Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
I think you're forgetting something, in your haste to blame Remain. From about the mid 90's onwards there was a drip drip drip of anti Brussels material from the Telegraph, Mail and Express and virulently from the Sun. Boris' articles about bendy bananas and the like created a mind-set.
That's true. But there was no real effort to counter any of that, as far as I could see. Most of it was palpable nonsense, but the pro-EU response was to ignore it as the preoccupation of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, which it was - of course - for a time. But failing to counter it, well, we can see the consequences. For most people the EU was a peripheral issue, but what they had heard about it was mostly negative (and untrue, but that didn't matter really).
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
It could be worse. At current rates of increase we could have 1.3 m cases a day in 8 weeks, 6.2 m in 12 weeks.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
I think you're forgetting something, in your haste to blame Remain. From about the mid 90's onwards there was a drip drip drip of anti Brussels material from the Telegraph, Mail and Express and virulently from the Sun. Boris' articles about bendy bananas and the like created a mind-set.
Where was the counter drip, drip, drip of pro-Brussels material from the Guardian, i, Mirror and others then advocating in favour of Ever Closer Union?
Instead of pretending Ever Closer Union doesn't exist and vacating the debate to the Eurosceptics?
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
The so-called "Liberal Democrat" Layla Moran on Sky banging on about Long Covid due to not having illiberal restrictions on Covid anymore.
Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire applies just as much to the Liberal Democrats.
I don't think I'm the only Lib Dem somewhat uncomfortable with this apparent drift into authoritarianism by some in the party (Layla is the most vocal and I suspect the most opinionated on this). Following the evidence is what we should be doing. Of course it means being sceptical of the ideologically driven "freedom day" stuff, but it also means accepting that state control over the individual should never be an end goal.
I do think Moran is a bit of an outlier within the party on this though.
I think she is an outlier on other things too. That's why I'm glad she's not leader of the LDs, even though she is more articulate and media friendly than Ed Davey.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
Actually I do not have an issue with that but they wont
Really good news story and good work by Kwasi Kwarteng
How much?
100 million
If I read that article right, that is what the company are spending. Whereas the BBC say this is the total investment and contains the taxpayer subsidy.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
It'll be 10, 15, 20 years before that happens. The full folly of Brexit needs to be unveiled without a concealing cloak of Covid. The major players need to depart the scene. The famously elastic principles of the Conservatives will need to do (another) volte face.
The so-called "Liberal Democrat" Layla Moran on Sky banging on about Long Covid due to not having illiberal restrictions on Covid anymore.
Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire applies just as much to the Liberal Democrats.
I don't think I'm the only Lib Dem somewhat uncomfortable with this apparent drift into authoritarianism by some in the party (Layla is the most vocal and I suspect the most opinionated on this). Following the evidence is what we should be doing. Of course it means being sceptical of the ideologically driven "freedom day" stuff, but it also means accepting that state control over the individual should never be an end goal.
I do think Moran is a bit of an outlier within the party on this though.
I'm in the same position as you. I was furious when I saw she'd been criticising the government on not giving more detailed guidelines on hugging around the 17 May relaxation. I do think, as others have pointed out, that she's a bit of an outlier. However, I'm seeing a lot of criticism of relaxations (including past ones) on social media from people I know are also party members. It's making my membership of the party increasingly uncomfortable (along with a couple of other factors).
The so-called "Liberal Democrat" Layla Moran on Sky banging on about Long Covid due to not having illiberal restrictions on Covid anymore.
Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire applies just as much to the Liberal Democrats.
I don't think I'm the only Lib Dem somewhat uncomfortable with this apparent drift into authoritarianism by some in the party (Layla is the most vocal and I suspect the most opinionated on this). Following the evidence is what we should be doing. Of course it means being sceptical of the ideologically driven "freedom day" stuff, but it also means accepting that state control over the individual should never be an end goal.
I do think Moran is a bit of an outlier within the party on this though.
On this topic (and presumably others) she seems to be in the wrong party entirely.
Terrifying to think she stood for the leadership.
True. But then, so were Thatcher, Blair, Corbyn and maybe Johnson. Some of those, of course, turned out better than others.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Doesn't stop it being a bad decision. Like electing Trump.
So Labour's talking point objections to boris opening up seems to be 3 fold.
Not enough support for better ventilation...fine, but how much longer would we have to delay opening up before many more buildings have better ventilation? Next year?
More payments for isolation....well given only 20% actually complete isolation properly, while for some it is about money, hosing more money at this, won't magically get that figure really really high as for many it is about attitude...so that won't solve covid spread either.
Masks on public transport...i think this is fair enough criticism, but if you are going to be allowing pubs, gyms, restaurants etc, dropping social distance limits and gathering numbers (most spread is via friend / family interactions), how much difference does this make to stop spread? Are Labour saying we have to keep all these other restrictions?
And Ashworth rather dishonestly has moved goalposts talking about only 50% of PEOPLE vaccinated.
So how much longer does Labour think we need to carry on with current restrictions? To get through vaccinating kids that several more months, then what about booster shots, do we have to wait for those to be done? For better ventilation, that's months, or more like years....
The masks on public transport one comes from the fact you have 200 people say from 200 different offices heading to 200 different homes.
If it only takes 5 minutes to catch covid, that's an awful lot of possible connections where it could be spread.
As I commented on this last night, public transport is about the last place that masks should be removed from...
Certainly I will keep wearing a mask until double vaccinated and probably after on public transport anyway, though for the double vaccinated it should be voluntary in my view
I had my 2nd jab in March and I will continue to wear masks going to and from work on the bus. I am happy to volunteer to do so.
People seem to forget that the mask is to protect others, not to protect yourself.
Vaccination only provides *some*protection against Delta infection (it's main effect seems to be to reduce severity), so you should still wear your mask to protect others even after double jabbage.
Plus, who wants to spend 10 days off work if you get a mild or asymptomatic infection having been double jabbed?
"some"....Pfizer is 80% effective....AZN 60% (and actually it is probably higher as the studies have used 3 week / 2 week cut offs, which a) means some in the data caught it within those periods and when we know AZN takes longer to build max immunity)...
That's a lot higher than "some". So no their main effect is not reduced severity. Its very good protection AND reduced severity.
Flu shots are never this effective.
I thought the 80% effectiveness figure was against symptoms, not infection.
How are vaccine effectiveness figures calculated? Is there a control sample of unvaccinated people, with weightings applied for lifestyle?
Given you are infected (but double jabbed), effectiveness against transmission (low viral load) is x%. If x% is 50%, then effectiveness against transmission of Delta is 1- (1-0.64)x(1-0.5) i,e, 82%. If x is 80% then effectiveness is 93%. But I think that x is not yet known.
Israel data should be treated very careful. Its very small numbers across less than a months worth of observations. Much bigger data sets from PHE and ZOE app.
Israel data is at the same stage as when the UK had that stat of 1/3 dying had been double jabbed....when it was from a dataset showing 12 in 52 people.
Fair comment. I'll have a look at the PHE and ZOE data. I contribute to the ZOE data every day.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Doesn't stop it being a bad decision. Like electing Trump.
Running Hillary could be described as a bad decision.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
"Let's reinstate free movement and sign up to follow EU laws with no say."
So Labour's talking point objections to boris opening up seems to be 3 fold.
Not enough support for better ventilation...fine, but how much longer would we have to delay opening up before many more buildings have better ventilation? Next year?
More payments for isolation....well given only 20% actually complete isolation properly, while for some it is about money, hosing more money at this, won't magically get that figure really really high as for many it is about attitude...so that won't solve covid spread either.
Masks on public transport...i think this is fair enough criticism, but if you are going to be allowing pubs, gyms, restaurants etc, dropping social distance limits and gathering numbers (most spread is via friend / family interactions), how much difference does this make to stop spread? Are Labour saying we have to keep all these other restrictions?
And Ashworth rather dishonestly has moved goalposts talking about only 50% of PEOPLE vaccinated.
So how much longer does Labour think we need to carry on with current restrictions? To get through vaccinating kids that several more months, then what about booster shots, do we have to wait for those to be done? For better ventilation, that's months, or more like years....
The masks on public transport one comes from the fact you have 200 people say from 200 different offices heading to 200 different homes.
If it only takes 5 minutes to catch covid, that's an awful lot of possible connections where it could be spread.
As I commented on this last night, public transport is about the last place that masks should be removed from...
Certainly I will keep wearing a mask until double vaccinated and probably after on public transport anyway, though for the double vaccinated it should be voluntary in my view
I had my 2nd jab in March and I will continue to wear masks going to and from work on the bus. I am happy to volunteer to do so.
People seem to forget that the mask is to protect others, not to protect yourself.
Vaccination only provides *some*protection against Delta infection (it's main effect seems to be to reduce severity), so you should still wear your mask to protect others even after double jabbage.
Plus, who wants to spend 10 days off work if you get a mild or asymptomatic infection having been double jabbed?
"some"....Pfizer is 80% effective....AZN 60% (and actually it is probably higher as the studies have used 3 week / 2 week cut offs, which a) means some in the data caught it within those periods and when we know AZN takes longer to build max immunity)...
That's a lot higher than "some". So no their main effect is not reduced severity. Its very good protection AND reduced severity.
Flu shots are never this effective.
I thought the 80% effectiveness figure was against symptoms, not infection.
How are vaccine effectiveness figures calculated? Is there a control sample of unvaccinated people, with weightings applied for lifestyle?
Given you are infected (but double jabbed), effectiveness against transmission (low viral load) is x%. If x% is 50%, then effectiveness against transmission of Delta is 1- (1-0.64)x(1-0.5) i,e, 82%. If x is 80% then effectiveness is 93%. But I think that x is not yet known.
Israel data should be treated very careful. Its very small numbers across less than a months worth of observations. Much bigger data sets from PHE and ZOE app.
Israel data is at the same stage as when the UK had that stat of 1/3 dying had been double jabbed....when it was from a dataset showing 12 in 52 people.
Fair comment. I'll have a look at the PHE and ZOE data. I contribute to the ZOE data every day.
The last time I saw the update, there were saying about 2000 cases a day were double jabbed out of 27-30k total cases.
We again have to be careful, because even if you say 2 weeks gap from jab to calling it as an infection after fully vaxxed, a) some will have caught it within that 2 week gap, so there weren't and b) we know with AZN protection takes longer to kick in.
But lets say for arguments sake, 2k in 30k is about the going rate at the moment after of those still catching COVID after being double jabbed.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
Of course.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
It could be worse. At current rates of increase we could have 1.3 m cases a day in 8 weeks, 6.2 m in 12 weeks.
It's going to burn itself out by September without overwhelming the NHS. It's already topped out here in Richmond according to ZOE.
You cant- the current situation is strangling the economy. SMEs in particular are losing as much as 3/4 of their previous trade. A new deal will have to be negotiated. If no deal now then the damage will slowly get worse until it will be clear that the slow puncture has pushed the car off the road.
