LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
"The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting "Heil, Spode!" and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?" I think Britain has always struggled to take populists seriously, even if it has frequently fallen in thrall to populist ideas. Brexit (a populist idea that the public voted for) versus May (a populist politician that the public won't vote for) are the latest examples. If we ever produce a populist that really cuts through ("Tommy Robinson" is probably the most successful to date but will also fall short I think, thank God) we'll be in real trouble.
A good header, but there is a simpler explanation. Mrs May isn't a very good politician but she is consistent - a little like 'ol Bonehead in Labour tries to be. She remains at heart a Remainer, but possibly a little shocked by the referendum result, has genuinely decided to honour it.
Her negotiations yielded her what seemed to be a result acceptable to both sides. However she underestimated the extremism on the ERG side and the ambition of the Remain side. The former want a clean break, the latter to reverse the referendum result. She also under-estimated Labour's aim to prevent her claiming any credit.
As we probably agree, she's a bad politician. That doesn't make her bad, merely naïve and unsuited to the job
I do not want to depress people on this gloriously sunny day. I am sitting in my garden as I write this.
But our political culture has become much more illiberal - on Labour’s side because Corbyn’s default instincts are not,IMO, those of liberal democracy and on the Tories’ side because of the focus on Brexit. May’s combination of incompetence, insecurity and a natural authoritarianism has led her to behaving in the way I have outlined.
It may not be populism South American style but it is sufficient of a move away from our traditional approach to politics to sound a warning note, one which I think should be heeded but isn’t. Both parties want to tear down rather than build. There are dangers in such an approach.
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
If we end up Remaining in a second referendum, it will be with a substantial part of the populace self-describing and voting as pro-Europeans. I would therefore expect the campaign for Euro membership to get underway swiftly, and for British exceptionalism in terms of not identifying as European to diminish.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Ahem.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
As in all revolutions, both sides have continued to radicalise. Calls for no deal were rare before the referendum, while support for joining the single currency has grown since 2016.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
Brexit has failed because the vast majority of those in prominent positions who campaigned for it had no idea how the EU works, had no concept of how integrated the UK is in cross-border supply chains, never bothered to understand the very specific problems of the Irish border and had no knowledge of what drives FTAs. They thought that Brexit could be delivered on the back of 500 word articles and speeches about liberty and tyranny. If they had bothered to do the hard yards, they might have come up with a viable plan. But that would also have involved some honesty about the sacrifices leaving the EU would involve. And that, of course, is why those who had done the hard work either: (1) lied, or (2) advocated a slow transition out of the EU involving the EEA/EFTA.
those pushing in to ever closer Union have no idea how the EU works nor indeed how their own country works.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Modern?
There's always been various levels of exploitation but your modern middle class mentality regards itself self-righteously as 'progresssive' and morally superior to the proles.
While still being dependent upon mass exploitation for its own living standards and lifestyle.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
Yes they can, they choose not to. If it is a plan which is about a temporary situation it is easy to explain why members are not involved.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
Within May's own party almost all 2016 Remainers back the deal (with a few hardline exceptions) while it is Leavers that oppose it. May's deal is a very Remainer deal.
Opposition for oppositions sake from Corbyn and co does not change that.
If someone had told you in 2016 there was a deal backed by Ken Clarke while opposed by the ERG nobody would have said that the deal maker had not reached out to Remainers.
Not to mention that the May's cabinet is dominated by former Remain supporters.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
Yes they can, they choose not to. If it is a plan which is about a temporary situation it is easy to explain why members are not involved.
Let me introduce you to our media - subtlety and nuanced explanation doesn’t work in the age of click bait.
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
If we end up Remaining in a second referendum, it will be with a substantial part of the populace self-describing and voting as pro-Europeans. I would therefore expect the campaign for Euro membership to get underway swiftly, and for British exceptionalism in terms of not identifying as European to diminish.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Ahem.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
As in all revolutions, both sides have continued to radicalise. Calls for no deal were rare before the referendum, while support for joining the single currency has grown since 2016.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
Brexit has failed because the vast majority of those in prominent positions who campaigned for it had no idea how the EU works, had no concept of how integrated the UK is in cross-border supply chains, never bothered to understand the very specific problems of the Irish border and had no knowledge of what drives FTAs. They thought that Brexit could be delivered on the back of 500 word articles and speeches about liberty and tyranny. If they had bothered to do the hard yards, they might have come up with a viable plan. But that would also have involved some honesty about the sacrifices leaving the EU would involve. And that, of course, is why those who had done the hard work either: (1) lied, or (2) advocated a slow transition out of the EU involving the EEA/EFTA.
those pushing in to ever closer Union have no idea how the EU works nor indeed how their own country works.
That may well be the case. Looks like we agree on everything.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Modern?
There's always been various levels of exploitation but your modern middle class mentality regards itself self-righteously as 'progresssive' and morally superior to the proles.
While still being dependent upon mass exploitation for its own living standards and lifestyle.
Out of interest, what's your definition of working and middle class? Presumably, you would consider anyone with a mobile phone or television assembled by poorly paid, exploited workers in the third world as middle class, so are there actually any working class people left in the UK?
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
More training both in the workplace and outside to improve workers' skills and pay prospects, a few more grammar schools if parents want them, even eventually a universal basic income might help
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
Yet it is the middle class who support uncontrolled migration of the low skilled, a policy guaranteed to put downward pressure on working class wages and upward pressure on house prices.
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Ahem.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
As in all revolutions, both sides have continued to radicalise. Calls for no deal were rare before the referendum, while support for joining the single currency has grown since 2016.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
A corollary of your argument is that the Conservative party only has a future as a pro-European party, otherwise it will always be on the back foot.
Were than their preceding generations.
The Conservative party is 80% + Eurosceptic. This used to be just the membership - since the Brexit vote it has been their vote, too.
Revoke will never happen because of this; long delay is death by a thousand cuts (the deepest of which would be the MEP elections).
It is no doubt a weird statistical fluke of small numbers, but all the Conservative Party members I know are strongly pro-EU. And I met another couple on the train home from the march yesterday. Not trying to make any particular point other than it is very easy for your personal experiences to be misleading.
Your friends have lost.
The Conservative party is now pre-2016 UKIP: hard right, deeply anti-EU, xenophobic and English nationalist. All those vying to take over from May know this very clearly.
Do not judge all of us as ERG supporters. I am a conservative member who rejects their views of the unattainable aims of no deal
And I was a Labour member who rejected the anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism of the far left. I lost and so have you, I'm afraid. There are good, moderate Tory members, just as there are still good, moderate Labour members. But the direction of travel in both parties is clear.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
Yes they can, they choose not to. If it is a plan which is about a temporary situation it is easy to explain why members are not involved.
