1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Scotland has a national police force so it seems quite reasonable that fishery protection sits with it. England doesn't and I'm not quite sure who is in charge.
I don't know - UK fisheries is negotiated at UK level and this weakens our negotiating position.
It should be very obvious that the Scottish Government will always do what's most politically inconvenient for Westminster.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
Don't forget folks. As we slide towards no deal. The no deal that the PM assured us absolutely wouldn't happen. His ministers and assorted parrots will start skwarking about the brilliant Australia style deal we would now enjoy.
The government hired a trade adviser. The former Prime Minister of Australia. Who says the Australia EU deal is shit.
So we get to enjoy government ministers. Robert Jenrick. Nadine Dorries. That level of intellect. Telling us why the former Prime Minister of Australia, hired by them for his expert opinions - is wrong about the Australia deal.
If you are a minister and your salary and political career mandates you saying such things I can almost - *almost* - understand it. What motivation though for the parrots. Who aren't taking the shilling. Repeating that the Australia style deal branded shit by the former Australian PM and now British trade expert is fantastic.
You might want to get your facts checked.
Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister who has been hired as a trade advisor, is not the former PM who stood against him that says the deal was shit.
Mixing them up together is like suggesting that Blair and Corbyn are the same person. So none of what you said is accurate. 🤦🏻♂️
Have thanked HYUFD for correcting my confusion.
You remain the same parroty stupidity as HYUFD. Either the former Prime Minister of Australia has more authority on the effects of the Australia - EU trade deal on Australia than Robert fucking Jenrick or he doesn't.
Personally I think the expert here is the guy who ran the country in question. Paid lackeys with no brain like Jenrick get paid to suggest the former PM of Australia is wrong about the effects of the Australian trade deal on Australia.
What do you get?
I grew up and did my High School years in Australia so I have a fair understanding of Australia. But no I don't claim to know more than former Australian PMs on the matter ... But the former Australian PM I respect the most is not Turnbull. Nor for that matter is it Abbott either.
The former Australian PM I have the most respect for is John Howard. Who BTW backed Brexit.
Edit: PS Howard ran the country longer and more successfully than any PM since. He is one of Australia's best ever PMs. So why should I respect Turnbull more than Howard?
What does Brexit have to do with it? I don't care what any of them think about Brexit. Question is what do any of them think about the Australia - EU trade deal. If Turnbull is an outlier and all the others think its great then ok. Are they?
No not all others. Just as not all of us agree why should all of them?
Of the 6 former PMs three are Liberals and two of those three backed Brexit. Turnbull is the exception amongst the Liberals.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
I largely agree with you but we are a distance from the next GE and I really do believe a deal will happen in the next 6 months, indeed if not by the 31st December with a 6 month or so implementation period
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
I'd say membership and WTO are the only logical responses, but logical doesn't mean sane. Think of the comedy of someone like John Cleese; a lot of his characters are people driven mad by the logic of their situation.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
Or evidence of non-EU developed countries worldwide suffering food shortages.
Scotland has a national police force so it seems quite reasonable that fishery protection sits with it. England doesn't and I'm not quite sure who is in charge.
You can say that last clause again any time.
Indeed. Our political system is totally f***ed. I'm thinking of starting a campaign to adopt the German Grundgesetz and start all over again.
Scotland has a national police force so it seems quite reasonable that fishery protection sits with it. England doesn't and I'm not quite sure who is in charge.
I don't know - UK fisheries is negotiated at UK level and this weakens our negotiating position.
It should be very obvious that the Scottish Government will always do what's most politically inconvenient for Westminster.
That would be a more credible argument if the Tory Governments in London hadn't spent so much time and energy excluding the Scottish Government from any sort of discussion on fisheries - whioch have been devolved since 1997. In particular, negotiations with the EU. Just wrecks any hope for internal consensus.
they manged to lose what should have been an easy win.
OK, what should they have done that they didn't do to convince the Little Englanders that staying in was better than BoZo's sunlit uplands?
To start with could have tried making positive arguments for what was good with the EU. Given some sunlit European uplands.
Simply saying life will be shit under Brexit doesn't work for those of us who aren't afraid of Brexit.
You're right. The list of culprits is long and it certainly includes remainers, like me, who failed to make the case for remaining adequately.
True, though it's hard to win a campaign against "we can have our cake and eat it".
Shouldn't have been. Remain made the mistake of thinking that just because something was effing stupid people wouldn't vote for it, and it was therefore not necessary to point out what was stupid about it.
No, and I was very critical of the Remain campaign at the time, we spent a lot of time pointing out the stupidity of Brexit. What we did not do was point out the wisdom and good sense of remaining at the heart of Europe. The campaign was far too negative.
The year after the Syrian migration crisis was what swung it, with a lot of people expecting a further mass refugee crisis that Spring and Summer*. I think Remain would have won if the referendum was held in 2017.
*indeed that was why Cameron's renegotiation was so perfunctory. The rest of the EU were trying to ensure no repeat, and a common policy, not deal with our Faragists.
Remain assumed every Brexiter was a Little Englander, a racist and a xenophobe. Most of us are far from that, indeed I normally travel in several EU countries a year, enjoying the local culture etc rather than sitting on the beach, demanding fish and chips and getting pissed*. Had the Remain campaign made an effort to tell me how many free trade deals the EU was likely to conclude in the next couple of years it might have swayed my vote.
*Er that does happen of course.
I know. My father enjoyed 3 years working in Paris when Britain was having massive unemployment in the eighties. He has travelled worldwide running sales training, and is fluent in French, Spanish, German and can get by in Italian, Japanese and Russian, as well as social pleasantries a number of other languages. He loves Europe and holidays there every year. Yet has become a fanatical, send in the gunboats Brexiteer. Ironically he won't eat fish unless being forced! He has become quite anti immigrant over the years, though it is Commonwealth immigrants that he dislikes, particularly Muslims. I have never really had a sound reason from him for Brexit, just a bunch of falsehoods about straight bananas etc.
He cannot understand why all three of his children are pro Remain, my brothers far more so than me. None of us discuss it with him anymore, it just causes fights, but Brexit has certainly damaged our relationships. My older brother is planning to retire to Germany, with his German spouse. My other Brother had to choose between redundancy and Eindhoven when his Dutch employer closed its UK establishments 2 years ago, and now works mostly on contract in the USA. There is physical distance as well as emotional distance between us now. Brexit is the worst thing that has happened to our family relationships.
I'd 'like' it if it weren't such a sad story.
I still speak to him every week, and had invited him for Christmas until the second wave made that impossible. My mother is marginally more sensible. My dad is intelligent, with a degree in Economics and a lifetime in business. He used to vote Lib Dem, and was even quite pro Gordon Brown. We can only talk of grandchildren and medical conditions now.