The voters will not be so split then, but are more likely to be calling for Johnson´s head on a stick.
The other thing is to look at the age splits. Because, as usual the age splits are huge;
Right/Wrong to leave: 18-24: 19/60 25-49: 33/43 50-64: 50/33 65+: 65/30 . If this goes well, those numbers will move and we will come to thank the wise baby boomers who made the right decision in the face of our scoffing.
But if it doesn't go well, and given the way the electorate will change over the next 10, 20 years, how does this version of Brexit stick? Not will it, or should it, but how does it?
Really good news story and good work by Kwasi Kwarteng
How much?
100 million
If I read that article right, that is what the company are spending. Whereas the BBC say this is the total investment and contains the taxpayer subsidy.
And while it's clear that Stellanis are going to be importing batteries in the short term - it's clear that Stellanis's UK management know they need a UK battery supplier asap
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Doesn't stop it being a bad decision. Like electing Trump.
Would that it was as reversible as electing Trump!
Britain voted not “just” to leave the EU but to set fire to much of its post-war geopolitical settlement. The era is gone.
Ah, I see for Scotland Patients in hospital is 285 as of 4 days ago.
I was assured it would peak at barely over 200 and definitely not more than 250.
Once again, the question is how many of them are unvaccinated by choice? In England we've been told today that 88% of people in hospital are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. That's a big win for the vaccine programme and if, like England, the people in hospital in Scotland are majority people who have refused the vaccine then what length of lockdown will convince them to get it?
You keep trying to blame those refusing vaccination [nice sleight of hand in the above by the way]
-> but it's obvious that the vast majority of people without protection, are without full protection because they haven't got both doses vaccine yet/had it too recently.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
Of course.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
So Labour's talking point objections to boris opening up seems to be 3 fold.
Not enough support for better ventilation...fine, but how much longer would we have to delay opening up before many more buildings have better ventilation? Next year?
More payments for isolation....well given only 20% actually complete isolation properly, while for some it is about money, hosing more money at this, won't magically get that figure really really high as for many it is about attitude...so that won't solve covid spread either.
Masks on public transport...i think this is fair enough criticism, but if you are going to be allowing pubs, gyms, restaurants etc, dropping social distance limits and gathering numbers (most spread is via friend / family interactions), how much difference does this make to stop spread? Are Labour saying we have to keep all these other restrictions?
And Ashworth rather dishonestly has moved goalposts talking about only 50% of PEOPLE vaccinated.
So how much longer does Labour think we need to carry on with current restrictions? To get through vaccinating kids that several more months, then what about booster shots, do we have to wait for those to be done? For better ventilation, that's months, or more like years....
The masks on public transport one comes from the fact you have 200 people say from 200 different offices heading to 200 different homes.
If it only takes 5 minutes to catch covid, that's an awful lot of possible connections where it could be spread.
As I commented on this last night, public transport is about the last place that masks should be removed from...
Certainly I will keep wearing a mask until double vaccinated and probably after on public transport anyway, though for the double vaccinated it should be voluntary in my view
I had my 2nd jab in March and I will continue to wear masks going to and from work on the bus. I am happy to volunteer to do so.
People seem to forget that the mask is to protect others, not to protect yourself.
Vaccination only provides *some*protection against Delta infection (it's main effect seems to be to reduce severity), so you should still wear your mask to protect others even after double jabbage.
Plus, who wants to spend 10 days off work if you get a mild or asymptomatic infection having been double jabbed?
"some"....Pfizer is 80% effective....AZN 60% (and actually it is probably higher as the studies have used 3 week / 2 week cut offs, which a) means some in the data caught it within those periods and when we know AZN takes longer to build max immunity)...
That's a lot higher than "some". So no their main effect is not reduced severity. Its very good protection AND reduced severity.
Flu shots are never this effective.
I thought the 80% effectiveness figure was against symptoms, not infection.
How are vaccine effectiveness figures calculated? Is there a control sample of unvaccinated people, with weightings applied for lifestyle?
Given you are infected (but double jabbed), effectiveness against transmission (low viral load) is x%. If x% is 50%, then effectiveness against transmission of Delta is 1- (1-0.64)x(1-0.5) i,e, 82%. If x is 80% then effectiveness is 93%. But I think that x is not yet known.
Israel data should be treated very careful. Its very small numbers across less than a months worth of observations. Much bigger data sets from PHE and ZOE app.
Israel data is at the same stage as when the UK had that stat of 1/3 dying had been double jabbed....when it was from a dataset showing 12 in 52 people.
That was also an unadjusted bit of data. You can't simply take that stat and then get efficacy data because unvaccinated people are likely much younger and have fewer comorbidities. I think once those numbers were adjusted for risk factors it came out to over 99.5% efficacy against death.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
Of course.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
The annoying thing is that Brexit voters tended to be not those physically needing to prosecute the war.
They voted to send their own kids to war with Eastasia.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Doesn't stop it being a bad decision. Like electing Trump.
Would that it was as reversible as electing Trump!
Britain voted not “just” to leave the EU but to set fire to much of its post-war geopolitical settlement. The era is gone.
The post-Cold War geopolitical settlement is also on the way out, and there are advantages to not being tied into the EU system.
So Labour's talking point objections to boris opening up seems to be 3 fold.
Not enough support for better ventilation...fine, but how much longer would we have to delay opening up before many more buildings have better ventilation? Next year?
More payments for isolation....well given only 20% actually complete isolation properly, while for some it is about money, hosing more money at this, won't magically get that figure really really high as for many it is about attitude...so that won't solve covid spread either.
Masks on public transport...i think this is fair enough criticism, but if you are going to be allowing pubs, gyms, restaurants etc, dropping social distance limits and gathering numbers (most spread is via friend / family interactions), how much difference does this make to stop spread? Are Labour saying we have to keep all these other restrictions?
And Ashworth rather dishonestly has moved goalposts talking about only 50% of PEOPLE vaccinated.
So how much longer does Labour think we need to carry on with current restrictions? To get through vaccinating kids that several more months, then what about booster shots, do we have to wait for those to be done? For better ventilation, that's months, or more like years....
The masks on public transport one comes from the fact you have 200 people say from 200 different offices heading to 200 different homes.
If it only takes 5 minutes to catch covid, that's an awful lot of possible connections where it could be spread.
As I commented on this last night, public transport is about the last place that masks should be removed from...
Certainly I will keep wearing a mask until double vaccinated and probably after on public transport anyway, though for the double vaccinated it should be voluntary in my view
I had my 2nd jab in March and I will continue to wear masks going to and from work on the bus. I am happy to volunteer to do so.
People seem to forget that the mask is to protect others, not to protect yourself.
Vaccination only provides *some*protection against Delta infection (it's main effect seems to be to reduce severity), so you should still wear your mask to protect others even after double jabbage.
Plus, who wants to spend 10 days off work if you get a mild or asymptomatic infection having been double jabbed?
"some"....Pfizer is 80% effective....AZN 60% (and actually it is probably higher as the studies have used 3 week / 2 week cut offs, which a) means some in the data caught it within those periods and when we know AZN takes longer to build max immunity)...
That's a lot higher than "some". So no their main effect is not reduced severity. Its very good protection AND reduced severity.
Flu shots are never this effective.
I thought the 80% effectiveness figure was against symptoms, not infection.
How are vaccine effectiveness figures calculated? Is there a control sample of unvaccinated people, with weightings applied for lifestyle?
Given you are infected (but double jabbed), effectiveness against transmission (low viral load) is x%. If x% is 50%, then effectiveness against transmission of Delta is 1- (1-0.64)x(1-0.5) i,e, 82%. If x is 80% then effectiveness is 93%. But I think that x is not yet known.
Israel data should be treated very careful. Its very small numbers across less than a months worth of observations. Much bigger data sets from PHE and ZOE app.
Israel data is at the same stage as when the UK had that stat of 1/3 dying had been double jabbed....when it was from a dataset showing 12 in 52 people.
Fair comment. I'll have a look at the PHE and ZOE data. I contribute to the ZOE data every day.
The last time I saw the update, there were saying about 2000 cases a day were double jabbed out of 27-30k total cases.
We again have to be careful, because even if you say 2 weeks gap from jab to calling it as an infection after fully vaxxed, a) some will have caught it within that 2 week gap, so there weren't and b) we know with AZN protection takes longer to kick in.
But lets say for arguments sake, 2k in 30k is about the going rate at the moment after of those still catching COVID after being double jabbed.
So if 50% of adults are double jabbed but it was totally ineffective you'd expect half the 30K to be double jabbed. As it is 2K rather than 15K that have been double jabbed and infected, that looks like 87% effective against infection to me.
Countries currently having their highest ever weekly death rates with Covid-19:
Russia Tunisia
This isn't just to do with vaccination rates. For example, see the differences in vaccination rates and death rates between Russia and Ukraine.
What is the difference between rates? For those of us who are not obsessing about comparative stats.
Russia (popn 146m): 17% >=1 vax, 12% "fully" vaxed, deaths per day w/C19, av for past week: 669
Ukraine (popn 43m): 5% >=1 vax 2% "fully" vaxed, deaths per day w/C19, av for past week: 27
With such a high death rate, Russia should probably go on Britain's red list. (Tunisia and Bangladesh are already on it.)
But for comparison: in Britain on 23 Jan 2021 (when vax figures were 9%<1%), deaths per day w/C1 reached 1250.
The Russian curves are very different from and worse than the Ukrainian ones, despite much higher vaccination rates.</p>
We should be taking note of this post. Because in two months time we’ll be suffering from the Vladivostok variant and PB Tories will be claiming that “nobody could have known”.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
Although I think Brexit was the most pointless and stupid small brained policy enacted by Britain since we decided to give a guarantee to Belgium, I am not sure it is sensible to re-join. That said, if it happens in my lifetime I will wet myself (probably literally when I am that old) laughing at all the remaining swiveleyed Daily Express reading Colonel Blimps that will be so cross!
That was also an unadjusted bit of data. You can't simply take that stat and then get efficacy data because unvaccinated people are likely much younger and have fewer comorbidities. I think once those numbers were adjusted for risk factors it came out to over 99.5% efficacy against death.
That's what the CDC is saying. We will be in the same ballpark I expect. Vaccination is the only anti-Covid measure that matters now, everything other measure combined is of negligible effect in comparison.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
"Let's reinstate free movement and sign up to follow EU laws with no say."
You never let me know how those letters to the Corinthians are going? Maybe you have moved on to the Romans, or Timothy perhaps?
So Labour's talking point objections to boris opening up seems to be 3 fold.
Not enough support for better ventilation...fine, but how much longer would we have to delay opening up before many more buildings have better ventilation? Next year?
More payments for isolation....well given only 20% actually complete isolation properly, while for some it is about money, hosing more money at this, won't magically get that figure really really high as for many it is about attitude...so that won't solve covid spread either.