We have a situation where the members of our sovereign body have been disconnected from the executive and it can’t go on. The Government is supposed to be formed by the individual with the confidence of Parliament. Except now, in both major parties, there is an assumption instead that it will be formed by the person who has the confidence of the membership of their respective parties outside Parliament. Further, because of the FTPA it’s harder for Parliament to remove the Government, and the consequences of it voting down signature legislation are the less. The law of unintended consequences has resulted in direct election of party leaders and the FTPA breaking the constitution. The 2016 referendum itself was Cameron’s effort to bypass his Parliamentary party to get a result from the electorate he wanted instead.
The immediate practical outcome is that it is hard to see either major parliamentary party seeking to change leaders for fear of what the loons that form the membership of both will come up with.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
we had ours, a bit of muttering about brexit, a chat by the MP, all over in 45 minutes.
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
That's not quite the same thing though, especially in the context of future democratic consequences arising from remaining in the EU.
A future in the EU post circumstances where Brexit has been tried and failed is less likely to lead to years of resentment and anti EU voting (especially in European elections) than a future in the EU resulting from the failure of those empowered with enacting Brexit to deliver.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as saying Brexit will break the political mould, Which quite clearly it has. And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Ahem.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
As in all revolutions, both sides have continued to radicalise. Calls for no deal were rare before the referendum, while support for joining the single currency has grown since 2016.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
A corollary of your argument is that the Conservative party only has a future as a pro-European party, otherwise it will always be on the back foot.
tiny pro-European minority in the party consists largely of middle class, middle aged men between the age of aggrieved (that was meant to say Grieve, but is quite a funny autocorrect so I’ve left it) and Clarke. Our younger members and politicians are in the main far more eurosceptic than their preceding generations.
The Conservative party is 80% + Eurosceptic. This used to be just the membership - since the Brexit vote it has been their vote, too.
Revoke will never happen because of this; long delay is death by a thousand cuts (the deepest of which would be the MEP elections).
It is no doubt a weird statistical fluke of small numbers, but all the Conservative Party members I know are strongly pro-EU. And I met another couple on the train home from the march yesterday. Not trying to make any particular point other than it is very easy for your personal experiences to be misleading.
Your friends have lost.
The Conservative party is now pre-2016 UKIP: hard right, deeply anti-EU, xenophobic and English nationalist. All those vying to take over from May know this very clearly.
Do not judge all of us as ERG supporters. I am a conservative member who rejects their views of the unattainable aims of no deal
As am I. They've utterly buggered up brexit. We would be leaving the EU in five days if they voted for the WA.
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Ahem.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
As in all revolutions, both sides have continued to radicalise. Calls for no deal were rare before the referendum, while support for joining the single currency has grown since 2016.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
A corollary of your argument is that the Conservative party only has a future as a pro-European party, otherwise it will always be on the back foot.
Were than their preceding generations.
The Conservative party is 80% + Eurosceptic. This used to be just the membership - since the Brexit vote it has been their vote, too.
Revoke will never happen because of this; long delay is death by a thousand cuts (the deepest of which would be the MEP elections).
It is no doubt a weird statistical fluke of small numbers, but all the Conservative Party members I know are strongly pro-EU. And I met another couple on the train home from the march yesterday. Not trying to make any particular point other than it is very easy for your personal experiences to be misleading.
Your friends have lost.
The Conservative party is now pre-2016 UKIP: hard right, deeply anti-EU, xenophobic and English nationalist. All those vying to take over from May know this very clearly.
Do not judge all of us as ERG supporters. I am a conservative member who rejects their views of the unattainable aims of no deal
And I was a Labour member who rejected the anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism of the far left. I lost and so have you, I'm afraid. There are good, moderate Tory members, just as there are still good, moderate Labour members. But the direction of travel in both parties is clear.
Well Tory Remainers and Labour Blairites can always move to TIG, there is now another option
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
That's not quite the same thing though, especially in the context of future democratic consequences arising from remaining in the EU.
A future in the EU post circumstances where Brexit has been tried and failed is less likely to lead to years of resentment and anti EU voting (especially in European elections) than a future in the EU resulting from the failure of those empowered with enacting Brexit to deliver.
Hardline No Deal Brexiteers will never accept their Brexit has failed though, they are fanatical, ideological and uncompromising
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as saying Brexit will break the political mould, Which quite clearly it has. And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
It may well break the political mould. But I fear that what may follow will be far nastier and more damaging to those you describe than the EU.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
Yes they can, they choose not to. If it is a plan which is about a temporary situation it is easy to explain why members are not involved.
We have a situation where the members of our sovereign body have been disconnected from the executive and it can’t go on. The Government is supposed to be formed by the individual with the confidence of Parliament. Except now, in both major parties, there is an assumption instead that it will be formed by the person who has the confidence of the membership of their respective parties outside Parliament. Further, because of the FTPA it’s harder for Parliament to remove the Government, and the consequences of it voting down signature legislation are the less. The law of unintended consequences has resulted in direct election of party leaders and the FTPA breaking the constitution. The 2016 referendum itself was Cameron’s effort to bypass his Parliamentary party to get a result from the electorate he wanted instead.
The immediate practical outcome is that it is hard to see either major parliamentary party seeking to change leaders for fear of what the loons that form the membership of both will come up with.
Hardly an issue for Labour i would have thought. Their problem is they have no mechanism for removing the leader without the support of the membership! They've already tried it.
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
That's not quite the same thing though, especially in the context of future democratic consequences arising from remaining in the EU.
A future in the EU post circumstances where Brexit has been tried and failed is less likely to lead to years of resentment and anti EU voting (especially in European elections) than a future in the EU resulting from the failure of those empowered with enacting Brexit to deliver.
Hardline No Deal Brexiteers will never accept their Brexit has failed though, they are fanatical, ideological and uncompromising
But hardline no deal Brexiters are a very small minority of the electorate.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You keep saying “you”. My background is not so dissimilar to yours. Please don’t ascribe to me opinions I do not hold. As discussed several times now, I somewhat agree with your sentiments but simply understand Brexit as making things worse, not better.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic libwe have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all sh accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as saying Brexit will break the political mould, Which quite clearly it has. And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
It may well break the political mould. But I fear that what may follow will be far nastier and more damaging to those you describe than the EU.
Be as pessimistic as you like, personally Im an optimist and think the UK generally has quite sensible people who dont go to extremes, Nut case activisits certainly but the population as a whole no.