Mr. Stocky, if he puts a deal to the Commons he'll want it to be backed.
Easy to forget but the prime jester has an 80 seat majority. Losing a vote under those circumstances is not a good look.
Surely, BoJo wouldn't lose the vote- that would require Labour to actively back No Deal, which I don't think anyone is talking about.
What's quite possible is that there would be enough Conservative rebels that the government needed opposition co-operation to get the deal passed. However, that would hurt Johnson even more, I suspect.
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Nah that's rubbish. It was perfectly feasible for us to have gone for EFTA membership in the wake of the referendum and that would easily have had majority support in the country as a whole. Sadly we had a PM in charge who didn't understand anything about Brexit or its support base and who chose to alienate practically everyone on all sides of the debate.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
I know. My father enjoyed 3 years working in Paris when Britain was having massive unemployment in the eighties. He has travelled worldwide running sales training, and is fluent in French, Spanish, German and can get by in Italian, Japanese and Russian, as well as social pleasantries a number of other languages. He loves Europe and holidays there every year. Yet has become a fanatical, send in the gunboats Brexiteer. Ironically he won't eat fish unless being forced! He has become quite anti immigrant over the years, though it is Commonwealth immigrants that he dislikes, particularly Muslims. I have never really had a sound reason from him for Brexit, just a bunch of falsehoods about straight bananas etc.
He cannot understand why all three of his children are pro Remain, my brothers far more so than me. None of us discuss it with him anymore, it just causes fights, but Brexit has certainly damaged our relationships. My older brother is planning to retire to Germany, with his German spouse. My other Brother had to choose between redundancy and Eindhoven when his Dutch employer closed its UK establishments 2 years ago, and now works mostly on contract in the USA. There is physical distance as well as emotional distance between us now. Brexit is the worst thing that has happened to our family relationships.
Ha! I feel a kind of kinship with your father, having worked in Paris for 3 years (in the 1970s), competent enough to read newspapers in French, German, Spanish and Finnish, summer cottage in Finland, German mother, Spanish grandchildren and I really love Europe and Europeans. And I think you might describe me as a fanatical brexiter (though that's not how I see myself). Sad to hear that you are distanced from your father and that it has soured your family relationships. For us brexit looks like it could be quite costly, especially to my son's family in Spain, yet both he and my son-in-law, who is very well connected and says I'm the only person he knows who voted brexit, are still on good terms with me despite it all. I hope your familial rift can heal.
Scotland has a national police force so it seems quite reasonable that fishery protection sits with it. England doesn't and I'm not quite sure who is in charge.
I don't know - UK fisheries is negotiated at UK level and this weakens our negotiating position.
It should be very obvious that the Scottish Government will always do what's most politically inconvenient for Westminster.
So ungrateful, what with all that consultation, cooperation and consideration emanating from Westminster.
This thread so far poses more questions than it answers.
Does Boris really believe in Brexit?
The rest of the Parris article provides the answer.
BoZo tapped into English exceptionalism to win. The Little Englanders voted for him, and he is intent on keeping them onside. Pike's comments about the vaccine illustrate this sentiment is alive and well among the Brexiteers in cabinet.
It was English exceptionalism that made Johnson’s career as a Brussels-bashing newspaper columnist. He saw early what so many on my side of the argument have been slow to understand. Tens of millions of people in Britain really believe that we British are much, much better than the rest and that, since the Second World War, history has been selling us short. They have persuaded themselves that it is the European Union that has shackled us and that, unbound, we shall leap.
Quel surprise - Matthew Parris continues to peddle the same arguments which lost the referendum 4 years ago - based on blaming the voters for not despising their own country like all right thinking middle class chatterers.
I don't usually have much time for the "you are an expat" argument, but these people at least do not despise their country too much to live there. We here are facing, and you are not, a period of real discomfort and uncertainty and perhaps worse. You are not. That being so, could you just put the whole being a complete prick thing on hold for a month or so? Thanks.
Hello - I didn't realise you owned and moderated the site and decided who could post. Oh and btw all of my income is from the UK to which I pay taxes and also which has been impacted by the fall in the £ as a result of the Brexit uncertainty which I did not vote for. And I am not an 'expat' I am an immigrant in Spain and very content to stay even on a reduced income.
He certainly seems to think he does. It's quite sad really.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
Don't forget folks. As we slide towards no deal. The no deal that the PM assured us absolutely wouldn't happen. His ministers and assorted parrots will start skwarking about the brilliant Australia style deal we would now enjoy.
The government hired a trade adviser. The former Prime Minister of Australia. Who says the Australia EU deal is shit.
So we get to enjoy government ministers. Robert Jenrick. Nadine Dorries. That level of intellect. Telling us why the former Prime Minister of Australia, hired by them for his expert opinions - is wrong about the Australia deal.
If you are a minister and your salary and political career mandates you saying such things I can almost - *almost* - understand it. What motivation though for the parrots. Who aren't taking the shilling. Repeating that the Australia style deal branded shit by the former Australian PM and now British trade expert is fantastic.
You might want to get your facts checked.
Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister who has been hired as a trade advisor, is not the former PM who stood against him that says the deal was shit.
Mixing them up together is like suggesting that Blair and Corbyn are the same person. So none of what you said is accurate. 🤦🏻♂️
Have thanked HYUFD for correcting my confusion.
You remain the same parroty stupidity as HYUFD. Either the former Prime Minister of Australia has more authority on the effects of the Australia - EU trade deal on Australia than Robert fucking Jenrick or he doesn't.
Personally I think the expert here is the guy who ran the country in question. Paid lackeys with no brain like Jenrick get paid to suggest the former PM of Australia is wrong about the effects of the Australian trade deal on Australia.
What do you get?
I grew up and did my High School years in Australia so I have a fair understanding of Australia. But no I don't claim to know more than former Australian PMs on the matter ... But the former Australian PM I respect the most is not Turnbull. Nor for that matter is it Abbott either.
The former Australian PM I have the most respect for is John Howard. Who BTW backed Brexit.
Edit: PS Howard ran the country longer and more successfully than any PM since. He is one of Australia's best ever PMs. So why should I respect Turnbull more than Howard?
What does Brexit have to do with it? I don't care what any of them think about Brexit. Question is what do any of them think about the Australia - EU trade deal. If Turnbull is an outlier and all the others think its great then ok. Are they?
No not all others. Just as not all of us agree why should all of them?
Of the 6 former PMs three are Liberals and two of those three backed Brexit. Turnbull is the exception amongst the Liberals.
In Australia, the Conservatives call themselves Liberals, officially. They are not Liberals at all. This is very confusing for some of our PB Tories.
Still waiting to find one to deface. Mind you, I never use cash so it might be a while...
You object to peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations?
I knew Remainers were morally bankrupt.
Oh yes... it is Remainers who want to ruin prosperity by tearing up all our trade agreements. Not!