Masks on public transport...i think this is fair enough criticism, but if you are going to be allowing pubs, gyms, restaurants etc, dropping social distance limits and gathering numbers (most spread is via friend / family interactions), how much difference does this make to stop spread? Are Labour saying we have to keep all these other restrictions?
And Ashworth rather dishonestly has moved goalposts talking about only 50% of PEOPLE vaccinated.
So how much longer does Labour think we need to carry on with current restrictions? To get through vaccinating kids that several more months, then what about booster shots, do we have to wait for those to be done? For better ventilation, that's months, or more like years....
The masks on public transport one comes from the fact you have 200 people say from 200 different offices heading to 200 different homes.
If it only takes 5 minutes to catch covid, that's an awful lot of possible connections where it could be spread.
As I commented on this last night, public transport is about the last place that masks should be removed from...
Certainly I will keep wearing a mask until double vaccinated and probably after on public transport anyway, though for the double vaccinated it should be voluntary in my view
I had my 2nd jab in March and I will continue to wear masks going to and from work on the bus. I am happy to volunteer to do so.
People seem to forget that the mask is to protect others, not to protect yourself.
Vaccination only provides *some*protection against Delta infection (it's main effect seems to be to reduce severity), so you should still wear your mask to protect others even after double jabbage.
Plus, who wants to spend 10 days off work if you get a mild or asymptomatic infection having been double jabbed?
"some"....Pfizer is 80% effective....AZN 60% (and actually it is probably higher as the studies have used 3 week / 2 week cut offs, which a) means some in the data caught it within those periods and when we know AZN takes longer to build max immunity)...
That's a lot higher than "some". So no their main effect is not reduced severity. Its very good protection AND reduced severity.
Flu shots are never this effective.
I thought the 80% effectiveness figure was against symptoms, not infection.
How are vaccine effectiveness figures calculated? Is there a control sample of unvaccinated people, with weightings applied for lifestyle?
Given you are infected (but double jabbed), effectiveness against transmission (low viral load) is x%. If x% is 50%, then effectiveness against transmission of Delta is 1- (1-0.64)x(1-0.5) i,e, 82%. If x is 80% then effectiveness is 93%. But I think that x is not yet known.
Israel data should be treated very careful. Its very small numbers across less than a months worth of observations. Much bigger data sets from PHE and ZOE app.
Israel data is at the same stage as when the UK had that stat of 1/3 dying had been double jabbed....when it was from a dataset showing 12 in 52 people.
That was also an unadjusted bit of data. You can't simply take that stat and then get efficacy data because unvaccinated people are likely much younger and have fewer comorbidities. I think once those numbers were adjusted for risk factors it came out to over 99.5% efficacy against death.
Countries currently having their highest ever weekly death rates with Covid-19:
Russia Tunisia
This isn't just to do with vaccination rates. For example, see the differences in vaccination rates and death rates between Russia and Ukraine.
What is the difference between rates? For those of us who are not obsessing about comparative stats.
Russia (popn 146m): 17% >=1 vax, 12% "fully" vaxed, deaths per day w/C19, av for past week: 669
Ukraine (popn 43m): 5% >=1 vax 2% "fully" vaxed, deaths per day w/C19, av for past week: 27
With such a high death rate, Russia should probably go on Britain's red list. (Tunisia and Bangladesh are already on it.)
But for comparison: in Britain on 23 Jan 2021 (when vax figures were 9%/ below 1%), the 7-day average of deaths per day w/C19 reached 1250.
The Russian curves are very different from and worse than the Ukrainian ones, despite much higher vaccination rates.
Treat Russian statistics with a mountain of salt.
By 28 March the Russians had officially recorded 97,200 Covid deaths - but they had an excess death toll of 494,610.
Puts our death toll of less than 120k really into context as to what could have been without vaccines.
If they're officially recorded 669 deaths per day its entire plausible that real death rates could be anywhere between about 3000 and 4000 per day given past precedence.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Good to see the Brexit debate continuing to be so horrifically entrenched. On here and in the wider public.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
I have not been able to comment here since 27th June and have,therefore, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the post Batley & Spen discussions. I was surprised in two respects - that Labour held the seat - and the size of the vote for Galloway. Starmer owes Hancock a great deal - as he does to the Greens for having withdrawn their candidate. The narrow majority in no way justified the decision to hold the by election at this time. It was high risk and Starmer's good fortune owes everything to luck rather than judgement. Nevertheless, the result is in reality much better for Labour than implied by the headline figures - given the size of the Galloway vote. This was a seat which Labour failed to win in 1992 - relative to that year it still represents a gain! - and it seems reasonable to believe that without Galloway's intervention the Labour majority would have been in the order of 5,000 or so - probably a pro - Labour swing of over 3% since 2019. The suggestion that this was a good result for the Tories because the headline figures showed a further 2.9% swing in their favour is pretty ludicrous given the context. On the same basis, it could be argued that Chesham & Amersham showed a swing from Con to Lab of 4.35% because the Tory margin over Labour there fell by 8.7% - ie the Tory vote dropped 19.9% whereas the Labour vote fell a mere 11.2%. Such a suggestion would have been nonsense.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
"Let's reinstate free movement and sign up to follow EU laws with no say."
You never let me know how those letters to the Corinthians are going? Maybe you have moved on to the Romans, or Timothy perhaps?
Well you know what they say about one sinner that repenteth . . .
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
Of course.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
I have never been able to fathom the "my party right or wrong" approach. Useful for the likes of Boris Johnson I guess
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
Although I think Brexit was the most pointless and stupid small brained policy enacted by Britain since we decided to give a guarantee to Belgium, I am not sure it is sensible to re-join. That said, if it happens in my lifetime I will wet myself (probably literally when I am that old) laughing at all the remaining swiveleyed Daily Express reading Colonel Blimps that will be so cross!
The Belgian guarantee made sense.
No, this is like trying to make the Tanganyikan ground-nut scheme a programme for governance.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
It was amazing at the time, and is amazing now. Elected on a ‘respect the result’ ticket , then voting down every version of respecting the result, with some starting new parties explicitly to prevent it happening, and others demanding another go at it. Incredible
On the Labour side much of it was displacement activity from those who felt alienated under Corbyn. By which I mean people who were used to being influential in the party and now weren't. Umunna, Leslie, Campbell, these types. Their energy had to have somewhere to go, so they poured it into Remain. Even forming new parties or defecting in some cases. Yet for all their passion for Remain, they were more passionate about something else. Jeremy Corbyn not making it to PM. This is why when given a chance to bring down a Tory government, and get Ref2 and Brexit cancelled under replacement PM Corbyn, they chose not to.
But at least Labour MPs had the excuse - the very good excuse - of being in Opposition. They had a Tory PM on the rocks and decided not to throw her a lifeline by passing her Deal. Hardly shock horror or a scandal. Ok, so we know where it eventually led, Trolley Johnson and Con 80, but there are counterfactuals. My favourite is no Benn Act, block the Johnson deal, block a GE, force the magnificent empty man to choose between a No Deal crashout and a long extension on the EU's terms. Either would have damaged him greatly and the GE, when it came, would have been a different story. But they bottled it. Tried to have their cake and eat it. Weren't sharp enough. Weren't united or ruthless enough. They allowed different and clashing agendas to get in the way. Paradise Lost - ah well.
You cant- the current situation is strangling the economy. SMEs in particular are losing as much as 3/4 of their previous trade. A new deal will have to be negotiated. If no deal now then the damage will slowly get worse until it will be clear that the slow puncture has pushed the car off the road.
The voters will not be so split then, but are more likely to be calling for Johnson´s head on a stick.
The other thing is to look at the age splits. Because, as usual the age splits are huge;
Right/Wrong to leave: 18-24: 19/60 25-49: 33/43 50-64: 50/33 65+: 65/30 . If this goes well, those numbers will move and we will come to thank the wise baby boomers who made the right decision in the face of our scoffing.
But if it doesn't go well, and given the way the electorate will change over the next 10, 20 years, how does this version of Brexit stick? Not will it, or should it, but how does it?
How much more integration will the EU undertake in 20 years?
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
Good to see the Brexit debate continuing to be so horrifically entrenched. On here and in the wider public.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
Rinse and repeat with every announcement
And the irony is that none of these announcements and subsidies have anything to do with Brexit - it's just the nature of that industry that you need subsidies as competing locations will offer them.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Good questions, your first especially, which the Remain campaign totally failed to anticipate or answer.
We have reduced our on air talent bill....haven't we done well....yeah but you bumped a load of big earners off that list and onto another one that we can't see and doesn't count for your on air talent bill.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
It was amazing at the time, and is amazing now. Elected on a ‘respect the result’ ticket , then voting down every version of respecting the result, with some starting new parties explicitly to prevent it happening, and others demanding another go at it. Incredible
What pretty much every MP in the 2017-2019 parliament did was fully justified by individual or party manifesto in almost every case, the exception being the handful of Tory no Brexit Tiggers. So the Tory no deal / bad deal duality, Labour's single market (equivalence) or bust, SNP/LD opposition positions all had electoral legitimacy, and all led legitimately to the downfall of the May deal.
Add to it that the courts had stood back and handed parliament a quasi judicial function in terms of assessing whether the advisory referendum result was even valid - remembering that the SFO didn't complete its investigation into Banks's dealing with Russia until well into 2019, and a debate on how to tiebreak if no single specific deal could prevail. All were valid, honourable debates to have - debates on the nature of democracy.
Where I'm with you is that, at some point, realpolitik should have kicked in amongst the remainers. Their routes to success lay in either forcing TMay to accept a second referendum, or getting enough support around an alternative figure to change the Brexit deal, or getting and winning a General Election. Corbyn stood in the way of pretty much all their options.
I made a blame hierarchy at the time , saying remainers would be more to blame for No Deal and the ERG for No Brexit, by virtue of being wrong about the reality of their ability to force their position. May's deal was the possible out ball for either side. Now, perhaps the blocker to that was party politics and they knew it would likely come to an election and they would likely lose, but even if that was the choice the deal should not have been dismissed quite so airily as it was.
Taking Johnson's deal as on the No Deal side - worse than that where May's deal had stepping stones to bridge and resolve the contradictions over years, Boris is now fudging all the same things but relying solely on an ability to walk on water (or have an EU pop down a stepping stone at an apt moment) to cross. Boris's deal has not avoided a single one the issues that May's deal planned a careful route through.
What I guess I'm saying is that I regard what the remainers did as a strategic error rather than either a moral failure or a properly justified shot to nothing.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Completely agreed. I agree with every single word of this.
The sad reality is that some today would rather lie and pretend that Ever Closer Union is not a thing despite the Euro, see the dishonest remarks from Nigel earlier in this thread, than actually advocate for a democratic European federation as the end state to be in favour of.
The only thing I'm not certain of is if the dishonest people claiming that Ever Closer Union isn't real are just lying to us, or if they're lying to themselves and actually believe that too.
