn did better with unemployed and unskilled working class DEs than Ed Miliband did and Labour won that group confortably
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Remember the golden rule....
PB Tories never learn, always wrong?
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
The golden rule of Brexit is that anything which gives Remainers cheer ends up undermining their cause.
Source?
One of my own.
Examples:
Obama and his 'back of the queue' Punishment budget Theresa May as leader The HoL stalling The Article 50 court case The Lancaster house speech James Chapman The Florence speech
Whatever happened to James Chapman ?
It wasn't long ago that he was being eulogised by certain people here.
He was quoted seriously in the Financial Times yesterday.
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Remember the golden rule....
PB Tories never learn, always wrong?
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
The golden rule of Brexit is that anything which gives Remainers cheer ends up undermining their cause.
Source?
That Gina Miller case didn't exactly help....
It distracted the government's attention onto whether they had the power to trigger Article 50, instead of thinking about whether they were ready to do it.
That stories been doing the rounds for a while, and that the holy Trinity of generals in the executive branch have procedures in place to stop Trump launching a nuclear weapon.
And the German government is arguing that he shouldn't, as they wish to force more cash concessions from us first, apparently.
This does make something of a mockery of the line that the EU has a mandated negotiating procedure which allows them no flexibility in how to proceed with the talks.
And the German government is arguing that he shouldn't, as they wish to force more cash concessions from us first, apparently.
This does make something of a mockery of the line that the EU has a mandated negotiating procedure which allows them no flexibility in how to proceed with the talks.
Austerity might be painful - but we aren't balancing the books yet so we still don't know.
Voters feeling sorry for themselves - well we lived high on the hog for too long running up huge debts. We get all we deserve.
How did you live high on the hog? I can't remember doing that.
I lived under successive governments spending more than they took in - leaving a huge debt to the next generations. Utterly selfish.
Agreed. The selfishness runs much deeper than just national overspending though - it’s completely permeated the economy.
The solution offered by the Conservative party (until TM’s speech last week, at least) was to load this excess public debt directly into the next generation via targeted austerity - tuition fees, delayed pensions and withdrawing as much as possible of the welfare state from them during their working lives.
They’ve also allowed private companies to honour existing, massively expensive pension obligations for older workers, contributing only a small fraction for younger workers.
The UK housing stock (now valued at 4x the total national debt) is the final major bung from the young to the old. If the population increases, you build more houses. You can’t not. But a couple of generations decided NIMBY with the added bonus that they wouldn’t have to pay to build the new houses & they’d get to pocket the asset price rise after engineering fake scarcity.
Insane and utterly selfish.
That’s what 6 decades of have cake & eat it exonomics has bequethed to the next generation.
I do genuinely appreciate TM’s actions on this. Tuition fees are a small but significant step.
That asset price rise still transfers to the next generation through inheritance especially after Osborne's inheritance tax cut and many if not most first time buyers now get parental help with a deposit. We may need new homes but a house price collapse is not the answer
We are also one of the most densely populated countries in the West, one argument for ending free movement is it will reduce the pressure for more housing and demand on services.
In the deep, dark recesses of what passes for my mind, ISTR a speech by an early South Korean leader - perhaps Rhee - who told the public they would have a couple of decades of hardship whilst they rebuilt, after which they would be richer than ever.
Naturally, that was when they were coming out of a disastrous war, but it certainly seems to have worked. I doubt any British politician would get away with promising the same.
(My google-fu's failed me, and I cannot find the speech)
Austerity might be painful - but we aren't balancing the books yet so we still don't know.
Voters feeling sorry for themselves - well we lived high on the hog for too long running up huge debts. We get all we deserve.
How did you live high on the hog? I can't remember doing that.
I lived under successive governments spending more than they took in - leaving a huge debt to the next generations. Utterly selfish.
High on the hog, implies some kind of lavish lifestyle. That was not a thing. I think my hospital got a linear accelerator for cancer treatment. Doesn't seem too opulent. The idea that we lived through a period of decadence is a touch OTT.
And you did use the word 'we'.
But you had the opportunity - and that opportunity has a value - to extract much as wealth as possible from an environment where extracting value from the future was rife.
If you failed or declined to do so that doesn't mean the system wasn't wrong (and still is).
It really does seem possible that we are going to do an extreme reverse ferret. Hold onto your seats!
Remember the golden rule....
PB Tories never learn, always wrong?
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
The golden rule of Brexit is that anything which gives Remainers cheer ends up undermining their cause.
Source?
One of my own.
Examples:
Obama and his 'back of the queue' Punishment budget Theresa May as leader The HoL stalling The Article 50 court case The Lancaster house speech James Chapman The Florence speech
Whatever happened to James Chapman ?