You might also want to reflect on how many Remainers have been posting on PB over the last few days that we need to "Send the gunboats" or "teach the EU a lesson". So much for peace and friendship...
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Nah that's rubbish. It was perfectly feasible for us to have gone for EFTA membership in the wake of the referendum and that would easily have had majority support in the country as a whole. Sadly we had a PM in charge who didn't understand anything about Brexit or its support base and who chose to alienate practically everyone on all sides of the debate.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
No, the truth is that such decisions are polarised, and polarising. EEA would have led to a Faragist anti free movement campaign, and Remainers wanting to be represented again in the EU Commission and Parliament in order to have a say in the rules.
The only substantial EEA country now has a party leading in the polls that wants to leave the EEA. Brexit hasn't smashed the EU, but may well smash the EEA.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Nah that's rubbish. It was perfectly feasible for us to have gone for EFTA membership in the wake of the referendum and that would easily have had majority support in the country as a whole. Sadly we had a PM in charge who didn't understand anything about Brexit or its support base and who chose to alienate practically everyone on all sides of the debate.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
Where do you see the differences between the EFTA model (i.e. single market outside customs union) and the deal that is on offer, aside from free movement?
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Most of the Tories saying so are the ones who would like no public health measures against Covid at all. Do you agree with them, or are you just grabbing the nearest muck to throw, not caring how much gets on you too?
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Getting a deal over by such a means would have the 1922 postbox full, and would be the end of his premiership, in ignominious style.
It would be the Norway debate, with Johnson playing Chamberlain.
they manged to lose what should have been an easy win.
OK, what should they have done that they didn't do to convince the Little Englanders that staying in was better than BoZo's sunlit uplands?
To start with could have tried making positive arguments for what was good with the EU. Given some sunlit European uplands.
Simply saying life will be shit under Brexit doesn't work for those of us who aren't afraid of Brexit.
You're right. The list of culprits is long and it certainly includes remainers, like me, who failed to make the case for remaining adequately.
True, though it's hard to win a campaign against "we can have our cake and eat it".
Shouldn't have been. Remain made the mistake of thinking that just because something was effing stupid people wouldn't vote for it, and it was therefore not necessary to point out what was stupid about it.
No, and I was very critical of the Remain campaign at the time, we spent a lot of time pointing out the stupidity of Brexit. What we did not do was point out the wisdom and good sense of remaining at the heart of Europe. The campaign was far too negative.
The year after the Syrian migration crisis was what swung it, with a lot of people expecting a further mass refugee crisis that Spring and Summer*. I think Remain would have won if the referendum was held in 2017.
*indeed that was why Cameron's renegotiation was so perfunctory. The rest of the EU were trying to ensure no repeat, and a common policy, not deal with our Faragists.
Remain assumed every Brexiter was a Little Englander, a racist and a xenophobe. Most of us are far from that, indeed I normally travel in several EU countries a year, enjoying the local culture etc rather than sitting on the beach, demanding fish and chips and getting pissed*. Had the Remain campaign made an effort to tell me how many free trade deals the EU was likely to conclude in the next couple of years it might have swayed my vote.
*Er that does happen of course.
Do you really believe that some smart PR guy by finding your particular button with a bit of research could have switched your vote? I'm sorry but it's not as easy as that. It's visceral. It's about values. Calling people racist is just a shorthand. The values that make up a Remainer or Leaver are as you say more complex than whether or not you like immigrants but that is more an element than any detail of a trade deal.
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Nah that's rubbish. It was perfectly feasible for us to have gone for EFTA membership in the wake of the referendum and that would easily have had majority support in the country as a whole. Sadly we had a PM in charge who didn't understand anything about Brexit or its support base and who chose to alienate practically everyone on all sides of the debate.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
Remainers tried to get parliament to back EFTA and it was voted down by Leavers. We have had a pro Leave PM for well over a year, and we are about to choose between a bare-bones FTA and WTO, with EFTA never considered. As a Remainer it has been clear to me since the referendum that EFTA is the median position in the country. The idea that it is Remainers who have blocked it is for the birds.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
(.. except without the bit where the Noes have it)
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Needing Labours help passing a deal. Brady postbox would be full to the brim in about 30s and Boris gone within a week.
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Nah that's rubbish. It was perfectly feasible for us to have gone for EFTA membership in the wake of the referendum and that would easily have had majority support in the country as a whole. Sadly we had a PM in charge who didn't understand anything about Brexit or its support base and who chose to alienate practically everyone on all sides of the debate.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
Where do you see the differences between the EFTA model (i.e. single market outside customs union) and the deal that is on offer, aside from free movement?
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
I remember the Sunday Post with considerable affection from the time we were living in Edinburgh in the sixties
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
I largely agree with you but we are a distance from the next GE and I really do believe a deal will happen in the next 6 months, indeed if not by the 31st December with a 6 month or so implementation period
Ok, so when I say (or used to) that No Deal is a Not Happening Event I specifically mean going from frictionless trade to WTO terms.
What I can see is some form of extension, implementing what's agreed as of 1/1/21, all else on ice with no change while talks on LPF and Fish, and whatever other bits and bobs there are, carry on into the new year.
Probably not, sounds a pain and bad optics, but I can just about see that.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
I largely agree with you but we are a distance from the next GE and I really do believe a deal will happen in the next 6 months, indeed if not by the 31st December with a 6 month or so implementation period
Ok, so when I say (or used to) that No Deal is a Not Happening Event I specifically mean going from frictionless trade to WTO terms.
What I can see is some form of extension, implementing what's agreed as of 1/1/21, all else on ice with no change while talks on LPF and Fish, and whatever other bits and bobs there are, carry on into the new year.
Probably not, sounds a pain and bad optics, but I can just about see that.
"Ikea has become the latest victim of the UK’s gridlocked ports, with the retailer blaming delayed orders and stock shortages on the congestion, which is now also derailing food imports.
The Swedish chain said it was experiencing “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The hold-ups came as Ikea struggled to meet increased demand for home furnishings, which has soared this year as Britons have switched to homeworking.
Ikea’s social media channels have been besieged by angry customers, venting over late and missing furniture deliveries. The situation was made worse for some by long periods spent on hold to its contact centres.
One customer, Kathy Hall, said she had received her wardrobe doors but was told the frame would not be in stock until February. “If you don’t sort yourselves out and concentrate on giving a good customer service you will be out of business soon,” she tweeted."
These are the just minor, first-world-problem intimations of what's to come, if the course doesn't change.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Getting a deal over by such a means would have the 1922 postbox full, and would be the end of his premiership, in ignominious style.
It would be the Norway debate, with Johnson playing Chamberlain.
On the other hand, it solves quite a lot of Johnson's problems.