Good to see the Brexit debate continuing to be so horrifically entrenched. On here and in the wider public.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
Rinse and repeat with every announcement
Who would have thought that foreign companies investing huge sums here was indeed bad news?
Good to see the Brexit debate continuing to be so horrifically entrenched. On here and in the wider public.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
Rinse and repeat with every announcement
We did this yesterday and today.
The bungs are tiny, not huge, by any reasonable international comparison.
So Labour's talking point objections to boris opening up seems to be 3 fold.
Not enough support for better ventilation...fine, but how much longer would we have to delay opening up before many more buildings have better ventilation? Next year?
More payments for isolation....well given only 20% actually complete isolation properly, while for some it is about money, hosing more money at this, won't magically get that figure really really high as for many it is about attitude...so that won't solve covid spread either.
Masks on public transport...i think this is fair enough criticism, but if you are going to be allowing pubs, gyms, restaurants etc, dropping social distance limits and gathering numbers (most spread is via friend / family interactions), how much difference does this make to stop spread? Are Labour saying we have to keep all these other restrictions?
And Ashworth rather dishonestly has moved goalposts talking about only 50% of PEOPLE vaccinated.
So how much longer does Labour think we need to carry on with current restrictions? To get through vaccinating kids that several more months, then what about booster shots, do we have to wait for those to be done? For better ventilation, that's months, or more like years....
The masks on public transport one comes from the fact you have 200 people say from 200 different offices heading to 200 different homes.
If it only takes 5 minutes to catch covid, that's an awful lot of possible connections where it could be spread.
As I commented on this last night, public transport is about the last place that masks should be removed from...
Certainly I will keep wearing a mask until double vaccinated and probably after on public transport anyway, though for the double vaccinated it should be voluntary in my view
I had my 2nd jab in March and I will continue to wear masks going to and from work on the bus. I am happy to volunteer to do so.
People seem to forget that the mask is to protect others, not to protect yourself.
Vaccination only provides *some*protection against Delta infection (it's main effect seems to be to reduce severity), so you should still wear your mask to protect others even after double jabbage.
Plus, who wants to spend 10 days off work if you get a mild or asymptomatic infection having been double jabbed?
"some"....Pfizer is 80% effective....AZN 60% (and actually it is probably higher as the studies have used 3 week / 2 week cut offs, which a) means some in the data caught it within those periods and when we know AZN takes longer to build max immunity)...
That's a lot higher than "some". So no their main effect is not reduced severity. Its very good protection AND reduced severity.
Flu shots are never this effective.
I thought the 80% effectiveness figure was against symptoms, not infection.
How are vaccine effectiveness figures calculated? Is there a control sample of unvaccinated people, with weightings applied for lifestyle?
Given you are infected (but double jabbed), effectiveness against transmission (low viral load) is x%. If x% is 50%, then effectiveness against transmission of Delta is 1- (1-0.64)x(1-0.5) i,e, 82%. If x is 80% then effectiveness is 93%. But I think that x is not yet known.
Israel data should be treated very careful. Its very small numbers across less than a months worth of observations. Much bigger data sets from PHE and ZOE app.
Israel data is at the same stage as when the UK had that stat of 1/3 dying had been double jabbed....when it was from a dataset showing 12 in 52 people.
That was also an unadjusted bit of data. You can't simply take that stat and then get efficacy data because unvaccinated people are likely much younger and have fewer comorbidities. I think once those numbers were adjusted for risk factors it came out to over 99.5% efficacy against death.
I assumed approx 100% in my post.
I think once cumulative reduction factors such as reduction of spread by double jabbed people is accounted for it will be very close to 100%.
The so-called "Liberal Democrat" Layla Moran on Sky banging on about Long Covid due to not having illiberal restrictions on Covid anymore.
Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire applies just as much to the Liberal Democrats.
I don't think I'm the only Lib Dem somewhat uncomfortable with this apparent drift into authoritarianism by some in the party (Layla is the most vocal and I suspect the most opinionated on this). Following the evidence is what we should be doing. Of course it means being sceptical of the ideologically driven "freedom day" stuff, but it also means accepting that state control over the individual should never be an end goal.
I do think Moran is a bit of an outlier within the party on this though.
Indeed.
After Boris postponed Stage 4 I said he's lost my support. But looking at the Lib Dems, especially but not just Moran, I couldn't see a liberal party I could support there either which is a shame, there's been a real vacancy on the liberal/authoritarian spectrum and the Lib Dems have just vacated that space entirely it seems.
Now that Stage 4 is going ahead, I'm happy to start supporting Boris again. So long as he sticks with it and doesn't become authoritarian again.
You sound like a victim of domestic abuse. "I know what you're saying. But he really does love me. He told me last night how sorry he was and he'll never do it again, and he only did it because of how much he loves me. And I'll never find anyone out there like him".
There are other candidates at constituency level than Tory and LibDem. There are other candidates for Prime Minister by the end of 2021 than Boris Johnson.
Good to see the Brexit debate continuing to be so horrifically entrenched. On here and in the wider public.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
Rinse and repeat with every announcement
We did this yesterday and today.
The bungs are tiny, not huge, by any reasonable international comparison.
Yeah, if you want to see a country giving bungs to companies to work in their country you only have to look at France who spend a whopping 50bn EUR a year on it.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
The so-called "Liberal Democrat" Layla Moran on Sky banging on about Long Covid due to not having illiberal restrictions on Covid anymore.
Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire applies just as much to the Liberal Democrats.
I don't think I'm the only Lib Dem somewhat uncomfortable with this apparent drift into authoritarianism by some in the party (Layla is the most vocal and I suspect the most opinionated on this). Following the evidence is what we should be doing. Of course it means being sceptical of the ideologically driven "freedom day" stuff, but it also means accepting that state control over the individual should never be an end goal.
I do think Moran is a bit of an outlier within the party on this though.
Indeed.
After Boris postponed Stage 4 I said he's lost my support. But looking at the Lib Dems, especially but not just Moran, I couldn't see a liberal party I could support there either which is a shame, there's been a real vacancy on the liberal/authoritarian spectrum and the Lib Dems have just vacated that space entirely it seems.
Now that Stage 4 is going ahead, I'm happy to start supporting Boris again. So long as he sticks with it and doesn't become authoritarian again.
You sound like a victim of domestic abuse. "I know what you're saying. But he really does love me. He told me last night how sorry he was and he'll never do it again, and he only did it because of how much he loves me. And I'll never find anyone out there like him".
There are other candidates at constituency level than Tory and LibDem. There are other candidates for Prime Minister by the end of 2021 than Boris Johnson.
The nature of party politics is seeing the rough and the smooth and accepting a balanced package that may have elements you dislike but is better than any of the alternatives.
There are parties other than Tory and Lib Dem but I'd oppose them even more than I would the Tories and Lib Dems. I narrow down to those two as they are the only parties I could see myself supporting.
If a sane, liberal, centre-right party is available other than the Tories or Lib Dems then please point it out to me as I've not seen any alternative.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
I guess thats why I am a LibDem these days...
Who arranged the exchange to swap you for williamglenn?
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
Although I think Brexit was the most pointless and stupid small brained policy enacted by Britain since we decided to give a guarantee to Belgium, I am not sure it is sensible to re-join. That said, if it happens in my lifetime I will wet myself (probably literally when I am that old) laughing at all the remaining swiveleyed Daily Express reading Colonel Blimps that will be so cross!
The Belgian guarantee made sense.
No, this is like trying to make the Tanganyikan ground-nut scheme a programme for governance.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
The government is being forced to subsidise car manufacturers to keep them open post-Brexit.
We all know this.
Car manufacturing was always going to become less profitable post Brexit. Add them to the list along with fishers etc, who are also in receipt of various bungs.
Let’s save £350m a week and spend it on no-longer productive business instead!
Not quite - the Government is subsidising car manufacturers at a time of total structural change in that industry.
When everything is up in the air you need to offer subsidies to keep both the existing companies and encourage new ones.
I suspect Tesla is regretting building their factory in Germany.
Funny how there’s always non-Brexit reasons.
This is an industry where subsidies have always exists - no-one has built or modernised a car factory in decades without incentives to do so.
The govt has always subsidised car manufacturers. Yet, all of a sudden, it’s an issue to diehard remainers. Labour bailed out British Leyland in the seventies. Money was given to Nissan, Honda and Toyota to come here in the eighties. Money has been given to Ford, BMW, Vauxhall, Nissan, JLR and others As far back as I can remember to Help them build new models locally. Yet suddenly it’s an issue to some people as if it has never happened before.
Funny how it’s happening all at once, though, innit.
Yeah because the industry is moving from petrol and diesel to electrical powertrains en masse. I guess if you want to hack a Brexit narrative in it then a lot of that is because of VW and their dodgy diesels which has forced the whole industry to dump diesel 10 years earlier than expected.
I hadn’t realised (or had forgotten), but the gilet jaune movement - analogous in some ways to Brexitism - was sparked by a hamfisted attempt by Macron to raise steep taxes on diesel.
Honestly mate, you need to move on from Brexit. I mean you're a kiwi right, I don't even know why you care so much?
As a quasi-outsider I can see perhaps more clearly how deranged it is. Besides, like any historical phenomenon it is open to endless interpretations.
You might as well ask why people don’t move on from the French Revolution.
It is daft. We lost a lot through it. In years to come people will realise how valuable freedom of movement was. However it is done and Blair is correct in saying we need to make it work if we aim to rejoin as we need to do so in a strong position.
Blair is correct. Although I don’t think we should rejoin. At least not to “this” EU.
In fact I think we need to make a “better” EU. That would have been much easier inside the institution, but it would also have required some independence of thought and coherence of policy-making by successive governments.
The sole benefit that Brexit provides is the pressure - PERHAPS - to avoid complacency in our economic and geopolitical settlement.
We have tried before to remake the EU in what the UK thought it should be, but I think it clear that that was not the vision of many of the other European leaders. So we left. We will miss many of the good things - ease of access to the markets, freedom of travel and so on. Other things less so, but we have made our bed and now must lie in it. Like with Covid its best to ignore the shrill on both sides of the debate (zero-covid vs let it rip), and try to build a new path. Something we often miss on PB is that many people just don't care. For them its done. They rarely think about politics. The audience on Question Time is not the population of the UK, its a very special subset.
No, I don’t think we did “try”.
The key moment was after the financial crisis, but neither Cameron nor Osborne were especially interested, and the Tory party at large had stopped thinking anything about the EU except as a bogeyman “other”,
Nobody did which is why ultimately Britain made the right choice.
Even Blair and Brown when push came to shove treated Europe as other. They never even tried to have a referendum to join the Euro, spending political capital on going to war alongside the Americans instead, despite all Blair's pretensions of taking Britain into the centre of Europe.
Britain was never philosophically interested in ever closer union and ultimately a federal single European nation state. The EU is. So ultimately we were the wrong fit for the project, Britain being in the EU is like someone who wants an ample supply of chocolate cakes joining Weightwatchers, it just didn't work.
