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Johnson NOT being fined would be the worst Tory outcome – politicalbetting.com

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  • Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,838

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    This is not news. Starmer has been saying for the last two years, unequivocally, that we won't be rejoining the EU and that Brexit is over as an issue. He knows it would be electoral suicide to have 'rejoin' in any Labour manifesto for the foreseeable future. And I'd guess over 90% of Labour members support that view, whether for electoral or ideological reasons. Of course, that doesn't tie any hands 15 or 20 years down the line. And he will seek to improve trading and other relationships with the EU.
    Yep. And neither will he go near SM with FM. Or even CU. His priority for GE24 is winning back a ton of RW seats. He knows that without that he won't be PM. (Something I always find useful to remember is that in FPTP terms Leave won the EU referendum by a landslide.)
  • Heathener said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I would expect that by the time we rejoin it will be supported by political opinion across the spectrum including many Tories.

    Yes.

    If the Conservative and Unionist Party ever recovers from their takeover by parasitic Brexiteers they will propose "ever closer ties with our closest and largest trading partners" to avoid being the sick man of Europe. Again.
    You are facing years of fruitless 'howling in the wind' over this now Labour have ruled out rejoining
    I suspect the best route for anyone wanting to rejoin would be:

    1. Move to Scotland and claim Scottish nationality (which at the moment isn't a thing)
    2. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scottish independence
    3. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scotland to join the EU

    Could be a tortuous wait ;)
    Lifetime probably
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Poor dome head Scholz head must be freezing 🥶 has he not been paying any attention to how to do the big Kremlin photo op!
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Because the way the Eurozealots had acted since the referendum made it look like a trap.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    Weather conditions in Ukraine could be effecting decisions . Quite an early warm up with temps well above freezing so if the thaw comes early it suggests Russia would need to move quickly or any invasion is unlikely to happen in the immediate future as it could hinder their tank movements .

  • Starmer supporting not rejoining the EU seems to have upset the imaginary voters the Tories have decided aren't voting Labour.

    Back in the real world, Starmer announced this policy literally whilst he was running for leader.

    Brexit as an argument is over - if this is what the Tories wish to fight then Labour will win in a landslide. Out of ideas, out of touch. Time to go.

    If you think the argument on Brexit is over you cannot be following this forum, and you may be surprised to learn that I am pleased he announced it yesterday removing any vestige of rejoining, notwithstanding the many in Labour who have never really left the EU in their mind and thought
    I'm sorry, but Brexit is talked about more on here by those in favour of it rather than those opposed.

    Despite what you say, I struggle to think of any Labour (or Lib Dem for that matter) supporter on here who thinks that 'rejoin' should be in their manifesto for the next election. If there are any, they are few in number. Indeed, I think the strongest anti-Brexit rhetoric on this forum comes from a couple of disillusioned Tory supporters.
    There is an opening gap between labour's now declared position and the lib dems who do say their aim is to rejoin
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083
    kjh said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    (puts tin hat on)

    The speaker should have forced the commons to vote via STV in the meaningful votes, thereby discovering which outcome the Commons disliked the least & allowing things to move forward with a full vote in the Commons for that option afterwards.
    In my opinion tin hat not needed. Can the speaker do that? Don't see why not.
    The Speaker wouldn't be able to allow the Commons to approve a motion based on a different voting system without a majority vote of the Commons, I don't think. The most likely approach would have been a slight tweak to the indicative votes process which led to the most popular option being chosen to be put to the House for confirmation by majority vote (even if it had not secured a majority in the indicative votes process, which none of the options did). But even then a majority could have blocked it.

    The other problem was the a majority of the Conservative party had an effective veto on any course of action, including one approved by an innovative STV system, because they could have interrupted any process with VONC in May. That veto was only effective as long as she refused to work on a cross-party basis for the good of the country... so obviously that means it was always going to be 100% effective.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708
    Heathener said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I would expect that by the time we rejoin it will be supported by political opinion across the spectrum including many Tories.

    Yes.