His premiership goes down in flames, but he gets to fast forward to the fun bit of being Former Prime Minister. And his place in history is Noble Personal Sacrifice For The Sake Of The Nation, which he would love, especially given that it's a deathbed conversion. And he doesn't have to run the country through the ensuing clustershambles.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Needing Labours help passing a deal. Brady postbox would be full to the brim in about 30s and Boris gone within a week.
Yes, by default Deal or No Deal will be determined by the views of the 43 most intransigent members of the Conservative caucus. Might as well send the buggers to negotiate directly with Ursula in that case.
This thread so far poses more questions than it answers.
Does Boris really believe in Brexit?
The rest of the Parris article provides the answer.
BoZo tapped into English exceptionalism to win. The Little Englanders voted for him, and he is intent on keeping them onside. Pike's comments about the vaccine illustrate this sentiment is alive and well among the Brexiteers in cabinet.
It was English exceptionalism that made Johnson’s career as a Brussels-bashing newspaper columnist. He saw early what so many on my side of the argument have been slow to understand. Tens of millions of people in Britain really believe that we British are much, much better than the rest and that, since the Second World War, history has been selling us short. They have persuaded themselves that it is the European Union that has shackled us and that, unbound, we shall leap.
Quel surprise - Matthew Parris continues to peddle the same arguments which lost the referendum 4 years ago - based on blaming the voters for not despising their own country like all right thinking middle class chatterers.
I am sick of such stupid arguments.
People who thought on balance that the U.K. should remain in the EU or that now it should seek to have a close and friendly relationship with its allies and close neighbours do not despise this country nor do they despise those who think differently.
However, I do despise those who think that because I do not share the current Tory party’s view on Europe or anything else I am some sort of traitor to my country. Why? Because that sort of view is a fundamentally totalitarian one incompatible with a democracy.
It is now for the government to enact the promises it made to the voters who voted for it. Not endlessly attack those who didn’t vote for it. We are watching to see how it achieves what it promised.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Needing Labours help passing a deal. Brady postbox would be full to the brim in about 30s and Boris gone within a week.
No argument about the letters from the ERG, but would there actually be a no deal minded majority to remove him?
This thread so far poses more questions than it answers.
Does Boris really believe in Brexit?
The rest of the Parris article provides the answer.
BoZo tapped into English exceptionalism to win. The Little Englanders voted for him, and he is intent on keeping them onside. Pike's comments about the vaccine illustrate this sentiment is alive and well among the Brexiteers in cabinet.
It was English exceptionalism that made Johnson’s career as a Brussels-bashing newspaper columnist. He saw early what so many on my side of the argument have been slow to understand. Tens of millions of people in Britain really believe that we British are much, much better than the rest and that, since the Second World War, history has been selling us short. They have persuaded themselves that it is the European Union that has shackled us and that, unbound, we shall leap.
Quel surprise - Matthew Parris continues to peddle the same arguments which lost the referendum 4 years ago - based on blaming the voters for not despising their own country like all right thinking middle class chatterers.
I am sick of such stupid arguments.
People who thought on balance that the U.K. should remain in the EU or that now it should seek to have a close and friendly relationship with its allies and close neighbours do not despise this country nor do they despise those who think differently.
However, I do despise those who think that because I do not share the current Tory party’s view on Europe or anything else I am some sort of traitor to my country. Why? Because that sort of view is a fundamentally totalitarian one incompatible with a democracy.
It is now for the government to enact the promises it made to the voters who voted for it. Not endlessly attack those who didn’t vote for it. We are watching to see how it achieves what it promised.
There are numerous posts on here both posters and tweets which show utter contempt for the views of those who voted leave and their motives. You choose to ignore them and call people stupid for pointing it out. Enjoy your bitterness. I hope it makes you feel better. I voted remain and prefer to move on.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Needing Labours help passing a deal. Brady postbox would be full to the brim in about 30s and Boris gone within a week.
No argument about the letters from the ERG, but would there actually be a no deal minded majority to remove him?
I think that any such vote would be post Deal, and the contest would be between a Dealer and a Reneger on the Deal.
I see our Brexit supporting friends have gone loopy again and have decided anyone who thinks the most extreme course of action is stupid are unpatriotic. Well I have the opportunity to embrace that in May by voting for the SNP for the first time, and I’m not sure the attitudes above are helping to change my mind.
I think I mentioned this previously but it was nervous middle class Scots who won the first IndyRef for No. However, middle Scotland only aligns economically with Middle England, it has a different set of social values (prudence dear child, prudence) and being told that your Presbyterian cultural mores are unpatriotic is an unimaginably stupid strategy. What makes me laugh is that Gove and even Johnson (belatedly) understand this, which is why we’ve had less “Britain r Best” rhetoric from them over this and more “We’ll be okay if we can’t reach a deal with our neighbours and we will do everything we can to avoid the worst outcomes”. For all that I find their arguments to be wrong headed the less heated leavers on here like Phillip get this too for the most part.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
It really has not been an issue with global trade. Various foods are always available all year round. Perhaps that weekly column will be back to tell us where the best shortest supermarket queues are in 2021?
"Ikea has become the latest victim of the UK’s gridlocked ports, with the retailer blaming delayed orders and stock shortages on the congestion, which is now also derailing food imports.
The Swedish chain said it was experiencing “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The hold-ups came as Ikea struggled to meet increased demand for home furnishings, which has soared this year as Britons have switched to homeworking.
Ikea’s social media channels have been besieged by angry customers, venting over late and missing furniture deliveries. The situation was made worse for some by long periods spent on hold to its contact centres.
One customer, Kathy Hall, said she had received her wardrobe doors but was told the frame would not be in stock until February. “If you don’t sort yourselves out and concentrate on giving a good customer service you will be out of business soon,” she tweeted."
These are the just minor, first-world-problem intimations of what's to come, if the course doesn't change.
An alternative reading is that their internal supply chain can't cope with an unexpected increase in demand.
I wish somebody would call his bluff on this. Even if an injunction was granted, which isn’t certain, it’s most unlikely it could be got to take effect before Friday.
Nick Gibb really is a crass human being. He’s unfit for office and unfit to be an MP. He’s dishonest, abusive, lazy, arrogant and clearly stupid.
But it says something for our comprehensive school system that somebody like him can actually still read and write.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
It really has not been an issue with global trade. Various foods are always available all year round. Perhaps that weekly column will be back to tell us where the best shortest supermarket queues are in 2021?
The first three months of the year will be an expensive mess but after that I suspect we will find some sort of equilibrium involving transit. We won’t have huge shortages but we might end up like the Japanese, with stagnation and a lack of population replacement becoming serious problems. Plus the whole “union explodes” thing.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
It really has not been an issue with global trade. Various foods are always available all year round. Perhaps that weekly column will be back to tell us where the best shortest supermarket queues are in 2021?