There was a thread on Twitter the other day in response to one of the GB News presenters rattling on about how all we ever wanted was to be a member of a trading bloc and didn’t want the political union.
I can’t be arsed to find the thread, but the writer showed reams and reams of newspaper articles about the project from it’s earliest days, through the referendum when we joined, contemporary interviews with politicians, etc, etc, etc, and it has always been clear, totally unambiguous, even when we joined, that ever closer union was the goal.
For anyone to say that this ever closer union was something we weren’t aware of, that the perfidious EU was trying to foist it upon us after we joined a simple trading bloc, is wrong.
It was more perfidious Albion than perfidious EU.
The EU never kept a secret of the fact they wanted Ever Closer Union and the EU's evolution into being a Federal nation state has never been a secret.
But in the UK over the past 35 years, arguably from Delors speech to the TUC onwards, the EEC/EU and the UK have drifted apart.
Its ended up suiting both sides in the UK to rewrite history to claim that the EU is/was about economics rather than a nascent federation. For Eurosceptics it suited them to pretend we'd joined a trade bloc and it had changed - its true it had changed but that it would change was never a secret when we joined. For Europhiles it suited them to pretend the EU is still primarily a trade bloc, because they knew that the majority of Britons now don't want ever closer union and a federal Europe.
You can't pull the wool over people's eyes for long though. Europhiles needed to make an argument for Ever Closer Union, not pretend it didn't exist or that Dave had abolished it. They didn't, so they lost and deservedly so.
I think perfidious Albion hits the nail on the head. The behaviour of the right-wing in this country, since free market fundamentalism became the lodestar of Conservative thought, sickens me. They have ripped us out of Europe, and they will happily tear the union asunder and throw NI to the wolves, in their pursuit of unfettered, amoral profit without responsibility.
Way to miss the point.
The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum, which is why they won. They said they didn't want ever closer union and they campaigned against it and they won a majority to ensure we no longer had any future in it.
It was the Remainers who were most dishonest in the referendum. They couldn't bring themselves to actually campaign for Ever Closer Union. They couldn't bring themselves to campaign for a Federal EU.
The British public were entirely correct to "rip us out of Europe" when even the Europhiles couldn't be arsed to campaign for Europe, to campaign for Ever Closer Union. Instead pretending that David Cameron had abolished it.
If you think "The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum", you are even more gullible idiot than I thought, or a complete liar. As you as an apologist for Johnson I suspect it is the latter. You are also too stupid to understand that "ever closer union" was an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle. If you think the French are about to go into full political union with the rest of Europe, particularly Germany you really are as thick as a plank.
Still, as you say, your side "won". Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn "won" and so did Vladimir Putin. The habitual liars won. Well done.
You are the habitual liar not me.
The entire point of the conversation with northern_monkey is that "Ever Closer Union" is literally the raison d'etre of the EU and something they never kept a secret even before we joined or before the 1975 referendum. Yet here you are now pretending that it was 'an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle.'
Deep down in your heart even you don't support Ever Closer Union it seems, you're unwilling to even attempt to argue in favour of it instead lying and casting aspersions that its not real or only a fringe aspiration. Which is why your side of habitual liars deservedly lost.
Philip, I have never supported "Ever Closer Union", because it was always a meaningless anachronism. Anyone that knows anything about the EU (you clearly know jackshit about it ) knows that it was, exactly as I said, an aspiration of a few diehard euro-federalists, and it remains so. It was an anachronism like Labour's Clause 4, though unlike clause 4 no Tony Blair was ever going to remove it because it was and is bland and meaningless.
As I previously said (which you conveniently ignored) France is never going into a full political union with Germany. Ever. Period. But your small EU hating mind will never be able to understand, Duh!
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
As Mitterand famously said when told his disapproval rating had risen to 82% "As I'm here for another four years that would seem to be their problem not mine'
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
Apols for misquoting. Do you think it will be 1 million a week, or will the wave peak lower than that? My suspicion is it will not reach 1 million new infections a week as there are not enough people to infect (with pretty good, but not perfect protection for the double jabbed, some for single jabbed, and all those who have already had it). But we will see.
The government is being forced to subsidise car manufacturers to keep them open post-Brexit.
We all know this.
Car manufacturing was always going to become less profitable post Brexit. Add them to the list along with fishers etc, who are also in receipt of various bungs.
Let’s save £350m a week and spend it on no-longer productive business instead!
Not quite - the Government is subsidising car manufacturers at a time of total structural change in that industry.
When everything is up in the air you need to offer subsidies to keep both the existing companies and encourage new ones.
I suspect Tesla is regretting building their factory in Germany.
Funny how there’s always non-Brexit reasons.
This is an industry where subsidies have always exists - no-one has built or modernised a car factory in decades without incentives to do so.
The govt has always subsidised car manufacturers. Yet, all of a sudden, it’s an issue to diehard remainers. Labour bailed out British Leyland in the seventies. Money was given to Nissan, Honda and Toyota to come here in the eighties. Money has been given to Ford, BMW, Vauxhall, Nissan, JLR and others As far back as I can remember to Help them build new models locally. Yet suddenly it’s an issue to some people as if it has never happened before.
Funny how it’s happening all at once, though, innit.
Yeah because the industry is moving from petrol and diesel to electrical powertrains en masse. I guess if you want to hack a Brexit narrative in it then a lot of that is because of VW and their dodgy diesels which has forced the whole industry to dump diesel 10 years earlier than expected.
I hadn’t realised (or had forgotten), but the gilet jaune movement - analogous in some ways to Brexitism - was sparked by a hamfisted attempt by Macron to raise steep taxes on diesel.
Honestly mate, you need to move on from Brexit. I mean you're a kiwi right, I don't even know why you care so much?
As a quasi-outsider I can see perhaps more clearly how deranged it is. Besides, like any historical phenomenon it is open to endless interpretations.
You might as well ask why people don’t move on from the French Revolution.
It is daft. We lost a lot through it. In years to come people will realise how valuable freedom of movement was. However it is done and Blair is correct in saying we need to make it work if we aim to rejoin as we need to do so in a strong position.
Blair is correct. Although I don’t think we should rejoin. At least not to “this” EU.
In fact I think we need to make a “better” EU. That would have been much easier inside the institution, but it would also have required some independence of thought and coherence of policy-making by successive governments.
The sole benefit that Brexit provides is the pressure - PERHAPS - to avoid complacency in our economic and geopolitical settlement.
We have tried before to remake the EU in what the UK thought it should be, but I think it clear that that was not the vision of many of the other European leaders. So we left. We will miss many of the good things - ease of access to the markets, freedom of travel and so on. Other things less so, but we have made our bed and now must lie in it. Like with Covid its best to ignore the shrill on both sides of the debate (zero-covid vs let it rip), and try to build a new path. Something we often miss on PB is that many people just don't care. For them its done. They rarely think about politics. The audience on Question Time is not the population of the UK, its a very special subset.
No, I don’t think we did “try”.
The key moment was after the financial crisis, but neither Cameron nor Osborne were especially interested, and the Tory party at large had stopped thinking anything about the EU except as a bogeyman “other”,
Nobody did which is why ultimately Britain made the right choice.
Even Blair and Brown when push came to shove treated Europe as other. They never even tried to have a referendum to join the Euro, spending political capital on going to war alongside the Americans instead, despite all Blair's pretensions of taking Britain into the centre of Europe.
Britain was never philosophically interested in ever closer union and ultimately a federal single European nation state. The EU is. So ultimately we were the wrong fit for the project, Britain being in the EU is like someone who wants an ample supply of chocolate cakes joining Weightwatchers, it just didn't work.
There was a thread on Twitter the other day in response to one of the GB News presenters rattling on about how all we ever wanted was to be a member of a trading bloc and didn’t want the political union.
I can’t be arsed to find the thread, but the writer showed reams and reams of newspaper articles about the project from it’s earliest days, through the referendum when we joined, contemporary interviews with politicians, etc, etc, etc, and it has always been clear, totally unambiguous, even when we joined, that ever closer union was the goal.
For anyone to say that this ever closer union was something we weren’t aware of, that the perfidious EU was trying to foist it upon us after we joined a simple trading bloc, is wrong.
It was more perfidious Albion than perfidious EU.
The EU never kept a secret of the fact they wanted Ever Closer Union and the EU's evolution into being a Federal nation state has never been a secret.
But in the UK over the past 35 years, arguably from Delors speech to the TUC onwards, the EEC/EU and the UK have drifted apart.
Its ended up suiting both sides in the UK to rewrite history to claim that the EU is/was about economics rather than a nascent federation. For Eurosceptics it suited them to pretend we'd joined a trade bloc and it had changed - its true it had changed but that it would change was never a secret when we joined. For Europhiles it suited them to pretend the EU is still primarily a trade bloc, because they knew that the majority of Britons now don't want ever closer union and a federal Europe.
You can't pull the wool over people's eyes for long though. Europhiles needed to make an argument for Ever Closer Union, not pretend it didn't exist or that Dave had abolished it. They didn't, so they lost and deservedly so.
I think perfidious Albion hits the nail on the head. The behaviour of the right-wing in this country, since free market fundamentalism became the lodestar of Conservative thought, sickens me. They have ripped us out of Europe, and they will happily tear the union asunder and throw NI to the wolves, in their pursuit of unfettered, amoral profit without responsibility.
Way to miss the point.
The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum, which is why they won. They said they didn't want ever closer union and they campaigned against it and they won a majority to ensure we no longer had any future in it.
It was the Remainers who were most dishonest in the referendum. They couldn't bring themselves to actually campaign for Ever Closer Union. They couldn't bring themselves to campaign for a Federal EU.
The British public were entirely correct to "rip us out of Europe" when even the Europhiles couldn't be arsed to campaign for Europe, to campaign for Ever Closer Union. Instead pretending that David Cameron had abolished it.
If you think "The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum", you are even more gullible idiot than I thought, or a complete liar. As you as an apologist for Johnson I suspect it is the latter. You are also too stupid to understand that "ever closer union" was an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle. If you think the French are about to go into full political union with the rest of Europe, particularly Germany you really are as thick as a plank.
Still, as you say, your side "won". Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn "won" and so did Vladimir Putin. The habitual liars won. Well done.
You are the habitual liar not me.
The entire point of the conversation with northern_monkey is that "Ever Closer Union" is literally the raison d'etre of the EU and something they never kept a secret even before we joined or before the 1975 referendum. Yet here you are now pretending that it was 'an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle.'
Deep down in your heart even you don't support Ever Closer Union it seems, you're unwilling to even attempt to argue in favour of it instead lying and casting aspersions that its not real or only a fringe aspiration. Which is why your side of habitual liars deservedly lost.
Philip, I have never supported "Ever Closer Union", because it was always a meaningless anachronism. Anyone that knows anything about the EU (you clearly know jackshit about it ) knows that it was, exactly as I said, an aspiration of a few diehard euro-federalists, and it remains so. It was an anachronism like Labour's Clause 4, though unlike clause 4 no Tony Blair was ever going to remove it because it was and is bland and meaningless.