All we are seeing is the folly of our representatives ignoring their own electorate and not addressing their concerns as they go. The ever toxic madelson\campbell mantra of "they have nowhere else to go" has been shown to be the biggest risk to UK politics, Hopefully it will now die unloved in the dark corner it hatched from.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as saying Brexit will break the political mould, Which quite clearly it has. And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
It may well break the political mould. But I fear that what may follow will be far nastier and more damaging to those you describe than the EU.
It might be and it might not be.
But what you said is similar to what reactionaries have said throughout the ages and I know you are not one of them.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
Yes they can, they choose not to. If it is a plan which is about a temporary situation it is easy to explain why members are not involved.
We have a situation where the members of our sovereign body have been disconnected from the executive and it can’t go on. The Government is supposed to be formed by the individual with the confidence of Parliament. Except now, in both major parties, there is an assumption instead that it will be formed by the person who has the confidence of the membership of their respective parties outside Parliament. Further, because of the FTPA it’s harder for Parliament to remove the Government, and the consequences of it voting down signature legislation are the less. The law of unintended consequences has resulted in direct election of party leaders and the FTPA breaking the constitution. The 2016 referendum itself was Cameron’s effort to bypass his Parliamentary party to get a result from the electorate he wanted instead.
The immediate practical outcome is that it is hard to see either major parliamentary party seeking to change leaders for fear of what the loons that form the membership of both will come up with.
Hardly an issue for Labour i would have thought. Their problem is they have no mechanism for removing the leader without the support of the membership! They've already tried it.
My point exactly. Corbyn is answerable to his members not his MPs. That, in government at least, is counter to the constitution
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Ahem.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
As in all revolutions, both sides have continued to radicalise. Calls for no deal were rare before the referendum, while support for joining the single currency has grown since 2016.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
A corollary of your argument is that the Conservative party only has a future as a pro-European party, otherwise it will always be on the back foot.
Were than their preceding generations.
The Conservative party is 80% + Eurosceptic. This used to be just the membership - since the Brexit vote it has been their vote, too.
Revoke will never happen because of this; long delay is death by a thousand cuts (the deepest of which would be the MEP elections).
It is no doubt a weird statistical fluke of small numbers, but all the Conservative Party members I know are strongly pro-EU. And I met another couple on the train home from the march yesterday. Not trying to make any particular point other than it is very easy for your personal experiences to be misleading.
Your friends have lost.
The Conservative party is now pre-2016 UKIP: hard right, deeply anti-EU, xenophobic and English nationalist. All those vying to take over from May know this very clearly.
Do not judge all of us as ERG supporters. I am a conservative member who rejects their views of the unattainable aims of no deal
And I was a Labour member who rejected the anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism of the far left. I lost and so have you, I'm afraid. There are good, moderate Tory members, just as there are still good, moderate Labour members. But the direction of travel in both parties is clear.
But it is not time for either of us to surrender and let the extremes take over
Barclay sinking fast ! So the government will ignore the Commons even if by a miracle they find a majority for something !
If they find a majority it is the will of the HOC
I suspect the will of the Commons is for a referendum on May’s deal, even though this has been voted down already.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But iand isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
That's not quite the same thing though, especially in the context of future democratic consequences arising from remaining in the EU.
A future in the EU post circumstances where Brexit has been tried and failed is less likely to lead to years of resentment and anti EU voting (especially in European elections) than a future in the EU resulting from the failure of those empowered with enacting Brexit to deliver.
Hardline No Deal Brexiteers will never accept their Brexit has failed though, they are fanatical, ideological and uncompromising
But hardline no deal Brexiters are a very small minority of the electorate.
I would say they are now about 25-30% of the electorate, the same as hardline Corbynistas. Moderate centrists are still the plurality and largest group but combine No Dealers and Corbynistas you could even say a majority of the electorate now back one of those extremes, hence they have taken over the Labour Party and are taking over the Tory Party and hence the creation of TIG
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You keep saying “you”. My background is not so dissimilar to yours. Please don’t ascribe to me opinions I do not hold. As discussed several times now, I somewhat agree with your sentiments but simply understand Brexit as making things worse, not better.
Ill happily observe that convention when you observe it yourself
Barclay sinking fast ! So the government will ignore the Commons even if by a miracle they find a majority for something !
If they find a majority it is the will of the HOC
I suspect the will of the Commons is for a referendum on May’s deal, even though this has been voted down already.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
I think more Tories like Boles, Clark, Rudd etc would go for May's Deal plus Customs Union than the likes of Grieve and Gyimah who back EUref2. Labour's official position is also for Customs Union and or Single Market benefits before EUref2 so I think soft Brexit remains more likely to get a Commons Majority than EUref2 but I would not rule out the latter winning
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic libwe have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all sh accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as saying Brexit will break the political mould, Which quite clearly it has. And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
It may well break the political mould. But I fear that what may follow will be far nastier and more damaging to those you describe than the EU.
Be as pessimistic as you like, personally Im an optimist and think the UK generally has quite sensible people who dont go to extremes, Nut case activisits certainly but the population as a whole no.
All we are seeing is the folly of our representatives ignoring their own electorate and not addressing their concerns as they go. The ever toxic madelson\campbell mantra of "they have nowhere else to go" has been shown to be the biggest risk to UK politics, Hopefully it will now die unloved in the dark corner it hatched from.
Nutcase extremists are in charge of Labour and they too are adopting the “they have nowhere else to go” mantra re Labour voters.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
You run your finances like Norway has done then use the dividends of the sovereign wealth fund as a universal basic income
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
More skills training and probably eventually a Universal Basic Income
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Ahem.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
As in all revolutions, both sides have continued to radicalise. Calls for no deal were rare before the referendum, while support for joining the single currency has grown since 2016.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
A corollary of your argument is that the Conservative party only has a future as a pro-European party, otherwise it will always be on the back foot.
Were than their preceding generations.
The Conservative party is 80% + Eurosceptic. This used to be just the membership - since the Brexit vote it has been their vote, too.
Revoke will never happen because of this; long delay is death by a thousand cuts (the deepest of which would be the MEP elections).
Ioint other than it is very easy for your personal experiences to be misleading.
Your friends have lost.
The Conservative party is now pre-2016 UKIP: hard right, deeply anti-EU, xenophobic and English nationalist. All those vying to take over from May know this very clearly.
Do not judge all of us as ERG supporters. I am a conservative member who rejects their views of the unattainable aims of no deal
And I was a Labour member who rejected the anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism of the far left. I lost and so have you, I'm afraid. There are good, moderate Tory members, just as there are still good, moderate Labour members. But the direction of travel in both parties is clear.
You misunderstand how the conservative party functions with its membership. We choose our leader (sometimes) and we choose our MPs and put leaflets through the door for them. The involvement ends largely there.