We have got rather used to having all fruit and veg all year round. Strawberries now have a 6 months season grown in the UK, but many others things that have become staples are grown in the Southern EU. Perhaps we will get winter tomatoes flown in from Morocco in the future, or maybe go back to carrots, turnips and parsnips.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
Also home to the Broons and Oor Wullie. A fine publication.
I wish somebody would call his bluff on this. Even if an injunction was granted, which isn’t certain, it’s most unlikely it could be got to take effect before Friday.
Nick Gibb really is a crass human being. He’s unfit for office and unfit to be an MP. He’s dishonest, abusive, lazy, arrogant and clearly stupid.
But it says something for our comprehensive school system that somebody like him can actually still read and write.
You’d certainly have a few solicitors willing to take the case pro bono if you asked.
I think this would be an ideal time for the teaching unions to take industrial action but given the pay constraints it doesn’t seem fair for teachers to take the hit for something the Fireplace Salesman and The Gimp should be doing.
This thread so far poses more questions than it answers.
Does Boris really believe in Brexit?
The rest of the Parris article provides the answer.
BoZo tapped into English exceptionalism to win. The Little Englanders voted for him, and he is intent on keeping them onside. Pike's comments about the vaccine illustrate this sentiment is alive and well among the Brexiteers in cabinet.
It was English exceptionalism that made Johnson’s career as a Brussels-bashing newspaper columnist. He saw early what so many on my side of the argument have been slow to understand. Tens of millions of people in Britain really believe that we British are much, much better than the rest and that, since the Second World War, history has been selling us short. They have persuaded themselves that it is the European Union that has shackled us and that, unbound, we shall leap.
Quel surprise - Matthew Parris continues to peddle the same arguments which lost the referendum 4 years ago - based on blaming the voters for not despising their own country like all right thinking middle class chatterers.
I am sick of such stupid arguments.
People who thought on balance that the U.K. should remain in the EU or that now it should seek to have a close and friendly relationship with its allies and close neighbours do not despise this country nor do they despise those who think differently.
However, I do despise those who think that because I do not share the current Tory party’s view on Europe or anything else I am some sort of traitor to my country. Why? Because that sort of view is a fundamentally totalitarian one incompatible with a democracy.
It is now for the government to enact the promises it made to the voters who voted for it. Not endlessly attack those who didn’t vote for it. We are watching to see how it achieves what it promised.
There are numerous posts on here both posters and tweets which show utter contempt for the views of those who voted leave and their motives. You choose to ignore them and call people stupid for pointing it out. Enjoy your bitterness. I hope it makes you feel better. I voted remain and prefer to move on.
Please point to any post at all where I have called Brexiteers stupid. I have not. So you should withdraw your unjustified accusation and apologise.
On the contrary I have written various headers which are sympathetic to the arguments of those who voted for Brexit and critical of the EU.
I am not bitter. I simply think that my country has made and is making a mistake. Thinking that does not make me a traitor, a term used on here repeatedly by some of the more fanatical Brexiteers and supporters of this government.
We’ll see what happens. Personally I am concerned because there are close family members who are dependant on medicines so I view with some concerns the government’s insouciance about a No Deal Brexit when their own reasonable worst case scenario says that the supply of such medicines may be reduced by 80%.
More immediately I am far more worried about what the government’s other policies are doing to my children’s business, employment hopes and to the future of the place I am living in.
Scotland has a national police force so it seems quite reasonable that fishery protection sits with it. England doesn't and I'm not quite sure who is in charge.
I don't know - UK fisheries is negotiated at UK level and this weakens our negotiating position.
It should be very obvious that the Scottish Government will always do what's most politically inconvenient for Westminster.
Yep. Humza's just playing SNP SOP. Fabricate a straw man and blame the English.
Patrol vessles patrolling our own waters is just another day at the office.
Someone asked about fishery management by England ... there's an organisation called the Marine Management Organisation that handles everything from, which seems to be just like Scotland.
I have no idea why they have involved Police Scotland, other than as another step on the route to Ruritania.
Couldn’t care less what happens to the French, but it’s overdue for a load of Spanish fishermen to be arrested and/or beaten up. Breaking the rules with merry abandon and the connivance of their government for 25 years, coming home to roost in one glorious moment, would be funny.
"Ikea has become the latest victim of the UK’s gridlocked ports, with the retailer blaming delayed orders and stock shortages on the congestion, which is now also derailing food imports.
The Swedish chain said it was experiencing “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The hold-ups came as Ikea struggled to meet increased demand for home furnishings, which has soared this year as Britons have switched to homeworking.
Ikea’s social media channels have been besieged by angry customers, venting over late and missing furniture deliveries. The situation was made worse for some by long periods spent on hold to its contact centres.
One customer, Kathy Hall, said she had received her wardrobe doors but was told the frame would not be in stock until February. “If you don’t sort yourselves out and concentrate on giving a good customer service you will be out of business soon,” she tweeted."
These are the just minor, first-world-problem intimations of what's to come, if the course doesn't change.
An alternative reading is that their internal supply chain can't cope with an unexpected increase in demand.
"It's OK, we can blame Brexit....."
That would be so if all sorts of other people weren't now starting to have problems too. The stockpiling is starting to cause major problems, and this is even before the changes in the conditions of travel.
Still waiting to find one to deface. Mind you, I never use cash so it might be a while...
You object to peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations?
I knew Remainers were morally bankrupt.
Oh yes... it is Remainers who want to ruin prosperity by tearing up all our trade agreements. Not!
You might also want to reflect on how many Remainers have been posting on PB over the last few days that we need to "Send the gunboats" or "teach the EU a lesson". So much for peace and friendship...
Can you give me a list of PBers calling for gunboats to be sent in?
I wish somebody would call his bluff on this. Even if an injunction was granted, which isn’t certain, it’s most unlikely it could be got to take effect before Friday.
Nick Gibb really is a crass human being. He’s unfit for office and unfit to be an MP. He’s dishonest, abusive, lazy, arrogant and clearly stupid.
But it says something for our comprehensive school system that somebody like him can actually still read and write.
You’d certainly have a few solicitors willing to take the case pro bono if you asked.
I think this would be an ideal time for the teaching unions to take industrial action but given the pay constraints it doesn’t seem fair for teachers to take the hit for something the Fireplace Salesman and The Gimp should be doing.
Again, not likely it could happen before Friday.
But if things continue as they are into January, I think there will be at least indicative ballots.
And given this is a failure of administration and will be compounded by the relaxation of restrictions over Christmas, I would expect them to get worse.
"Ikea has become the latest victim of the UK’s gridlocked ports, with the retailer blaming delayed orders and stock shortages on the congestion, which is now also derailing food imports.
The Swedish chain said it was experiencing “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The hold-ups came as Ikea struggled to meet increased demand for home furnishings, which has soared this year as Britons have switched to homeworking.