It wasn't long ago that he was being eulogised by certain people here.
He was quoted seriously in the Financial Times yesterday.
This is going to hurt them. It might force Boris and co to act as incompetence they can put up with fir now, but if the hardcore leavers think the pm is not a proper convert they will act.
Interesting that Dale's reason for asking the question-a demand for loyalty to Brexit by an arch Brexiteer-could backfire. Any self respecting Remain minister or MP having seen their worst fears for Leaving not only realised but exceeded would look like a complete dork to say they'd now vote differently.
A trickle might turn into a flood and MP's might start queuing up to say they wouldn't change their vote.
*That doesn't apply to Jeremy Hunt for obvious reasons.
I was not the one trying to draw unsupported conclusions from the election results. That was the idiotic Anna Soubry. She is the one claiming the loss of the majority was due to people not wanting Brexit. Conveniently ignoring all those UKIP supporters who voted Labour safe in the knowledge they had promised a hard Brexit.
Very good thread header, exploring several explanations to attempt to explain where we are now. I would have liked to have seen Alastair explore one more important avenue in his piece - The media, both MSM and Social.
In the past ten years there have been great changes in both forms of media. Memes and slogans have become king and are used to discourage and close down discussion and objective thinking. Examples being "Corbyn is unelectable", " Fake News", "the one per cent" and more recently, "Venezuela".
Journalists have generally become less objective, more partisan and less subtle about it. Social media, thanks to it's easy and simple "sharing" facility is 99% memes and only 1% sensible and objective discussion.
Both forms of media sow the seeds of hated and discontent like never before. Is it any wonder, therefore that this is reflected when people get their one chance every few years to make their voices heard in an election?
There is also a "meta" level of fake news, which is the fake rebuttal. "Everest is the highest mountain in the world"; "Yebbut Snopes have mythbusted that"; in fact outside the easy cases (9/11, moon landings faked) Snopes seems to phone in easy answers on the lines of "no photographic evidence so can't be true".
Remind me how many fewer votes Mrs May won in 2017 than Mr Cameron in 2015?
Oh, wait...
CON vote up 5.8% LAB vote up 9.8% therefore swing to LAB which came from Remainers as the latest GE analysis is showing
OTOH, the Conservatives have crushed the most unequivocally anti-Brexit party, the Lib Dems, in their heartlands. Think of the number of West Country seats where they're now a distant third.
Not sure the Conservatives had much to do with it - basically tactical Labour voters went home. The general polarisation of UK politics is making life difficult for the LibDems - in a way it should be an opportunity (they could say "we are the only party in the centre ground"), but they've not clearly said that they really are centrists, rather than radical reformists, kind of like Labour in wanting change but "more modern and more realistic". That's a complex message, arguably not backed up by very well-known specific policies, so it doesn't really cut through.
In a nutshell, neither Tories nor LibDems are projecting a clear image of what they're for, while Labour is projecting one but many older people in particular aren't sure they want it.
I was not the one trying to draw unsupported conclusions from the election results. That was the idiotic Anna Soubry. She is the one claiming the loss of the majority was due to people not wanting Brexit. Conveniently ignoring all those UKIP supporters who voted Labour safe in the knowledge they had promised a hard Brexit.
So over the campaign Labour gained 8% from non Tory Remain voters and only 5% from Tory Remain voters. The Tories had already gained most of the UKIP Leave voters who voted for them before the campaign. So it was still likely the dementia tax and not Brexit which cost the Tories in the campaign
In the deep, dark recesses of what passes for my mind, ISTR a speech by an early South Korean leader - perhaps Rhee - who told the public they would have a couple of decades of hardship whilst they rebuilt, after which they would be richer than ever.
Naturally, that was when they were coming out of a disastrous war, but it certainly seems to have worked. I doubt any British politician would get away with promising the same.
(My google-fu's failed me, and I cannot find the speech)
To be fair, ‘your average Korean’ had had a very unpleasant government, hostile to Korean interests and living standards for at least 40 years prior to that speech and for some of that time at least had been effectively treated as sub-human. Another decade or so, with the promise of riches at the end might well have seen a good deal. Especially as the promiser was backed by the rich Americans.
I was not the one trying to draw unsupported conclusions from the election results. That was the idiotic Anna Soubry. She is the one claiming the loss of the majority was due to people not wanting Brexit. Conveniently ignoring all those UKIP supporters who voted Labour safe in the knowledge they had promised a hard Brexit.