Barclay sinking fast ! So the government will ignore the Commons even if by a miracle they find a majority for something !
If they find a majority it is the will of the HOC
I suspect the will of the Commons is for a referendum on May’s deal, even though this has been voted down already.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
It will be a lot easier to deal with transition if we can get to a majority around an objective
Barclay sinking fast ! So the government will ignore the Commons even if by a miracle they find a majority for something !
If they find a majority it is the will of the HOC
I suspect the will of the Commons is for a referendum on May’s deal, even though this has been voted down already.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
You may well be correct on that
The deal will depend on ERG suddenly switching and support the deal and speaking up for it in the HOC
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as saying Brexit will break the political mould, Which quite clearly it has. And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
It may well break the political mould. But I fear that what may follow will be far nastier and more damaging to those you describe than the EU.
It might be and it might not be.
But what you said is similar to what reactionaries have said throughout the ages and I know you are not one of them.
I would like politicians to stand up for and practise the values of liberal democracy and freedom and the rule of law and equality under the law. That may make me old-fashioned. But not reactionary.
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
That's not quite the same thing though, especially in the context of future democratic consequences arising from remaining in the EU.
A future in the EU post circumstances where Brexit has been tried and failed is less likely to lead to years of resentment and anti EU voting (especially in European elections) than a future in the EU resulting from the failure of those empowered with enacting Brexit to deliver.
Hardline No Deal Brexiteers will never accept their Brexit has failed though, they are fanatical, ideological and uncompromising
But hardline no deal Brexiters are a very small minority of the electorate.
Probably about 20-25% or so, similar to the proportion of radical socialists, or people who want to revoke Brexit (the first and last group overlap with the second, to an extent).
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
That's a very good point and I think most people who come to prominence in public life have somewhat above average intellectual capabilities. (Giles Fraser being of course the exception.)
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
As you must surely realise, there is no such thing as 'delivering' a successful Brexit, or needing to do so. Brexit is not a thing, it is an absence of thing. It isn't a project, it is an absence of project. And since the EU doesn't collect our bins, treat our sick, sell us our stamps, or in fact perform any useful task, once we are gone, we are gone, and we won't ever go back. That's why, as most Remainers in positions of political power know, it must be prevented or all is lost.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
For what its worth I thinbk we need to
- invest heavily in our own infrastructure - we have 2-3 decade gap to fill and its one of the reasons why both our productivity and GDP are sub optimal - decentralise as a coiuntry and put more decision making down to regions where people can influence their own futures - reform corporate and personal taxation to reflect the changes in economy - make our priority raising GDP per head rather than just GDP
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
You run your finances like Norway has done then use the dividends of the sovereign wealth fund as a universal basic income
Possibly - but that means much higher taxes and it also means international action against tax avoidance. The Conservative party is focused on the UK (or, more likely, England) becoming a low tax economy.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as saying Brexit will break the political mould, Which quite clearly it has. And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
It may well break the political mould. But I fear that what may follow will be far nastier and more damaging to those you describe than the EU.
It might be and it might not be.
But what you said is similar to what reactionaries have said throughout the ages and I know you are not one of them.
I would like politicians to stand up for and practise the values of liberal democracy and freedom and the rule of law and equality under the law. That may make me old-fashioned. But not reactionary.
Anyway time to enjoy the spring sunshine.
It makes you naive as well.
What our politicians do is pander to the rich and powerful, bribe their own supporters to keep voting for them, posture about the world at a cost of British lives and money, obsess about vanity projects while neglecting essential infrastructure and ignore proper preparation and attention to detail in favour of ranting on twatter.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic libwe have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all sh accept it.
You're on the record as saying you wanted a soft Brexit, so it would have made no difference at all to the economic settlement. It's just a tiresome form of virtue signalling.
Im also on the record as sayie tiresome EU
It may well break the political mould. But I fear that what may follow will be far nastier and more damaging to those you describe than the EU.
Be as pessimistic as you like, personally Im an optimist and think the UK generally has quite sensible people who dont go to extremes, Nut case activisits certainly but the population as a whole no.
All we are seeing is the folly of our it hatched from.
Nutcase extremists are in charge of Labour and they too are adopting the “they have nowhere else to go” mantra re Labour voters.
yes, but theres only so long that can go on, after a while people do find other places to go and go there.
IMHO, people with "extreme" views either are, or are close to, a majority of the electorate. I think this is the out working of the Great Financial Crash.
One sees a similar pattern in the USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands.
I think the idea that the logjam in parliament might not have occurred if May had involved them sooner is rather fanciful. Why has it occurred? Because of inflexible leaver ultras and die hard remainers. Theres no reason to suspect asking them things sooner would have led to more urgency from them.
And the casualty is TM who tried to reflect the 52/48 vote with the least worst exit
She didn't. She tried for a compromise among the 52% and ignored the 48%. She's now wasted 33 months. F*** her.
BTW this morning the petition for Revoke - not just a Ratifying Referendum - has got to 4.9 million whereas I heard on R4 yesterday that one urging a No Deal exit had got to 490,000.
It is not the answer and will not happen unless through a referendum
At the current rate the petition might have reached 5M by tomorrow morning or midday. That's like >10% of registered voters asking for Brexit to be 'recalled'. I don't see how even tin-eared Theresa can refuse Watson's offer yesterday in Parliament Square to approve the deal subject to a ratifying referendum.
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
As you must surely realise, there is no such thing as 'delivering' a successful Brexit, or needing to do so. Brexit is not a thing, it is an absence of thing. It isn't a project, it is an absence of project.
Anything which involves transitioning from A to B is a project. You can't simply define B as the absence of A and expect anything good to happen.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s figures.
Only to address.
I had a beer with two accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many o moment.
For what its worth I thinbk we need to
- invest heavily in our own infrastructure - we have 2-3 decade gap to fill and its one of the reasons why both our productivity and GDP are sub optimal - decentralise as a coiuntry and put more decision making down to regions where people can influence their own futures - reform corporate and personal taxation to reflect the changes in economy - make our priority raising GDP per head rather than just GDP
Again, I largely agree. Where we differ, I guess, is that I don't see how being in the EU prevents any of this; while I think it is made much harder to do by taking ourselves out of the SM and CU, so making ourselves poorer and a much less attractive investment proposition.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Modern?
There's always been various levels of exploitation but your modern middle class mentality regards itself self-righteously as 'progresssive' and morally superior to the proles.
While still being dependent upon mass exploitation for its own living standards and lifestyle.
Out of interest, what's your definition of working and middle class? Presumably, you would consider anyone with a mobile phone or television assembled by poorly paid, exploited workers in the third world as middle class, so are there actually any working class people left in the UK?