Ikea’s social media channels have been besieged by angry customers, venting over late and missing furniture deliveries. The situation was made worse for some by long periods spent on hold to its contact centres.
One customer, Kathy Hall, said she had received her wardrobe doors but was told the frame would not be in stock until February. “If you don’t sort yourselves out and concentrate on giving a good customer service you will be out of business soon,” she tweeted."
These are the just minor, first-world-problem intimations of what's to come, if the course doesn't change.
An alternative reading is that their internal supply chain can't cope with an unexpected increase in demand.
"It's OK, we can blame Brexit....."
That would be so if all sorts of other people weren't also now having problems too. The stockpiling is starting to cause major problems, and this is even before the changes in the conditions of travel.
Looking at RS components shows an alarming number of parts on back order. I doubt my PCB I’m working on will be assembled until January.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If we do get No Deal, there will quite soon be physical manifestations of that. Lorry queues, price rises and shortages are predicatable, but I expect there will be things that happen which will surprise us (and not in a positive way). A big drop in Tory support seems to be the only likely upside.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
Also home to the Broons and Oor Wullie. A fine publication.
A bit conservative in certain respects, not least itself - and it did provoke Tom Nairn to his notorious assertion
"Tom Nairn ... wishes now that the young Nairn hadn’t uttered that line for which he will probably be anthologised – about Scotland not being free until the last minister of the Kirk has been strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post. (As it turns out, the Post has done far less damage to democracy in Scotland over the last few years than the editorials in the Scotsman, while the Kirk effected a rapprochement with the nation by helping to guide the faithful across the desert between devolution Bills.)"
Couldn’t care less what happens to the French, but it’s overdue for a load of Spanish fishermen to be arrested and/or beaten up. Breaking the rules with merry abandon and the connivance of their government for 25 years, coming home to roost in one glorious moment, would be funny.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
His book on the first EU referendum is excellent.
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
I remember the prices in shops increasing by the week back in the 70s. It was a conversation starter in the same way that the weather is. "Have you seen how much bread/milk/beans/tea/etc has gone up since last week?"
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
Also home to the Broons and Oor Wullie. A fine publication.
A bit conservative in certain respects, not least itself - and it did provoke Tom Nairn to his notorious assertion
"Tom Nairn ... wishes now that the young Nairn hadn’t uttered that line for which he will probably be anthologised – about Scotland not being free until the last minister of the Kirk has been strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post. (As it turns out, the Post has done far less damage to democracy in Scotland over the last few years than the editorials in the Scotsman, while the Kirk effected a rapprochement with the nation by helping to guide the faithful across the desert between devolution Bills.)"
"Ikea has become the latest victim of the UK’s gridlocked ports, with the retailer blaming delayed orders and stock shortages on the congestion, which is now also derailing food imports.
The Swedish chain said it was experiencing “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The hold-ups came as Ikea struggled to meet increased demand for home furnishings, which has soared this year as Britons have switched to homeworking.
Ikea’s social media channels have been besieged by angry customers, venting over late and missing furniture deliveries. The situation was made worse for some by long periods spent on hold to its contact centres.
One customer, Kathy Hall, said she had received her wardrobe doors but was told the frame would not be in stock until February. “If you don’t sort yourselves out and concentrate on giving a good customer service you will be out of business soon,” she tweeted."
These are the just minor, first-world-problem intimations of what's to come, if the course doesn't change.
An alternative reading is that their internal supply chain can't cope with an unexpected increase in demand.
"It's OK, we can blame Brexit....."
That would be so if all sorts of other people weren't also now having problems too. The stockpiling is starting to cause major problems, and this is even before the changes in the conditions of travel.
Looking at RS components shows an alarming number of parts on back order. I doubt my PCB I’m working on will be assembled until January.
I've been waiting for my regular supplier (a major mail/internet order firm supplying businesses as well as ordinary folk) to have stock of an ink cartridge for a pretty common HP printer for some weeks now.
I see our Brexit supporting friends have gone loopy again and have decided anyone who thinks the most extreme course of action is stupid are unpatriotic. Well I have the opportunity to embrace that in May by voting for the SNP for the first time, and I’m not sure the attitudes above are helping to change my mind.
I think I mentioned this previously but it was nervous middle class Scots who won the first IndyRef for No. However, middle Scotland only aligns economically with Middle England, it has a different set of social values (prudence dear child, prudence) and being told that your Presbyterian cultural mores are unpatriotic is an unimaginably stupid strategy. What makes me laugh is that Gove and even Johnson (belatedly) understand this, which is why we’ve had less “Britain r Best” rhetoric from them over this and more “We’ll be okay if we can’t reach a deal with our neighbours and we will do everything we can to avoid the worst outcomes”. For all that I find their arguments to be wrong headed the less heated leavers on here like Phillip get this too for the most part.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that an increasingly crucial section of the electorate is the sceptical middle, people who are neither Unionists or Nationalists, Leavers or Remainers or necessarily capital L & C Labour or Conservative. Of course the extremes get more bandwidth, particularly in British tabloids and social media, but the sleeping giant of the SM may be awakening, particularly on an 'I've just about had enough of your stupid shit'* level.
*Stupid shit = Trump, Farage, Johnston, Brexit, fish, Britain is best etc
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Nah that's rubbish. It was perfectly feasible for us to have gone for EFTA membership in the wake of the referendum and that would easily have had majority support in the country as a whole. Sadly we had a PM in charge who didn't understand anything about Brexit or its support base and who chose to alienate practically everyone on all sides of the debate.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
Well, Brexit is about different things to different people. Amongst the 17m no doubt there were some like you who were passionate about leaving the EU yet hot to trot for EFTA. Unfortunately the politics meant that such a thing - the softest of Brexits - was not possible for a Tory PM to implement and retain their job. It needed a different result in the 17 election. If Labour had won, EFTA or similar would have been the likely outcome.
But where are where we are. This deal. Which by my reckoning passes your very robust "sovereignty" test, therefore you are hoping it gets done - am I right?
Firstly it is a pathetic excuse to say the Tories took charge of the Remain campaign. Why did others allow that? Why did others not form a different campaign? Boris, Gove etc took charge of the Vote Leave campaign did Farage let them stop him from campaigning or did he fight his own campaign?
Cameron made it very difficult by framing the whole thing as his deal versus nothing. An alternative Brexit campaign could easily promote a different version of Brexit because it was all a fantasy.
On topic, hurrah for the Supreme Court for slapping down this astonishing attack on States' Right, this shows the importance of a strong independent judiciary.
No wonder Emperor Boris Johnson wants to castrate our judiciary.