So over the campaign Labour gained 8% from non Tory Remain voters and only 5% from Tory Remain voters. The Tories had already gained most of the UKIP Leave voters who voted for them before the campaign. So it was still likely the dementia tax and not Brexit which cost the Tories in the campaign
The effect of the dementia tax are very clear as have election polls from both the period where May was backing hard Brexit and no dementia tax, and from the period where May was backing hard Brexit and the dementia tax
If Brexit is betrayed, a Corbyn landslide is guaranteed. Leave voters will sit on their hands in their millions.
If Brexit happens then Tories out of power for generations.
If Brexit doesn't happen, who do you think will be in power, given that the people will have been cheated out of their clearly stated result in both 2016 and 2017?
A failure to deliver the democratic will is going to turn into MPs expenses, cubed. There will be a wholesale clear-out of MPs, to be replaced by some significantly less savoury characters.
The effect of the dementia tax are very clear as have election polls from both the period where May was backing hard Brexit and no dementia tax, and from the period where May was backing hard Brexit and the dementia tax
If the dementia tax cost more votes than Brexit, that does not negate the point that Brexit cost votes.
Comments
As an example, we're quite literally employing Romanian/Polish/other language teachers to teach English to those who don't have it as a first language.
I do not advocate a second referendum, I advocate proper preparation for WTO Brexit.
Blaming Cameron for holding, and the result of, the referendum is almost farcically one-dimensional and childish. It's classic blame-avoidance and Monday-afternoon quarterbacking.
And you did use the word 'we'.
Look at the wild shifts in fortunes in Scotland since 2010.
Overall, the Tories have gained 20 seats from Labour, since 2010, but lost 36, and gained 28 from Lib Dems and SNP, while losing 1.
Examples:
Obama and his 'back of the queue'
Punishment budget
Theresa May as leader
The HoL stalling
The Article 50 court case
The Lancaster house speech
James Chapman
The Florence speech
The average migrant is more skilled than the average Briton, albeit often initially employed in areas that do not use the skill set.
Advocates of lower immigration as a cure for societies ills do need to come up with a better way of a shrinking workforce supporting an increasing number of over 75's.
Oh, wait...
Perhaps someone could come up with a kind of anonymous and confidential reporting system, where accusers are notified when a critical level of other complainants is reached - to encourage them to go public...
The problem we have now - and this is directly related to the 'citizen of nowhere' idea - is that we have too many people who want to be internationalist and European whilst they are supposed to be contributing and then want to be British when they are ready to get something back from the State. This applies across the board to all age groups. Citizenship is about rights and responsibilities and it does strike me that there is a small but vocal group of people who are quick to shout about their rights but less willing to consider their responsibilities.
If you want to look at what happens when people are "cheated" (Meeks' header), look at Scotland.
The Scots were cheated out of devolution in 1979, despite the devolutionists winning the referendum fair and square.
How did that work out? Many would say it added fuel to the sense of grievance and injustice, and led ultimately to the SNP becoming the largest party in Scotland.
Cheat the Leavers out of their victory, if you want. The long-term consequences will be just as severe.
I don't think the situation is as bad yet as you suggest... but it will get there. I know lots of young people moving to Dubai for instance because they can save lots/there is no tax.
But they expect to come back to the UK and have a well-funded NHS when they get there...
All that imported consumer tat and foreign holidays didn't come free.
Why do we feel cheated ?
Because our present is not the future we were promised.
People need to understand that if you manage someone, or have power over someone, then you need to be extremely careful how you treat that person - not just for their sake, but your own. Lord Rennard is a classic example.
Basically: you need to be professional.
The opposite is also true: if someone has every willingly used sex with a boss or person of authority in order to gain, then the are partially responsible for this toxic environment.
(Says someone who ended up marrying someone he had project managed).
Lower unemployment, lower youth unemployment, higher growth, trade surplus rather than deficit; seems like the UK could do with some more of Scotland's 'problems'.
National votes don't matter under FPTP, the system the Tories backed in 2011.
It wasn't long ago that he was being eulogised by certain people here.
Over 80% of the voters voted for parties that supported a hard Brexit - That is another fact.
If you really believe Corbyn would have got anywhere near the level of support he did if he had backed Remain then you are truly deluded. Exactly how many of those UKIP supporters do you think would have returned to Labour had they not supported a hard Brexit. Corbyn knew this. It seems it is only the Remoaners who are in denial.
Concerns have been raised over initiatives such as working 16 hours a day in the fields to grow enough food and using prayer to cure illnesses after the NHS has collapsed.
Economist Donna Sheridan said: “Total economic meltdown followed by living in filthy hovels with your pigs was probably not what most people voted for in the referendum.
“I’m particularly concerned about replacing high-tech manufacturing and financial services with growing cabbages. I also believe there is no significant overseas market for ‘swords and big catapults’.”