As I previously said (which you conveniently ignored) France is never going into a full political union with Germany. Ever. Period. But your small EU hating mind will never be able to understand, Duh!
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The so-called "Liberal Democrat" Layla Moran on Sky banging on about Long Covid due to not having illiberal restrictions on Covid anymore.
Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire applies just as much to the Liberal Democrats.
I don't think I'm the only Lib Dem somewhat uncomfortable with this apparent drift into authoritarianism by some in the party (Layla is the most vocal and I suspect the most opinionated on this). Following the evidence is what we should be doing. Of course it means being sceptical of the ideologically driven "freedom day" stuff, but it also means accepting that state control over the individual should never be an end goal.
I do think Moran is a bit of an outlier within the party on this though.
Indeed.
After Boris postponed Stage 4 I said he's lost my support. But looking at the Lib Dems, especially but not just Moran, I couldn't see a liberal party I could support there either which is a shame, there's been a real vacancy on the liberal/authoritarian spectrum and the Lib Dems have just vacated that space entirely it seems.
Now that Stage 4 is going ahead, I'm happy to start supporting Boris again. So long as he sticks with it and doesn't become authoritarian again.
You sound like a victim of domestic abuse. "I know what you're saying. But he really does love me. He told me last night how sorry he was and he'll never do it again, and he only did it because of how much he loves me. And I'll never find anyone out there like him".
There are other candidates at constituency level than Tory and LibDem. There are other candidates for Prime Minister by the end of 2021 than Boris Johnson.
The nature of party politics is seeing the rough and the smooth and accepting a balanced package that may have elements you dislike but is better than any of the alternatives.
There are parties other than Tory and Lib Dem but I'd oppose them even more than I would the Tories and Lib Dems. I narrow down to those two as they are the only parties I could see myself supporting.
If a sane, liberal, centre-right party is available other than the Tories or Lib Dems then please point it out to me as I've not seen any alternative.
I am unfamiliar with the local parties or independents where you live but they'll be there. If not then stand against them. Meanwhile the greatest power you have in British democracy is via your MP. Write to them now and tell them in no uncertain terms that you will march on Parliament if they dare flinch to casual authoritarianism this winter to counter winter flu. This applies to a seat held by any of the Big 3 English Parties, given they now all seem to have identical authoritarian tendencies.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
87% of adults
Given that this is only a few percent different to the number vaccinated, I would expect that number to be much lower among the under 18 cohorts
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That must be up for the "Thickest Comment By a Nationalist Prize"
I have not been able to comment here since 27th June and have,therefore, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the post Batley & Spen discussions. I was surprised in two respects - that Labour held the seat - and the size of the vote for Galloway. Starmer owes Hancock a great deal - as he does to the Greens for having withdrawn their candidate. The narrow majority in no way justified the decision to hold the by election at this time. It was high risk and Starmer's good fortune owes everything to luck rather than judgement. Nevertheless, the result is in reality much better for Labour than implied by the headline figures - given the size of the Galloway vote. This was a seat which Labour failed to win in 1992 - relative to that year it still represents a gain! - and it seems reasonable to believe that without Galloway's intervention the Labour majority would have been in the order of 5,000 or so - probably a pro - Labour swing of over 3% since 2019. The suggestion that this was a good result for the Tories because the headline figures showed a further 2.9% swing in their favour is pretty ludicrous given the context. On the same basis, it could be argued that Chesham & Amersham showed a swing from Con to Lab of 4.35% because the Tory margin over Labour there fell by 8.7% - ie the Tory vote dropped 19.9% whereas the Labour vote fell a mere 11.2%. Such a suggestion would have been nonsense.
Yep, it was an excellent result for Labour and for Starmer. If told GG was getting 22% of the vote not a single serious pundit would have called anything but a clear Con win. Adjusting for GG it was Lab by miles. The seat is safe as houses for the GE. It shows progress from Dec 19, changes the narrative, and creates momentum. I've said for ages how I expect my 'Starmer Next PM' long at 8 to be layable back at 4 max quite soon, and I've been semi-kidding, but it's now the unvarnished truth.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
"Yes, it's a shitshow, but fuckit, we won!"
And you wonder why Brexiteers are not winning hearts and minds...
Do you ever wonder why you lost the Referendum?
Exhibit A - this level of supercilious sneering....
It was literally in response to your deranged bellowing that Boris has a majority and hence nobody gives a “shiny shit”.
There’s a word for your instincts, and it’s not really “democratic”.
Oh really?
How did Boris get his majority? How did he win the referendum?
Its your side that's against democracy, not Mark.
We are into the sixth year of them Not Having A Fucking Clue what happened to them over Brexit.....
See thread header. Most people now disagree with you.
By your perverted and dismal understanding of democracy we should surely do a rapid about-turn!
This may be news to you but we have governance via elections and not opinion polls.
The so-called majority against Brexit that has been put on thread headers on this site for about five years and counting now pre-dates the last general election. It didn't prevent the 80 seat majority, so no rapid about-turn necessary.
I would just comment that thinking Brexit was wrong does not automatically translate into re- join
Quite. Brexit, particularly this Brexit was wrong. Re-join now, or even in 10 years time, would also be wrong.
Hopefully over the next 5-10 years we can eject the politicians who led us down this path and rebuild a better relationship with the EU, but it should not be re-join.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
The government is being forced to subsidise car manufacturers to keep them open post-Brexit.
We all know this.
Car manufacturing was always going to become less profitable post Brexit. Add them to the list along with fishers etc, who are also in receipt of various bungs.
Let’s save £350m a week and spend it on no-longer productive business instead!
Not quite - the Government is subsidising car manufacturers at a time of total structural change in that industry.
When everything is up in the air you need to offer subsidies to keep both the existing companies and encourage new ones.
I suspect Tesla is regretting building their factory in Germany.
Funny how there’s always non-Brexit reasons.
This is an industry where subsidies have always exists - no-one has built or modernised a car factory in decades without incentives to do so.
The govt has always subsidised car manufacturers. Yet, all of a sudden, it’s an issue to diehard remainers. Labour bailed out British Leyland in the seventies. Money was given to Nissan, Honda and Toyota to come here in the eighties. Money has been given to Ford, BMW, Vauxhall, Nissan, JLR and others As far back as I can remember to Help them build new models locally. Yet suddenly it’s an issue to some people as if it has never happened before.
Funny how it’s happening all at once, though, innit.
Yeah because the industry is moving from petrol and diesel to electrical powertrains en masse. I guess if you want to hack a Brexit narrative in it then a lot of that is because of VW and their dodgy diesels which has forced the whole industry to dump diesel 10 years earlier than expected.
I hadn’t realised (or had forgotten), but the gilet jaune movement - analogous in some ways to Brexitism - was sparked by a hamfisted attempt by Macron to raise steep taxes on diesel.
Honestly mate, you need to move on from Brexit. I mean you're a kiwi right, I don't even know why you care so much?
As a quasi-outsider I can see perhaps more clearly how deranged it is. Besides, like any historical phenomenon it is open to endless interpretations.
You might as well ask why people don’t move on from the French Revolution.
It is daft. We lost a lot through it. In years to come people will realise how valuable freedom of movement was. However it is done and Blair is correct in saying we need to make it work if we aim to rejoin as we need to do so in a strong position.
Blair is correct. Although I don’t think we should rejoin. At least not to “this” EU.
In fact I think we need to make a “better” EU. That would have been much easier inside the institution, but it would also have required some independence of thought and coherence of policy-making by successive governments.
The sole benefit that Brexit provides is the pressure - PERHAPS - to avoid complacency in our economic and geopolitical settlement.
We have tried before to remake the EU in what the UK thought it should be, but I think it clear that that was not the vision of many of the other European leaders. So we left. We will miss many of the good things - ease of access to the markets, freedom of travel and so on. Other things less so, but we have made our bed and now must lie in it. Like with Covid its best to ignore the shrill on both sides of the debate (zero-covid vs let it rip), and try to build a new path. Something we often miss on PB is that many people just don't care. For them its done. They rarely think about politics. The audience on Question Time is not the population of the UK, its a very special subset.
No, I don’t think we did “try”.
The key moment was after the financial crisis, but neither Cameron nor Osborne were especially interested, and the Tory party at large had stopped thinking anything about the EU except as a bogeyman “other”,
Nobody did which is why ultimately Britain made the right choice.
Even Blair and Brown when push came to shove treated Europe as other. They never even tried to have a referendum to join the Euro, spending political capital on going to war alongside the Americans instead, despite all Blair's pretensions of taking Britain into the centre of Europe.
Britain was never philosophically interested in ever closer union and ultimately a federal single European nation state. The EU is. So ultimately we were the wrong fit for the project, Britain being in the EU is like someone who wants an ample supply of chocolate cakes joining Weightwatchers, it just didn't work.
There was a thread on Twitter the other day in response to one of the GB News presenters rattling on about how all we ever wanted was to be a member of a trading bloc and didn’t want the political union.
I can’t be arsed to find the thread, but the writer showed reams and reams of newspaper articles about the project from it’s earliest days, through the referendum when we joined, contemporary interviews with politicians, etc, etc, etc, and it has always been clear, totally unambiguous, even when we joined, that ever closer union was the goal.
For anyone to say that this ever closer union was something we weren’t aware of, that the perfidious EU was trying to foist it upon us after we joined a simple trading bloc, is wrong.
It was more perfidious Albion than perfidious EU.
The EU never kept a secret of the fact they wanted Ever Closer Union and the EU's evolution into being a Federal nation state has never been a secret.
But in the UK over the past 35 years, arguably from Delors speech to the TUC onwards, the EEC/EU and the UK have drifted apart.
Its ended up suiting both sides in the UK to rewrite history to claim that the EU is/was about economics rather than a nascent federation. For Eurosceptics it suited them to pretend we'd joined a trade bloc and it had changed - its true it had changed but that it would change was never a secret when we joined. For Europhiles it suited them to pretend the EU is still primarily a trade bloc, because they knew that the majority of Britons now don't want ever closer union and a federal Europe.
You can't pull the wool over people's eyes for long though. Europhiles needed to make an argument for Ever Closer Union, not pretend it didn't exist or that Dave had abolished it. They didn't, so they lost and deservedly so.
I think perfidious Albion hits the nail on the head. The behaviour of the right-wing in this country, since free market fundamentalism became the lodestar of Conservative thought, sickens me. They have ripped us out of Europe, and they will happily tear the union asunder and throw NI to the wolves, in their pursuit of unfettered, amoral profit without responsibility.
Way to miss the point.
The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum, which is why they won. They said they didn't want ever closer union and they campaigned against it and they won a majority to ensure we no longer had any future in it.