Final point, reading between the lines, I think SCOTUS would have voted 9 nil against the case if they had heard the case.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
I wasn't alive then but I can imagine that the quality and choice of foods available after joining the EU increased fairly significantly. There's no doubt that the UK has benefited from being in the EU from a food choice perspective. However, the world isn't in the 1970s, global supply chains can replace EU food products on a mostly like for like basis and where they can't and there isn't any domestic market to protect we can eliminate tariffs, cured meats is probably an area where zero tariffs make sense because we haven't got a huge industry to protect and the quality of cured meats from the EU will be far better than what is available from elsewhere in the world.
Couldn’t care less what happens to the French, but it’s overdue for a load of Spanish fishermen to be arrested and/or beaten up. Breaking the rules with merry abandon and the connivance of their government for 25 years, coming home to roost in one glorious moment, would be funny.
Calling for people to be beaten up isn't OK.
Well, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration.
I’ll stand on ‘arrested,’ which is what should happen to criminals.
I think it highly likely that French fisherfolk will blockade ferry ports, if interfered with. They do have form.
I wonder what our government has planned at that point.
Fascinating quote I read somewhere today that the French Navy was actually set up in the thirteenth century to protect French fishermen from English-French disputes. We're really going back this weekend.
1. The EU has been an institution central to peace on the continent of Europe. In this respect it has achieved its principal purpose. 2. In the modern world only by standing together and having common standards can we hope for those standards to become world standards. 3. The greatest success of the EU has been the establishment of democracies in former Soviet Europe. The UK should play a part in protecting that legacy. 4. The creation of a Single Market, a British led idea, gives businesses the best chance of achieving growth to the point that they can compete on the world stage. 5. Freedom of movement, although a pain for the UK, has had a massive impact on the quality of many, many lives and has boosted UK growth. 6. It is in our interests to contribute to the catch up of eastern Europe and to create more consumers for tomorrow. 7. The US is a less reliable friend than we like to think. 8. The EU social policies have helped us improve many standards in this country, especially in relation to work and maternity. 9. Pollution is not a one country problem and does not recognise boundaries. 10. The UK contribution, respecting the rule of law and demanding a lack of corruption has generally been good for the EU.
The same criticism applies. Better together might sum it up best.
It is mildly disconcerting to someone who voted Remain to admit that the list of reasons to Leave has strength compared to reason to stay, at least by number.
However, your reasons to remain numbers 1, 4 and 9 are, for me, so massive that that these dwarf reasons to leave though the latter benefits may be more numerous.
I genuinely found the balance difficult. I don't really understand how people on either side of the argument can be so dogmatic about it. If Cameron had got an emergency break on EU immigration I think that I would have voted the other way. I doubt I am alone in that but maybe I am since most people have more interesting things to think about!
This may sound strange but I agree (minus the immigration brake, more niche but I wanted some protection from the Eurozone QMVing us as our brake).
I may come across as hard-line here but I'm not, I could have voted either way. I just think if we are going to leave to take back control of our laws then we need to take back control of our laws - or it was all bloody pointless and we shouldn't have bothered.
Yes, to me the only sane responses to the to Brexit were either Remain or WTO terms. No one wanted a soft Brexit, just a distant unsatisfactory second choice before getting what they really want in a later battle.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
Nah that's rubbish. It was perfectly feasible for us to have gone for EFTA membership in the wake of the referendum and that would easily have had majority support in the country as a whole. Sadly we had a PM in charge who didn't understand anything about Brexit or its support base and who chose to alienate practically everyone on all sides of the debate.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
Well, Brexit is about different things to different people. Amongst the 17m no doubt there were some like you who were passionate about leaving the EU yet hot to trot for EFTA. Unfortunately the politics meant that such a thing - the softest of Brexits - was not possible for a Tory PM to implement and retain their job. It needed a different result in the 17 election. If Labour had won, EFTA or similar would have been the likely outcome.
But where are where we are. This deal. Which by my reckoning passes your very robust "sovereignty" test, therefore you are hoping it gets done - am I right?
Yes. We should have dealt months ago. We should have gone with May's deal.
I don't often agree with Dan Hodges, but this is actually an excellent perspective.
He must have cribbed it then.
Update on my cogitations -
If Johnson does choose the ostensible irrationality and national self-harm of No Deal it will mean he judges it to be better for his personal political prospects than any feasible deal - by which I mean any deal other than the unicorn 'cake and eat it" variety that was never going to be available.
This in turn means 2 things. (1) He has become a creature of the headbangers. He doesn't share their ideology but he fears he'd be ousted if he doesn't stay pure. (2) He thinks he can stay on top politically with the public (or enough of it anyway) by continuing to tap into jingoism and xenophobia. Having won his landslide on this basis (he thinks) he believes it remains the way to go.
First, I hope this analysis is wrong and he'll prove it by doing a deal. I still think he will but my certainty has evaporated.
Second, if this analysis is right I hope that HE is wrong. I hope the US election is a sign that this sort of tawdry populism has peaked and that if Johnson and the Tories pursue it they will get their ass handed to them at the next election.
If Johnson does put a trade deal before parliament, and it is shite, what does Starmer do in your opinion?
Is it possible that Johnson does this deliberately, secretly wanting Parliament to vote it down? Then we go No Trade Deal with Starmer having shown that he would have entered into a rubbish deal for the UK.
Am I overthinking this?
I think Labour would vote for or abstain, so if Johnson brings back a deal it will be passed. But if his calculation is there would be a big Tory rebellion and he'd be relying on Labour support, I think Johnson would want to avoid that. It has a Mrs May look.
Needing Labours help passing a deal. Brady postbox would be full to the brim in about 30s and Boris gone within a week.
Which if true would give the ERG very substantial leverage and runs contrary to the line that Johnson's big win a year ago set him free from the loonies. The comforting (to many) notion that he'd used them to have his wicked way and would now blow them a raspberry kiss and move on to implement his real agenda of liberal "One Nation Conservatism". A term that I'm afraid is becoming increasingly associated with a "lol".
Comments
Easy to forget but the prime jester has an 80 seat majority. Losing a vote under those circumstances is not a good look.
I have been for WTO ever since 2016, just changed my mind to wanting it ratified by referendum when it became clear that was going to be the choice in 2018.
If a deal is possible, any deal, wouldn`t it be responsible to put it to the vote anyway - even if he thinks it poor for the UK?
It should be very obvious that the Scottish Government will always do what's most politically inconvenient for Westminster.
For that to have any credibility at all you would have to show that there had been notable food shortages in the decade prior to us joining the EU. Not sure there is much, if any, evidence for that.
Of the 6 former PMs three are Liberals and two of those three backed Brexit. Turnbull is the exception amongst the Liberals.
I knew Remainers were morally bankrupt.
We aren't in the 1950s, or the third world.
https://twitter.com/NSoames/status/1337694102423527424
What's quite possible is that there would be enough Conservative rebels that the government needed opposition co-operation to get the deal passed. However, that would hurt Johnson even more, I suspect.