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/no-deal-brexit-plan-suspiciously-similar-to-middle-ages-20171011137272
In judging government debt, or indeed, the private debt that is the true elephant in the UK room, it is the whole system that needs to be considered and, ultimately, the question that needs answering is this: what sweat pays that debt? Often it very may not even be a UK citizen working off a UK debt.
Nations and geographies do not age or die and it is entirely possible to run near continual deficits as long as that central question of sweat can be answered.
That would be the attack Caesar launched with veteran troops against Pompey's newly-raised legions, which ended with Caesar's beloved and trusty Tenth legion running away and Pompey winning the battle?
I have a little knowledge of primary education in Yorkshire, and (equally anecdotally), many of the most significant problems in terms of SEND, and certainly (extreme) behaviour problems, manifest in what is somewhat inaccurately described as the 'white working class'.
(As an example, fetal alcohol syndrome is quite differently correlated in terms of culture.)
In the past ten years there have been great changes in both forms of media. Memes and slogans have become king and are used to discourage and close down discussion and objective thinking. Examples being "Corbyn is unelectable", " Fake News", "the one per cent" and more recently, "Venezuela".
Journalists have generally become less objective, more partisan and less subtle about it. Social media, thanks to it's easy and simple "sharing" facility is 99% memes and only 1% sensible and objective discussion.
Both forms of media sow the seeds of hated and discontent like never before. Is it any wonder, therefore that this is reflected when people get their one chance every few years to make their voices heard in an election?
The solution offered by the Conservative party (until TM’s speech last week, at least) was to load this excess public debt directly into the next generation via targeted austerity - tuition fees, delayed pensions and withdrawing as much as possible of the welfare state from them during their working lives.
They’ve also allowed private companies to honour existing, massively expensive pension obligations for older workers, contributing only a small fraction for younger workers.
The UK housing stock (now valued at 4x the total national debt) is the final major bung from the young to the old. If the population increases, you build more houses. You can’t not. But a couple of generations decided NIMBY with the added bonus that they wouldn’t have to pay to build the new houses & they’d get to pocket the asset price rise after engineering fake scarcity.
Insane and utterly selfish.
That’s what 6 decades of have cake & eat it exonomics has bequethed to the next generation.
I do genuinely appreciate TM’s actions on this. Tuition fees are a small but significant step.
However on immigration I would point out that the issue is as much cultural as economic with concerns about ISIS terrorism as much a force in the rise of the far right in Europe as the undercutting of wages and a desire for immigrants to commit to the culture and traditions of the country they have emigrated too.
On class politics it is not so much an ABC1 C2DE divide as an ABC2 and C1DE divide. At the last general election the Tories still won upper middle class ABs, albeit by less than Cameron did and they also won skilled working class C2s by more than Cameron had. Lower middle class C1s were split while Corbyn did better with unemployed and unskilled working class DEs than Ed Miliband did and Labour won that group confortably
I don't know whether to believe this, and if so, how to feel about it...
https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/917906777387147264
All interesting points. It is rather dispiriting how short-lived the limited public appetite for living within our means was.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/europe/eu-policy-agenda/trade/news/89717/michel-barnier-wants-start-work-trade-talks
Mike Veale, who runs Wiltshire police, has presided over a scandalous and wasteful investigation into Edward Heath"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/this-disgraceful-chief-constable-must-quit-lh5lrfwts
This does make something of a mockery of the line that the EU has a mandated negotiating procedure which allows them no flexibility in how to proceed with the talks.
We are also one of the most densely populated countries in the West, one argument for ending free movement is it will reduce the pressure for more housing and demand on services.
Naturally, that was when they were coming out of a disastrous war, but it certainly seems to have worked. I doubt any British politician would get away with promising the same.
(My google-fu's failed me, and I cannot find the speech)
If you failed or declined to do so that doesn't mean the system wasn't wrong (and still is).
A trickle might turn into a flood and MP's might start queuing up to say they wouldn't change their vote.
*That doesn't apply to Jeremy Hunt for obvious reasons.
In a nutshell, neither Tories nor LibDems are projecting a clear image of what they're for, while Labour is projecting one but many older people in particular aren't sure they want it.
Another decade or so, with the promise of riches at the end might well have seen a good deal. Especially as the promiser was backed by the rich Americans.
"More than 120 MPs have written to David Davis demanding the Government publish its studies on the impact Brexit will have on the country. "
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/foreign-affairs/brexit/news/89720/more-120-mps-demand-government-publish-brexit-impact
I wonder if that number will increase?
A failure to deliver the democratic will is going to turn into MPs expenses, cubed. There will be a wholesale clear-out of MPs, to be replaced by some significantly less savoury characters.
Which was the point.