It was the Remainers who were most dishonest in the referendum. They couldn't bring themselves to actually campaign for Ever Closer Union. They couldn't bring themselves to campaign for a Federal EU.
The British public were entirely correct to "rip us out of Europe" when even the Europhiles couldn't be arsed to campaign for Europe, to campaign for Ever Closer Union. Instead pretending that David Cameron had abolished it.
If you think "The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum", you are even more gullible idiot than I thought, or a complete liar. As you as an apologist for Johnson I suspect it is the latter. You are also too stupid to understand that "ever closer union" was an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle. If you think the French are about to go into full political union with the rest of Europe, particularly Germany you really are as thick as a plank.
Still, as you say, your side "won". Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn "won" and so did Vladimir Putin. The habitual liars won. Well done.
You are the habitual liar not me.
The entire point of the conversation with northern_monkey is that "Ever Closer Union" is literally the raison d'etre of the EU and something they never kept a secret even before we joined or before the 1975 referendum. Yet here you are now pretending that it was 'an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle.'
Deep down in your heart even you don't support Ever Closer Union it seems, you're unwilling to even attempt to argue in favour of it instead lying and casting aspersions that its not real or only a fringe aspiration. Which is why your side of habitual liars deservedly lost.
Philip, I have never supported "Ever Closer Union", because it was always a meaningless anachronism. Anyone that knows anything about the EU (you clearly know jackshit about it ) knows that it was, exactly as I said, an aspiration of a few diehard euro-federalists, and it remains so. It was an anachronism like Labour's Clause 4, though unlike clause 4 no Tony Blair was ever going to remove it because it was and is bland and meaningless.
As I previously said (which you conveniently ignored) France is never going into a full political union with Germany. Ever. Period. But your small EU hating mind will never be able to understand, Duh!
I feel sorry for you, because you're just embarrassing yourself now.
You're in denial of that which everyone sane and honest can see: The EU is about Ever Closer Union. It is the very first line, very first principle of the project. You wish to deny that the French and Germans are seeking a political union while they make no secret of the fact that is what they want. Macron is up front, open and honest about his desire to see more EU integration so why do you hate that or deny that? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/15/emmanuel-macron-sets-out-10-year-vision-for-eu-with-call-for-more-integration
That you are in denial just makes you look silly and petulant, not wise. It seems that you are the one who hates what the EU really is so you're trying to deny it and turn it into something it isn't. I don't hate the EU - I wish them well. If the French and Germans want a political union and integrated defence policies etc as Macron is calling for and as they've been building for the better part of three quarters of a century now then good luck to them. It is the logical end point of a single currency and unlike you it seems I wish them well. I just wish them well as our neighbours instead of trying to bring their project down from the inside like you seem to want.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
87% of adults
Given that this is only a few percent different to the number vaccinated, I would expect that number to be much lower among the under 18 cohorts
Hmm. ONS ought to rewrite their top level blurb then (and there is no link from that page)
Antibodies against coronavirus (COVID-19) The presence of antibodies to COVID-19 suggests that a person previously had the infection or has been vaccinated. In the week beginning 7 June 2021, the percentage of people that would have tested positive for antibodies is estimated to be: 86.6% in England 88.7% in Wales 85.4% in Northern Ireland 79.1% in Scotland
Government modelling was crap back in the early 2000s, too.
The forecasts indicate that net immigration from the AC-10 to the UK after the current enlargement of the EU will be relatively small, at between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants per year up to 2010. (although they do caveat this, this is the central prediction).
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
I think you're forgetting something, in your haste to blame Remain. From about the mid 90's onwards there was a drip drip drip of anti Brussels material from the Telegraph, Mail and Express and virulently from the Sun. Boris' articles about bendy bananas and the like created a mind-set.
I think the bigger question wrt EU is that it is a pig-in-a-poke.
No common idea amongst its members as to what it wants, no idea how to get there (obviously), and a leadership that could be improved on by the Goodies singing Funky Gibbon.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Indeed and Rejoin has just begun. If the demographics are as stated and the old continue to die before the young it shouldn't take long
The government is being forced to subsidise car manufacturers to keep them open post-Brexit.
We all know this.
Car manufacturing was always going to become less profitable post Brexit. Add them to the list along with fishers etc, who are also in receipt of various bungs.
Let’s save £350m a week and spend it on no-longer productive business instead!
Not quite - the Government is subsidising car manufacturers at a time of total structural change in that industry.
When everything is up in the air you need to offer subsidies to keep both the existing companies and encourage new ones.
I suspect Tesla is regretting building their factory in Germany.
Funny how there’s always non-Brexit reasons.
This is an industry where subsidies have always exists - no-one has built or modernised a car factory in decades without incentives to do so.
The govt has always subsidised car manufacturers. Yet, all of a sudden, it’s an issue to diehard remainers. Labour bailed out British Leyland in the seventies. Money was given to Nissan, Honda and Toyota to come here in the eighties. Money has been given to Ford, BMW, Vauxhall, Nissan, JLR and others As far back as I can remember to Help them build new models locally. Yet suddenly it’s an issue to some people as if it has never happened before.
Funny how it’s happening all at once, though, innit.
Yeah because the industry is moving from petrol and diesel to electrical powertrains en masse. I guess if you want to hack a Brexit narrative in it then a lot of that is because of VW and their dodgy diesels which has forced the whole industry to dump diesel 10 years earlier than expected.
I hadn’t realised (or had forgotten), but the gilet jaune movement - analogous in some ways to Brexitism - was sparked by a hamfisted attempt by Macron to raise steep taxes on diesel.
Honestly mate, you need to move on from Brexit. I mean you're a kiwi right, I don't even know why you care so much?
As a quasi-outsider I can see perhaps more clearly how deranged it is. Besides, like any historical phenomenon it is open to endless interpretations.
You might as well ask why people don’t move on from the French Revolution.
It is daft. We lost a lot through it. In years to come people will realise how valuable freedom of movement was. However it is done and Blair is correct in saying we need to make it work if we aim to rejoin as we need to do so in a strong position.
Blair is correct. Although I don’t think we should rejoin. At least not to “this” EU.
In fact I think we need to make a “better” EU. That would have been much easier inside the institution, but it would also have required some independence of thought and coherence of policy-making by successive governments.
The sole benefit that Brexit provides is the pressure - PERHAPS - to avoid complacency in our economic and geopolitical settlement.
We have tried before to remake the EU in what the UK thought it should be, but I think it clear that that was not the vision of many of the other European leaders. So we left. We will miss many of the good things - ease of access to the markets, freedom of travel and so on. Other things less so, but we have made our bed and now must lie in it. Like with Covid its best to ignore the shrill on both sides of the debate (zero-covid vs let it rip), and try to build a new path. Something we often miss on PB is that many people just don't care. For them its done. They rarely think about politics. The audience on Question Time is not the population of the UK, its a very special subset.
No, I don’t think we did “try”.
The key moment was after the financial crisis, but neither Cameron nor Osborne were especially interested, and the Tory party at large had stopped thinking anything about the EU except as a bogeyman “other”,
Nobody did which is why ultimately Britain made the right choice.
Even Blair and Brown when push came to shove treated Europe as other. They never even tried to have a referendum to join the Euro, spending political capital on going to war alongside the Americans instead, despite all Blair's pretensions of taking Britain into the centre of Europe.
Britain was never philosophically interested in ever closer union and ultimately a federal single European nation state. The EU is. So ultimately we were the wrong fit for the project, Britain being in the EU is like someone who wants an ample supply of chocolate cakes joining Weightwatchers, it just didn't work.
There was a thread on Twitter the other day in response to one of the GB News presenters rattling on about how all we ever wanted was to be a member of a trading bloc and didn’t want the political union.
I can’t be arsed to find the thread, but the writer showed reams and reams of newspaper articles about the project from it’s earliest days, through the referendum when we joined, contemporary interviews with politicians, etc, etc, etc, and it has always been clear, totally unambiguous, even when we joined, that ever closer union was the goal.
For anyone to say that this ever closer union was something we weren’t aware of, that the perfidious EU was trying to foist it upon us after we joined a simple trading bloc, is wrong.
It was more perfidious Albion than perfidious EU.
The EU never kept a secret of the fact they wanted Ever Closer Union and the EU's evolution into being a Federal nation state has never been a secret.
But in the UK over the past 35 years, arguably from Delors speech to the TUC onwards, the EEC/EU and the UK have drifted apart.
Its ended up suiting both sides in the UK to rewrite history to claim that the EU is/was about economics rather than a nascent federation. For Eurosceptics it suited them to pretend we'd joined a trade bloc and it had changed - its true it had changed but that it would change was never a secret when we joined. For Europhiles it suited them to pretend the EU is still primarily a trade bloc, because they knew that the majority of Britons now don't want ever closer union and a federal Europe.
You can't pull the wool over people's eyes for long though. Europhiles needed to make an argument for Ever Closer Union, not pretend it didn't exist or that Dave had abolished it. They didn't, so they lost and deservedly so.
I think perfidious Albion hits the nail on the head. The behaviour of the right-wing in this country, since free market fundamentalism became the lodestar of Conservative thought, sickens me. They have ripped us out of Europe, and they will happily tear the union asunder and throw NI to the wolves, in their pursuit of unfettered, amoral profit without responsibility.
Way to miss the point.
The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum, which is why they won. They said they didn't want ever closer union and they campaigned against it and they won a majority to ensure we no longer had any future in it.
It was the Remainers who were most dishonest in the referendum. They couldn't bring themselves to actually campaign for Ever Closer Union. They couldn't bring themselves to campaign for a Federal EU.
The British public were entirely correct to "rip us out of Europe" when even the Europhiles couldn't be arsed to campaign for Europe, to campaign for Ever Closer Union. Instead pretending that David Cameron had abolished it.
If you think "The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum", you are even more gullible idiot than I thought, or a complete liar. As you as an apologist for Johnson I suspect it is the latter. You are also too stupid to understand that "ever closer union" was an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle. If you think the French are about to go into full political union with the rest of Europe, particularly Germany you really are as thick as a plank.
Still, as you say, your side "won". Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn "won" and so did Vladimir Putin. The habitual liars won. Well done.
You are the habitual liar not me.
The entire point of the conversation with northern_monkey is that "Ever Closer Union" is literally the raison d'etre of the EU and something they never kept a secret even before we joined or before the 1975 referendum. Yet here you are now pretending that it was 'an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle.'
Deep down in your heart even you don't support Ever Closer Union it seems, you're unwilling to even attempt to argue in favour of it instead lying and casting aspersions that its not real or only a fringe aspiration. Which is why your side of habitual liars deservedly lost.
Philip, I have never supported "Ever Closer Union", because it was always a meaningless anachronism. Anyone that knows anything about the EU (you clearly know jackshit about it ) knows that it was, exactly as I said, an aspiration of a few diehard euro-federalists, and it remains so. It was an anachronism like Labour's Clause 4, though unlike clause 4 no Tony Blair was ever going to remove it because it was and is bland and meaningless.