Like everything in life it is all relative. The working class is a bit of a wide definition sometimes mixed up with nostalgia. People can have all kinds of cultural capital that goes beyond their income.
This is more accurate but even then it is only useful at generalising not at individuals.
D has been utterly eviscerated by young motivated healthy migrants, the national living wage was as much as a ceiling as it was a floor. C2 and C1 can effectively organise in certain circumstances to mitigate against migration reducing the demand for their skills.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
That's a very good point and I think most people who come to prominence in public life have somewhat above average intellectual capabilities. (Giles Fraser being of course the exception.)
One would also need to exclude Mark Francois, David Lammy, and Guto Bebb from that.
IMHO, people with "extreme" views either are, or are close to, a majority of the electorate. I think this is the out working of the Great Financial Crash.
One sees a similar pattern in the USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands.
I think I agree - the extremism isn’t necessarily going in one direction though. We have two sets of Manicheans in each country, each dividing the world on a dualistic basis to a side that can do no wrong and a side that can go no right.
I think future historians might view the 2016 referendum as being a judgement on European policy since Maastricht; essentially, stay out of the most important European project, but still expect to be a key decision-maker. Cameron’s actions over the fiscal pact showed that the strategy was ultimately a dead-end.
The EU referendum has summoned the European demos.
Brexit as failed revolution. I’ve been saying it for months, if not years!
A corollary of your argument is that the Conservative party only has a future as a pro-European party, otherwise it will always be on the back foot.
Were than their preceding generations.
The Conservative party is 80% + Eurosceptic. This used to be just the membership - since the Brexit vote it has been their vote, too.
Revoke will never happen because of this; long delay is death by a thousand cuts (the deepest of which would be the MEP elections).
Ioint other than it is very easy for your personal experiences to be misleading.
Your friends have lost.
The Conservative party is now pre-2016 UKIP: hard right, deeply anti-EU, xenophobic and English nationalist. All those vying to take over from May know this very clearly.
Do not judge all of us as ERG supporters. I am a conservative member who rejects their views of the unattainable aims of no deal
And I was a Labour member who rejected the anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism of the far left. I lost and so have you, I'm afraid. There are good, moderate Tory members, just as there are still good, moderate Labour members. But the direction of travel in both parties is clear.
You misunderstand how the conservative party functions with its membership. We choose our leader (sometimes) and we choose our MPs and put leaflets through the door for them. The involvement ends largely there.
That's pretty much what Labour members do as well. They certainly have very little say over policy, as the party's current Brexit position demonstrates.
IMHO, people with "extreme" views either are, or are close to, a majority of the electorate. I think this is the out working of the Great Financial Crash.
One sees a similar pattern in the USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands.
Id say thats frustration rather than they hold intrinsically extreme views. The voters are still pissed of from a combination of one rule for the rich ( Cameron really should have sent some of his mates to jail ) and having their views ignored.
I think the idea that the logjam in parliament might not have occurred if May had involved them sooner is rather fanciful. Why has it occurred? Because of inflexible leaver ultras and die hard remainers. Theres no reason to suspect asking them things sooner would have led to more urgency from them.
And the casualty is TM who tried to reflect the 52/48 vote with the least worst exit
She didn't. She tried for a compromise among the 52% and ignored the 48%. She's now wasted 33 months. F*** her.
BTW this morning the petition for Revoke - not just a Ratifying Referendum - has got to 4.9 million whereas I heard on R4 yesterday that one urging a No Deal exit had got to 490,000.
It is not the answer and will not happen unless through a referendum
At the current rate the petition might have reached 5M by tomorrow morning or midday. That's like >10% of registered voters asking for Brexit to be 'recalled'. I don't see how even tin-eared Theresa can refuse Watson's offer yesterday in Parliament Square to approve the deal subject to a ratifying referendum.
That's a lot, but clicking a button does not require much effort, any more than voting in a Daily Mail poll. The five million are very representative of middle class left wing Britain, but that limits their influence in the Conservatives.
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
That's a very good point and I think most people who come to prominence in public life have somewhat above average intellectual capabilities. (Giles Fraser being of course the exception.)
One would also need to exclude Mark Francois, David Lammy, and Guto Bebb from that.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Modern?
There's always been various levels of exploitation but your modern middle class mentality regards itself self-righteously as 'progresssive' and morally superior to the proles.
While still being dependent upon mass exploitation for its own living standards and lifestyle.
Out of interest, what's your definition of working and middle class? Presumably, you would consider anyone with a mobile phone or television assembled by poorly paid, exploited workers in the third world as middle class, so are there actually any working class people left in the UK?
Like everything in life it is all relative. The working class is a bit of a wide definition sometimes mixed up with nostalgia. People can have all kinds of cultural capital that goes beyond their income.
This is more accurate but even then it is only useful at generalising not at individuals.
D has been utterly eviscerated by young motivated healthy migrants, the national living wage was as much as a ceiling as it was a floor. C2 and C1 can effectively organise in certain circumstances to mitigate against migration reducing the demand for their skills.
Marx defined the working class or proletariat as individuals who sell their labour power for wages and who do not own the means of production. That would encompass nearly all of what we would describe as the middle class. I’m a salaried partner (i.e. I have no equity) in a City law firm which, as I love to point out to socialist friends, technically makes me working class too.
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
As you must surely realise, there is no such thing as 'delivering' a successful Brexit, or needing to do so. Brexit is not a thing, it is an absence of thing. It isn't a project, it is an absence of project.
Anything which involves transitioning from A to B is a project. You can't simply define B as the absence of A and expect anything good to happen.
The ansence of cancer? The absence of a prison cell? The absence of an abusive partner? Those are all absences with intrinsic merit.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
My children went, in the 70's, to a fairly large comprehensive school, my elder son leaving at 16 for an engineering apprenticeship. Life, as it does, has gone on, and he is in a senior management position with a major sports company. Now someone has written to all the 'Class of 79" inviting thm for a 40 year reunion. It's to be held in a venue which, quite frankly he would normally expect to go to for such an event, and at a price much lower than he would expect to pay. He's wondering.
I think the idea that the logjam in parliament might not have occurred if May had involved them sooner is rather fanciful. Why has it occurred? Because of inflexible leaver ultras and die hard remainers. Theres no reason to suspect asking them things sooner would have led to more urgency from them.
And the casualty is TM who tried to reflect the 52/48 vote with the least worst exit
She didn't. She tried for a compromise among the 52% and ignored the 48%. She's now wasted 33 months. F*** her.
BTW this morning the petition for Revoke - not just a Ratifying Referendum - has got to 4.9 million whereas I heard on R4 yesterday that one urging a No Deal exit had got to 490,000.