The Remainer myth that a hard Brexit was the only one that would be acceptable to Leavers just shows how little you understood - or cared - what Brexit was about.
The closing quote: "All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now, where is this omelette of yours?”
Saunders point is that while shortages were episodic, and often induced by other economic woes such as balance of payments of industrial disputes, anxiety about food shortages and food inflation was real. Don't forget that food rationing in Britain lasted to the early fifties and was a recent lived memory for many voters in 1975.
https://twitter.com/IamAnnaEvans/status/1337715656435916801
Demands that Brexiteers apologise and repent their sins...
https://twitter.com/lukemcgee/status/1337691851462221827
You might also want to reflect on how many Remainers have been posting on PB over the last few days that we need to "Send the gunboats" or "teach the EU a lesson". So much for peace and friendship...
The only substantial EEA country now has a party leading in the polls that wants to leave the EEA. Brexit hasn't smashed the EU, but may well smash the EEA.
It would be the Norway debate, with Johnson playing Chamberlain.
In my childhood (60s/70s) there was a weekly column in the Sunday Post [a very popular newspaper in Scotland, roughly same market as Sunday Mail/NotW without the sleaze, mammaries and buttocks]. This reviewed the current state of the food wholesale market and supplies and let you know what was in season and which way prices in the shops for different veg., etc., were heading. Haven't seen anything like that lately.
What I can see is some form of extension, implementing what's agreed as of 1/1/21, all else on ice with no change while talks on LPF and Fish, and whatever other bits and bobs there are, carry on into the new year.
Probably not, sounds a pain and bad optics, but I can just about see that.
The Swedish chain said it was experiencing “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The hold-ups came as Ikea struggled to meet increased demand for home furnishings, which has soared this year as Britons have switched to homeworking.
Ikea’s social media channels have been besieged by angry customers, venting over late and missing furniture deliveries. The situation was made worse for some by long periods spent on hold to its contact centres.
One customer, Kathy Hall, said she had received her wardrobe doors but was told the frame would not be in stock until February. “If you don’t sort yourselves out and concentrate on giving a good customer service you will be out of business soon,” she tweeted."
These are the just minor, first-world-problem intimations of what's to come, if the course doesn't change.
His premiership goes down in flames, but he gets to fast forward to the fun bit of being Former Prime Minister.
And his place in history is Noble Personal Sacrifice For The Sake Of The Nation, which he would love, especially given that it's a deathbed conversion.
And he doesn't have to run the country through the ensuing clustershambles.
Please Carrie- suggest it to him.
People who thought on balance that the U.K. should remain in the EU or that now it should seek to have a close and friendly relationship with its allies and close neighbours do not despise this country nor do they despise those who think differently.
However, I do despise those who think that because I do not share the current Tory party’s view on Europe or anything else I am some sort of traitor to my country. Why? Because that sort of view is a fundamentally totalitarian one incompatible with a democracy.
It is now for the government to enact the promises it made to the voters who voted for it. Not endlessly attack those who didn’t vote for it. We are watching to see how it achieves what it promised.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2020/12/abu-dhabi-pre-qualifying-2020.html
Was tempted by Ocon or Ricciardo at 3.2 and 3 for best of the rest but the margins are too tight.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/dec/12/minister-threatens-school-heads-over-pre-christmas-online-lessons
I see our Brexit supporting friends have gone loopy again and have decided anyone who thinks the most extreme course of action is stupid are unpatriotic. Well I have the opportunity to embrace that in May by voting for the SNP for the first time, and I’m not sure the attitudes above are helping to change my mind.
I think I mentioned this previously but it was nervous middle class Scots who won the first IndyRef for No. However, middle Scotland only aligns economically with Middle England, it has a different set of social values (prudence dear child, prudence) and being told that your Presbyterian cultural mores are unpatriotic is an unimaginably stupid strategy. What makes me laugh is that Gove and even Johnson (belatedly) understand this, which is why we’ve had less “Britain r Best” rhetoric from them over this and more “We’ll be okay if we can’t reach a deal with our neighbours and we will do everything we can to avoid the worst outcomes”. For all that I find their arguments to be wrong headed the less heated leavers on here like Phillip get this too for the most part.
"It's OK, we can blame Brexit....."
Nick Gibb really is a crass human being. He’s unfit for office and unfit to be an MP. He’s dishonest, abusive, lazy, arrogant and clearly stupid.
But it says something for our comprehensive school system that somebody like him can actually still read and write.
I think this would be an ideal time for the teaching unions to take industrial action but given the pay constraints it doesn’t seem fair for teachers to take the hit for something the Fireplace Salesman and The Gimp should be doing.
On the contrary I have written various headers which are sympathetic to the arguments of those who voted for Brexit and critical of the EU.
I am not bitter. I simply think that my country has made and is making a mistake. Thinking that does not make me a traitor, a term used on here repeatedly by some of the more fanatical Brexiteers and supporters of this government.
We’ll see what happens. Personally I am concerned because there are close family members who are dependant on medicines so I view with some concerns the government’s insouciance about a No Deal Brexit when their own reasonable worst case scenario says that the supply of such medicines may be reduced by 80%.
More immediately I am far more worried about what the government’s other policies are doing to my children’s business, employment hopes and to the future of the place I am living in.
Patrol vessles patrolling our own waters is just another day at the office.
Someone asked about fishery management by England ... there's an organisation called the Marine Management Organisation that handles everything from, which seems to be just like Scotland.
I have no idea why they have involved Police Scotland, other than as another step on the route to Ruritania.
next...
Suspect that it is a very round number indeed.
But if things continue as they are into January, I think there will be at least indicative ballots.
And given this is a failure of administration and will be compounded by the relaxation of restrictions over Christmas, I would expect them to get worse.
A big drop in Tory support seems to be the only likely upside.
"Tom Nairn ... wishes now that the young Nairn hadn’t uttered that line for which he will probably be anthologised – about Scotland not being free until the last minister of the Kirk has been strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post. (As it turns out, the Post has done far less damage to democracy in Scotland over the last few years than the editorials in the Scotsman, while the Kirk effected a rapprochement with the nation by helping to guide the faithful across the desert between devolution Bills.)"
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n04/neal-ascherson/on-with-the-pooling-and-merging
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/oct/03/theobserver.uknews3
*Stupid shit = Trump, Farage, Johnston, Brexit, fish, Britain is best etc
But where are where we are. This deal. Which by my reckoning passes your very robust "sovereignty" test, therefore you are hoping it gets done - am I right?
No wonder Emperor Boris Johnson wants to castrate our judiciary.
Final point, reading between the lines, I think SCOTUS would have voted 9 nil against the case if they had heard the case.
I wonder what our government has planned at that point.
I’ll stand on ‘arrested,’ which is what should happen to criminals.