As I previously said (which you conveniently ignored) France is never going into a full political union with Germany. Ever. Period. But your small EU hating mind will never be able to understand, Duh!
Most dispassionate observers contend that the Euro currency was a means to an end, an economic tool to force political alignment upon future crisis events. The survival of the sacred non-socialisation of cross country debts (and hence something resembling a common treasury) is really only in the eye of the beholder, effected through central bank chicanery. It's perfectly possible to see how France and Germany will in a decade or two have entreated something resembling a full political union, with evermore power up-volved to the central body, with other matters remaining devolved. It may not be called the Federated States of Europia but it's going to waddle and quack suspiciously like a duck.
Comments
Instead of pretending Ever Closer Union doesn't exist and vacating the debate to the Eurosceptics?
You lost, get over it!
Clear as mud.
All we can do - what we must do - is painstakingly rebuild a closer trading relationship.
The future is Swiss, and perhaps there is a possibility in allying more closely with Switzerland and the EEA countries.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
Like electing Trump.
72.18%
61.74%
47.91%
60.87%
60.87%
63.55%
96.45%
84.05%
87.02%
113.68%
101.55%
101.55%
91.97%
62.38%
39.93%
43.44%
44.89%
40.59%
40.59%
44.13%
56.39%
133.16%
80.60%
71.21%
96.64%
96.64%
106.94%
79.12%
61.98%
177.84%
45.15%
15.14%
15.14%
2.86%
11.24%
Goes from 297 cases week ending 02/06/21 to 4053 cases rolling 7 days ending today.
We again have to be careful, because even if you say 2 weeks gap from jab to calling it as an infection after fully vaxxed, a) some will have caught it within that 2 week gap, so there weren't and b) we know with AZN protection takes longer to kick in.
But lets say for arguments sake, 2k in 30k is about the going rate at the moment after of those still catching COVID after being double jabbed.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/bul4ckm2bw/TheTimes_VI_Track_210617_W.pdf
Right/Wrong to leave:
18-24: 19/60
25-49: 33/43
50-64: 50/33
65+: 65/30
.
If this goes well, those numbers will move and we will come to thank the wise baby boomers who made the right decision in the face of our scoffing.
But if it doesn't go well, and given the way the electorate will change over the next 10, 20 years, how does this version of Brexit stick? Not will it, or should it, but how does it?
£100m from Stellanis, £40m from the UK
And while it's clear that Stellanis are going to be importing batteries in the short term - it's clear that Stellanis's UK management know they need a UK battery supplier asap
Britain voted not “just” to leave the EU but to set fire to much of its post-war geopolitical settlement. The era is gone.
-> but it's obvious that the vast majority of people without protection, are without full protection because they haven't got both doses vaccine yet/had it too recently.
They voted to send their own kids to war with Eastasia.
17% >=1 vax,
12% "fully" vaxed,
deaths per day w/C19, av for past week: 669
Ukraine (popn 43m):
5% >=1 vax
2% "fully" vaxed,
deaths per day w/C19, av for past week: 27
With such a high death rate, Russia should probably go on Britain's red list. (Tunisia and Bangladesh are already on it.)
But for comparison: in Britain on 23 Jan 2021 (when vax figures were 9%/<1%), the 7-day average of deaths per day w/C19 reached 1250.
The Russian curves are very different from and worse than the Ukrainian ones, despite much higher vaccination rates.
As it is 2K rather than 15K that have been double jabbed and infected, that looks like 87% effective against infection to me.
Because in two months time we’ll be suffering from the Vladivostok variant and PB Tories will be claiming that “nobody could have known”.
Aided by Sgt Scarper, perhaps?
'Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/06/afghan-anger-over-uss-sudden-silent-bagram-departure
By 28 March the Russians had officially recorded 97,200 Covid deaths - but they had an excess death toll of 494,610.
Puts our death toll of less than 120k really into context as to what could have been without vaccines.
If they're officially recorded 669 deaths per day its entire plausible that real death rates could be anywhere between about 3000 and 4000 per day given past precedence.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
Rinse and repeat with every announcement
I was surprised in two respects - that Labour held the seat - and the size of the vote for Galloway. Starmer owes Hancock a great deal - as he does to the Greens for having withdrawn their candidate. The narrow majority in no way justified the decision to hold the by election at this time. It was high risk and Starmer's good fortune owes everything to luck rather than judgement.
Nevertheless, the result is in reality much better for Labour than implied by the headline figures - given the size of the Galloway vote. This was a seat which Labour failed to win in 1992 - relative to that year it still represents a gain! - and it seems reasonable to believe that without Galloway's intervention the Labour majority would have been in the order of 5,000 or so - probably a pro - Labour swing of over 3% since 2019. The suggestion that this was a good result for the Tories because the headline figures showed a further 2.9% swing in their favour is pretty ludicrous given the context. On the same basis, it could be argued that Chesham & Amersham showed a swing from Con to Lab of 4.35% because the Tory margin over Labour there fell by 8.7% - ie the Tory vote dropped 19.9% whereas the Labour vote fell a mere 11.2%. Such a suggestion would have been nonsense.
No, this is like trying to make the Tanganyikan ground-nut scheme a programme for governance.
But at least Labour MPs had the excuse - the very good excuse - of being in Opposition. They had a Tory PM on the rocks and decided not to throw her a lifeline by passing her Deal. Hardly shock horror or a scandal. Ok, so we know where it eventually led, Trolley Johnson and Con 80, but there are counterfactuals. My favourite is no Benn Act, block the Johnson deal, block a GE, force the magnificent empty man to choose between a No Deal crashout and a long extension on the EU's terms. Either would have damaged him greatly and the GE, when it came, would have been a different story. But they bottled it. Tried to have their cake and eat it. Weren't sharp enough. Weren't united or ruthless enough. They allowed different and clashing agendas to get in the way. Paradise Lost - ah well.
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
The wage bill for all on air talent has been cut by 10% overall to £130m, down from £144m last year....
However, many stars do not appear on the list because the corporation's commercial arm, BBC Studios, does not have to publish its talent spend....
Claudia Winkelman also disappears from the list, as Strictly Come Dancing isn't counted either.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57722068
We have reduced our on air talent bill....haven't we done well....yeah but you bumped a load of big earners off that list and onto another one that we can't see and doesn't count for your on air talent bill.
Add to it that the courts had stood back and handed parliament a quasi judicial function in terms of assessing whether the advisory referendum result was even valid - remembering that the SFO didn't complete its investigation into Banks's dealing with Russia until well into 2019, and a debate on how to tiebreak if no single specific deal could prevail. All were valid, honourable debates to have - debates on the nature of democracy.
Where I'm with you is that, at some point, realpolitik should have kicked in amongst the remainers. Their routes to success lay in either forcing TMay to accept a second referendum, or getting enough support around an alternative figure to change the Brexit deal, or getting and winning a General Election. Corbyn stood in the way of pretty much all their options.
I made a blame hierarchy at the time , saying remainers would be more to blame for No Deal and the ERG for No Brexit, by virtue of being wrong about the reality of their ability to force their position. May's deal was the possible out ball for either side. Now, perhaps the blocker to that was party politics and they knew it would likely come to an election and they would likely lose, but even if that was the choice the deal should not have been dismissed quite so airily as it was.
Taking Johnson's deal as on the No Deal side - worse than that where May's deal had stepping stones to bridge and resolve the contradictions over years, Boris is now fudging all the same things but relying solely on an ability to walk on water (or have an EU pop down a stepping stone at an apt moment) to cross. Boris's deal has not avoided a single one the issues that May's deal planned a careful route through.
What I guess I'm saying is that I regard what the remainers did as a strategic error rather than either a moral failure or a properly justified shot to nothing.
The sad reality is that some today would rather lie and pretend that Ever Closer Union is not a thing despite the Euro, see the dishonest remarks from Nigel earlier in this thread, than actually advocate for a democratic European federation as the end state to be in favour of.
The only thing I'm not certain of is if the dishonest people claiming that Ever Closer Union isn't real are just lying to us, or if they're lying to themselves and actually believe that too.
My god, @2.66 England are a clear lay!
Say it ain’t so
The bungs are tiny, not huge, by any reasonable international comparison.
There are other candidates at constituency level than Tory and LibDem. There are other candidates for Prime Minister by the end of 2021 than Boris Johnson.
There are parties other than Tory and Lib Dem but I'd oppose them even more than I would the Tories and Lib Dems. I narrow down to those two as they are the only parties I could see myself supporting.
If a sane, liberal, centre-right party is available other than the Tories or Lib Dems then please point it out to me as I've not seen any alternative.
As I previously said (which you conveniently ignored) France is never going into a full political union with Germany. Ever. Period. But your small EU hating mind will never be able to understand, Duh!
Given that this is only a few percent different to the number vaccinated, I would expect that number to be much lower among the under 18 cohorts
https://twitter.com/gideonrachman/status/1412367708939862023
Gideon Rachman
@gideonrachman
Amazing stat in this @sarahoconnor_ piece. The government thought there were 370,000 Rumanians in Britain; 918,000 have applied for settled status. https://ft.com/content/1c489fb7-2840-4810-b3e6-a036803edf5c via
@financialtimes
Hopefully over the next 5-10 years we can eject the politicians who led us down this path and rebuild a better relationship with the EU, but it should not be re-join.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
You're in denial of that which everyone sane and honest can see: The EU is about Ever Closer Union. It is the very first line, very first principle of the project. You wish to deny that the French and Germans are seeking a political union while they make no secret of the fact that is what they want. Macron is up front, open and honest about his desire to see more EU integration so why do you hate that or deny that? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/15/emmanuel-macron-sets-out-10-year-vision-for-eu-with-call-for-more-integration
That you are in denial just makes you look silly and petulant, not wise. It seems that you are the one who hates what the EU really is so you're trying to deny it and turn it into something it isn't. I don't hate the EU - I wish them well. If the French and Germans want a political union and integrated defence policies etc as Macron is calling for and as they've been building for the better part of three quarters of a century now then good luck to them. It is the logical end point of a single currency and unlike you it seems I wish them well. I just wish them well as our neighbours instead of trying to bring their project down from the inside like you seem to want.
So more than a month to go of being pinged and having to stay at home
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1412376163733884932
Antibodies against coronavirus (COVID-19)
The presence of antibodies to COVID-19 suggests that a person previously had the infection or has been vaccinated. In the week beginning 7 June 2021, the percentage of people that would have tested positive for antibodies is estimated to be:
86.6% in England
88.7% in Wales
85.4% in Northern Ireland
79.1% in Scotland
The forecasts indicate that net immigration from the AC-10 to the UK after the current
enlargement of the EU will be relatively small, at between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants per year
up to 2010. (although they do caveat this, this is the central prediction).
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/14332/1/14332.pdf
No common idea amongst its members as to what it wants, no idea how to get there (obviously), and a leadership that could be improved on by the Goodies singing Funky Gibbon.