It is not the answer and will not happen unless through a referendum
At the current rate the petition might have reached 5M by tomorrow morning or midday. That's like >10% of registered voters asking for Brexit to be 'recalled'. I don't see how even tin-eared Theresa can refuse Watson's offer yesterday in Parliament Square to approve the deal subject to a ratifying referendum.
That's a lot, but clicking a button does not require much effort, any more than voting in a Daily Mail poll. The five million are very representative of middle class left wing Britain, but that limits their influence in the Conservatives.
I'm being a pendent here but there is a little more effort (not much I grant you) required.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
Indeed.
Yet recruitment in the 18-30 age group in engineering is not easy either for manual or office jobs.
There might be a reduction in those starter jobs you mentioned but there seems to be a reduction in the number of young people who want those jobs which remain.
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s figures.
Only to address.
I had a beer with two accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many o moment.
For what its worth I thinbk we need to
- invest heavily in our own infrastructure - we have 2-3 decade gap to fill and its one of the reasons why both our productivity and GDP are sub optimal - decentralise as a coiuntry and put more decision making down to regions where people can influence their own futures - reform corporate and personal taxation to reflect the changes in economy - make our priority raising GDP per head rather than just GDP
Again, I largely agree. Where we differ, I guess, is that I don't see how being in the EU prevents any of this; while I think it is made much harder to do by taking ourselves out of the SM and CU, so making ourselves poorer and a much less attractive investment proposition.
the EU is simply a side issue whether were in or out makes little difference economically imo. being out probably gives us a bit more leeway on what we can do to suit ourselves though has some downsides too. The Brexit vote was one of the few occasions where the people could kick the politicans, the other one perhaps ironically is EU Parlt votes as no-one thinks theyre that important. The popular vote to take us out was a jugement on our political class performance and told them they were failing.
I think the idea that the logjam in parliament might not have occurred if May had involved them sooner is rather fanciful. Why has it occurred? Because of inflexible leaver ultras and die hard remainers. Theres no reason to suspect asking them things sooner would have led to more urgency from them.
And the casualty is TM who tried to reflect the 52/48 vote with the least worst exit
She didn't. She tried for a compromise among the 52% and ignored the 48%. She's now wasted 33 months. F*** her.
BTW this morning the petition for Revoke - not just a Ratifying Referendum - has got to 4.9 million whereas I heard on R4 yesterday that one urging a No Deal exit had got to 490,000.
It is not the answer and will not happen unless through a referendum
At the current rate the petition might have reached 5M by tomorrow morning or midday. That's like >10% of registered voters asking for Brexit to be 'recalled'. I don't see how even tin-eared Theresa can refuse Watson's offer yesterday in Parliament Square to approve the deal subject to a ratifying referendum.
TM is subject to the HOC and it will be upto the HOC
However, I do agree that neither the conservative or labour parties will support revoke without a referendum, no matter how many sign the revoke petition. The biggest roadblock for your course of action now is Corbyn, and many on his front bench, who do not support a referendum, hence why he was hiding in Morecambe yesterday and making a fool of himself with a large dog
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
As you must surely realise, there is no such thing as 'delivering' a successful Brexit, or needing to do so. Brexit is not a thing, it is an absence of thing. It isn't a project, it is an absence of project.
Anything which involves transitioning from A to B is a project. You can't simply define B as the absence of A and expect anything good to happen.
IMHO, people with "extreme" views either are, or are close to, a majority of the electorate. I think this is the out working of the Great Financial Crash.
One sees a similar pattern in the USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands.
The bailout of the bankers being the key turning point.
IMHO, people with "extreme" views either are, or are close to, a majority of the electorate. I think this is the out working of the Great Financial Crash.
One sees a similar pattern in the USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands.
I agree not just here with No Deal Tories and Kippers and Corbyn Labour and the hardliners within the SNP and DUP but in the US with Trump Republicans and Sanders Democrats or Germany with AfD and Die Linke voters, Italy with Five Star and Lega Nord voters, France with Le Pen and Melenchon voters, Spain with Podemos and Vox and Popular Party voters, Sweden with the Swedish Democrats, Greece with Syriza and Golden Dawn, the Netherlands with Wilders and Forum for Democracy etc. Canada, Australia and New Zealand and Ireland are less immune at least in terms of mainstream politics (though Australia has One Nation up to about 10% of the vote now) but even there extremists are present as recent events in New Zealand proved
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
Indeed.
Yet recruitment in the 18-30 age group in engineering is not easy either for manual or office jobs.
There might be a reduction in those starter jobs you mentioned but there seems to be a reduction in the number of young people who want those jobs which remain.
Simple question; can anyone direct me to figures which tell me how many there are in each age-group today, and were ten year intervals since WWII.
I think the idea that the logjam in parliament might not have occurred if May had involved them sooner is rather fanciful. Why has it occurred? Because of inflexible leaver ultras and die hard remainers. Theres no reason to suspect asking them things sooner would have led to more urgency from them.
And the casualty is TM who tried to reflect the 52/48 vote with the least worst exit
She didn't. She tried for a compromise among the 52% and ignored the 48%. She's now wasted 33 months. F*** her.
BTW this morning the petition for Revoke - not just a Ratifying Referendum - has got to 4.9 million whereas I heard on R4 yesterday that one urging a No Deal exit had got to 490,000.
It is not the answer and will not happen unless through a referendum
At the current rate the petition might have reached 5M by tomorrow morning or midday. That's like >10% of registered voters asking for Brexit to be 'recalled'. I don't see how even tin-eared Theresa can refuse Watson's offer yesterday in Parliament Square to approve the deal subject to a ratifying referendum.
TM is subject to the HOC and it will be upto the HOC
However, I do agree that neither the conservative or labour parties will support revoke without a referendum, no matter how many sign the revoke petition. The biggest roadblock for your course of action now is Corbyn, and many on his front bench, who do not support a referendum, hence why he was hiding in Morecambe yesterday and making a fool of himself with a large dog
He went to Morecambe but it wasn't Wise. As someone said on twitter
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Modern?
There's always been various levels of exploitation but your modern middle class mentality regards itself self-righteously as 'progresssive' and morally superior to the proles.
While still being dependent upon mass exploitation for its own living standards and lifestyle.
Out of interest, what's your definition of working and middle class? Presumably, you would consider anyone with a mobile phone or television assembled by poorly paid, exploited workers in the third world as middle class, so are there actually any working class people left in the UK?
Like everything in life it is all relative. The working class is a bit of a wide definition sometimes mixed up with nostalgia. People can have all kinds of cultural capital that goes beyond their income.
This is more accurate but even then it is only useful at generalising not at individuals.
D has been utterly eviscerated by young motivated healthy migrants, the national living wage was as much as a ceiling as it was a floor. C2 and C1 can effectively organise in certain circumstances to mitigate against migration reducing the demand for their skills.
Cheers. So we are talking about 15% of the population, essentially: Corbyn's left behind. Most people are either skilled working class or middle class.
Barclay sinking fast ! So the government will ignore the Commons even if by a miracle they find a majority for something !
If they find a majority it is the will of the HOC
I suspect the will of the Commons is for a referendum on May’s deal, even though this has been voted down already.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
I think the idea that the logjam in parliament might not have occurred if May had involved them sooner is rather fanciful. Why has it occurred? Because of inflexible leaver ultras and die hard remainers. Theres no reason to suspect asking them things sooner would have led to more urgency from them.
And the casualty is TM who tried to reflect the 52/48 vote with the least worst exit
She didn't. She tried for a compromise among the 52% and ignored the 48%. She's now wasted 33 months. F*** her.
BTW this morning the petition for Revoke - not just a Ratifying Referendum - has got to 4.9 million whereas I heard on R4 yesterday that one urging a No Deal exit had got to 490,000.
It is not the answer and will not happen unless through a referendum
At the current rate the petition might have reached 5M by tomorrow morning or midday. That's like >10% of registered voters asking for Brexit to be 'recalled'. I don't see how even tin-eared Theresa can refuse Watson's offer yesterday in Parliament Square to approve the deal subject to a ratifying referendum.
TM is subject to the HOC and it will be upto the HOC
However, I do agree that neither the conservative or labour parties will support revoke without a referendum, no matter how many sign the revoke petition. The biggest roadblock for your course of action now is Corbyn, and many on his front bench, who do not support a referendum, hence why he was hiding in Morecambe yesterday and making a fool of himself with a large dog
Neither major party will accept the use of a petition to drive / revoke policy as it would form a precedent to restrict future governments from undertaking contentious policies.
Applying the same principle to referendums: the Swiss model of referendums acts as a socially conservative brake on society by restricting government policy. As a result some social conservatives here could see their use as great for the UK but progressives would hate them.
I think the idea that the logjam in parliament might not have occurred if May had involved them sooner is rather fanciful. Why has it occurred? Because of inflexible leaver ultras and die hard remainers. Theres no reason to suspect asking them things sooner would have led to more urgency from them.
And the casualty is TM who tried to reflect the 52/48 vote with the least worst exit
She didn't. She tried for a compromise among the 52% and ignored the 48%. She's now wasted 33 months. F*** her.
BTW this morning the petition for Revoke - not just a Ratifying Referendum - has got to 4.9 million whereas I heard on R4 yesterday that one urging a No Deal exit had got to 490,000.
It is not the answer and will not happen unless through a referendum
At the current rate the petition might have reached 5M by tomorrow morning or midday. That's like >10% of registered voters asking for Brexit to be 'recalled'. I don't see how even tin-eared Theresa can refuse Watson's offer yesterday in Parliament Square to approve the deal subject to a ratifying referendum.
TM is subject to the HOC and it will be upto the HOC
However, I do agree that neither the conservative or labour parties will support revoke without a referendum, no matter how many sign the revoke petition. The biggest roadblock for your course of action now is Corbyn, and many on his front bench, who do not support a referendum, hence why he was hiding in Morecambe yesterday and making a fool of himself with a large dog
He went to Morecambe but it wasn't Wise. As someone said on twitter
Yes as the photo of him with Eric's statue demonstrated
IDS on Marr calls the idea of a Remainer 'cabinet cabal' to replace the PM and install their own leader 'appalling' and that Tory backbenchers will force the Tory membership to be consulted on the next Tory leader. Says May should sack some of the Cabinet too
He's an idiot. No sensible person could think that there is time to consult the members now. I'm actually worried for mps who think otherwise, i cannot conceive of how theyd think it appropriate in these circumstances, it frightens me they could think that .
The growth of calling public figures ‘stupid’ or ‘an idiot’ fails to appreciate that their public pronouncements always have multiple contexts, rather than existing in an intellectual vacuum.
Let me give you a little context for comments like this: Tory associations need to have AGMS by the end of March; much recent posturing is inextricably linked to this. MPs can’t stand up and say ‘we won’t give you a vote in this leadership election either’.
That's a very good point and I think most people who come to prominence in public life have somewhat above average intellectual capabilities. (Giles Fraser being of course the exception.)
Be nice if they used them now and again instead of playing dumber than dumb.
LBJ famously said it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. But if we remain I suspect our relationship with the EU will be one of us inside the tent, pissing all over the walls, the sleeping bags, and our fellow members. Particularly when we elect a load of hardline nationalists. Don't think it can happen? Look north of the border to see what happens when a nation narrowly decides to "remain" and isn't happy about it...
That was the 52/48 win for Remain in 2016 scenario, but that ship has sailed. Instead it went the other way, and Brexit was tested to destruction as a viable political project.
It hasn't been remotely tested to destruction. What has been tested to destruction is the ability of MPs to agree a form of Brexit in the circumstances where a large proportion don't accept that Brexit should happen. We're staying in the EU because the MPs can't agree if or how to leave is not testing Brexit to destruction. For it to be tested to destruction it has to happen in one form or another.
It's easy to say that May didn't do enough "reaching out to remainers". But how many remainers are opposing the deal because they genuinely think she could have done better (as opposed to just opposing it because 'it's not as good as remain' - with the implication that Leavers didn't know what they were voting for - even though that was the main argument made by them during the referendum)?
If a political consensus is a necessary condition for delivering a successful Brexit, the last three years show that it doesn't exist and is unlikely to ever exist.
As you must surely realise, there is no such thing as 'delivering' a successful Brexit, or needing to do so. Brexit is not a thing, it is an absence of thing. It isn't a project, it is an absence of project.
Anything which involves transitioning from A to B is a project. You can't simply define B as the absence of A and expect anything good to happen.
Trouble is they wanted Brexit but had no B
There were plans out there but the government / civil service didn't use any of them. Even if DExEU had followed such a plan, Olly Robbins and the PM would have still gone with their own plan from the Bunker.
Barclay sinking fast ! So the government will ignore the Commons even if by a miracle they find a majority for something !
If they find a majority it is the will of the HOC
I suspect the will of the Commons is for a referendum on May’s deal, even though this has been voted down already.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
May's deal is deader than a dodo
It would look that way but IDS this morning seemed to be blinking and others maybe
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
Indeed.
Yet recruitment in the 18-30 age group in engineering is not easy either for manual or office jobs.
There might be a reduction in those starter jobs you mentioned but there seems to be a reduction in the number of young people who want those jobs which remain.
Simple question; can anyone direct me to figures which tell me how many there are in each age-group today, and were ten year intervals since WWII.
IMHO, people with "extreme" views either are, or are close to, a majority of the electorate. I think this is the out working of the Great Financial Crash.
One sees a similar pattern in the USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands.
The bailout of the bankers being the key turning point.
One law for the rich etc.
And that's how Boris Johnson can get away with saying "fuck business."
Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour was something I was excited about in the early Ed Miliband years, and I really enjoyed this interview by Giles Fraser, particularly his views on why EU membership is a negative for the working class
EU membership being a negative for the working class is regarded as a good thing by much of the middle class.
The modern middle class lifestyle is dependent upon exploitation.
Tiresome.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
I had a beer with two friends both remainers, one a retired legal partner, the other a retired actuary, We all share the same council estate background. None of us see how we could have got to the positions we got to if we were teenagers today. The current mesh of leaving people with no hope of moving on is simply the bag of misery you want us all to accept. People quite rightly wont accept it.
I agree. So what is the solution?
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
You run your finances like Norway has done then use the dividends of the sovereign wealth fund as a universal basic income
Not something (UBI) that could be introduced in the EU (except at EU level)
Barclay sinking fast ! So the government will ignore the Commons even if by a miracle they find a majority for something !
If they find a majority it is the will of the HOC
I suspect the will of the Commons is for a referendum on May’s deal, even though this has been voted down already.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
May's deal is deader than a dodo
It would look that way but IDS this morning seemed to be blinking and others maybe
Comments
But our political culture has become much more illiberal - on Labour’s side because Corbyn’s default instincts are not,IMO, those of liberal democracy and on the Tories’ side because of the focus on Brexit. May’s combination of incompetence, insecurity and a natural authoritarianism has led her to behaving in the way I have outlined.
It may not be populism South American style but it is sufficient of a move away from our traditional approach to politics to sound a warning note, one which I think should be heeded but isn’t. Both parties want to tear down rather than build. There are dangers in such an approach.
While still being dependent upon mass exploitation for its own living standards and lifestyle.
Why you perhaps mean to say is that automation and offshoring has caused a collapse in the abundance of higher skilled and well paid working class jobs - the jobs that once lifted individuals and families toward a middle class existence.
Thus, the job market has bifurcated into a low skill/low paid tier, and a professional/high paid tier.
Britain’s relative economic liberalisation - and the lack of any countervening industrial policies per Alanbrooke - mean we are perhaps further down this path than some of our European neighbours. Important to add, though, that perhaps for similar reasons we have globally high employment figures.
Only from a Marxist perspective, are the middle classes “exploitative”. The issues are really due to deep changes in the global economy and not easy to address.
The immediate practical outcome is that it is hard to see either major parliamentary party seeking to change leaders for fear of what the loons that form the membership of both will come up with.
A future in the EU post circumstances where Brexit has been tried and failed is less likely to lead to years of resentment and anti EU voting (especially in European elections) than a future in the EU resulting from the failure of those empowered with enacting Brexit to deliver.
And once politics reorganises then the economics will follow. Currently there is little chance of this happening with the tiresome EU
My background is not so dissimilar to yours. Please don’t ascribe to me opinions I do not hold. As discussed several times now, I somewhat agree with your sentiments but simply understand Brexit as making things worse, not better.
All we are seeing is the folly of our representatives ignoring their own electorate and not addressing their concerns as they go. The ever toxic madelson\campbell mantra of "they have nowhere else to go" has been shown to be the biggest risk to UK politics, Hopefully it will now die unloved in the dark corner it hatched from.
But what you said is similar to what reactionaries have said throughout the ages and I know you are not one of them.
I don’t believe any or many Tories are going to go for May’s Deal plus Customs Union, whereas Norway requires something like May’s Deal first to get there.
Starmer, however ...
Many of the jobs that those who are now in senior managerial positions now started off in are mechanised - and that is not going to change. In my own field, when I started people subscribed to B2B newsletters, written by journalists, edited by subs, put together by a production team, type-set externally, printed externally and distributed solely for a UK audience. Dozens were involved int he process. Now all of it can be done on one computer by one person, the put on the internet to be seen globally in a moment.
However, I do accept your point and of course it can be levelled at conservative mps as wel
The deal will depend on ERG suddenly switching and support the deal and speaking up for it in the HOC
Anyway time to enjoy the spring sunshine.
- invest heavily in our own infrastructure - we have 2-3 decade gap to fill and its one of the reasons why both our productivity and GDP are sub optimal
- decentralise as a coiuntry and put more decision making down to regions where people can influence their own futures
- reform corporate and personal taxation to reflect the changes in economy
- make our priority raising GDP per head rather than just GDP
What our politicians do is pander to the rich and powerful, bribe their own supporters to keep voting for them, posture about the world at a cost of British lives and money, obsess about vanity projects while neglecting essential infrastructure and ignore proper preparation and attention to detail in favour of ranting on twatter.
One sees a similar pattern in the USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands.
This is more accurate but even then it is only useful at generalising not at individuals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade
D has been utterly eviscerated by young motivated healthy migrants, the national living wage was as much as a ceiling as it was a floor. C2 and C1 can effectively organise in certain circumstances to mitigate against migration reducing the demand for their skills.
It's to be held in a venue which, quite frankly he would normally expect to go to for such an event, and at a price much lower than he would expect to pay. He's wondering.
Yet recruitment in the 18-30 age group in engineering is not easy either for manual or office jobs.
There might be a reduction in those starter jobs you mentioned but there seems to be a reduction in the number of young people who want those jobs which remain.
being out probably gives us a bit more leeway on what we can do to suit ourselves though has some downsides too. The Brexit vote was one of the few occasions where the people could kick the politicans, the other one perhaps ironically is EU Parlt votes as no-one thinks theyre that important. The popular vote to take us out was a jugement on our political class performance and told them they were failing.
However, I do agree that neither the conservative or labour parties will support revoke without a referendum, no matter how many sign the revoke petition. The biggest roadblock for your course of action now is Corbyn, and many on his front bench, who do not support a referendum, hence why he was hiding in Morecambe yesterday and making a fool of himself with a large dog
One law for the rich etc.
Applying the same principle to referendums: the Swiss model of referendums acts as a socially conservative brake on society by restricting government policy. As a result some social conservatives here could see their use as great for the UK but progressives would hate them.
Like everything in brexit, expect the unexpected
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom
For the historic you'd need to interrogate the ONS website
He is also a friend of 40 years standing - and will give it to her straight.
If he says the game is up, it is - though I suspect as he heartily loathes the other attendees he'll try to suggest a way out.