    If the Conservative and Unionist Party ever recovers from their takeover by parasitic Brexiteers they will propose "ever closer ties with our closest and largest trading partners" to avoid being the sick man of Europe. Again.
    You are facing years of fruitless 'howling in the wind' over this now Labour have ruled out rejoining
    I suspect the best route for anyone wanting to rejoin would be:

    1. Move to Scotland and claim Scottish nationality (which at the moment isn't a thing)
    2. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scottish independence
    3. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scotland to join the EU

    Could be a tortuous wait ;)
    Scotland is not getting indyref2 any time soon but even if Starmer became PM and allowed it and Yes won Scotland might not even rejoin the EU anyway but just go for Norway style EEA. Spain for example could veto Scottish EU entry to avoid a precedent being set for Catalonia
  • Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    At the time of the 'indicitive votes' the entire party majority system had broken down. One reason why Boris's 'Get brexit done' worked, as the public just wanted an end to the deadlock.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited February 2022

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Indeed. As discussed on almost endless occasions chez PB, the underlying problem was Tory splits and incoherence, and May's continual elevation of the most extreme ERG elements into setting national policy.
  • Heathener said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I would expect that by the time we rejoin it will be supported by political opinion across the spectrum including many Tories.

    Yes.

    If the Conservative and Unionist Party ever recovers from their takeover by parasitic Brexiteers they will propose "ever closer ties with our closest and largest trading partners" to avoid being the sick man of Europe. Again.
    You are facing years of fruitless 'howling in the wind' over this now Labour have ruled out rejoining
    I suspect the best route for anyone wanting to rejoin would be:

    1. Move to Scotland and claim Scottish nationality (which at the moment isn't a thing)
    2. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scottish independence
    3. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scotland to join the EU

    Could be a tortuous wait ;)
    Wouldn't it be easier to:

    1. Move to Ireland.
    2. Claim Irish citizenship.

    Be a much shorter wait.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    There is great disgust among many natural Tories. They won't want to vote to endorse a Johnson led Party.
    There is no great enthusiasm for a Starmer led government.
    Both things are true at once. Makes the next GE more difficult to call than any recent one I think.
    These factors may change, even with no leadership changes. But I think it will be easier for Starmer to do that, as he only needs to keep buggering on. Johnson needs to change character.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,838
    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    I don't follow this thread header. The worst thing surely is Boris being fined, but then not being VONCed? Having a confirmed law breaker in post is surely the worst scenario.

    If he's not fined, because he's not broken the law, then that would be strange given all the reporting that has happened - but if he's not actually broken the law then he's not broken the rules. But I expect he will be and surely being fined and then kept on is the worst case scenario?

    Is fined = speeding fine type fine.

    If the PM was clocked going at 81mph on the motorway I genuinely wouldn't know how much of one there would be or even if there would be an outcry.

    Bl**dy idiot is what people might say and also there but for the grace of god...

    And yes he did make the lockdown rules; he also made the speeding rules.
    When did Boris make the speeding rules?

    Not repealing existing laws is not the same thing as introducing new ones. If there had never been a speed limit, then Boris introduced it, then that would be comparable, not having existing laws already being there.
    He is in charge of all rules and laws isn't he?
    Breaking your own rules that you foist upon others is simply worse than breaking pre-existing rules that society is used to and socially accepts that they get broken from time to time like speeding.
    "worse" - so it is less bad for a PM to break pre-existing laws.
    Yes. The PM should not be above the law so should be subject to the relevant punishment, eg in that case 3 points and a fixed penalty notice.

    But to break a law you've imposed on others, that is definitely far, far worse. Which means the inverse is clearly less bad.
    Bizarre that you should have constructed a hierarchy of transgressions wrt the law and the PM. It of course exists only in your head.
    Not that bizarre considering its the conversation that has been dominating issues for months so we've all thought about it already. And yes, my opinions do reside in my head - yours reside in yours too.

    Hypocrisy being an issue to take objection to is not just something that exists in my head. I find it odd you can't wrap your head around the hypocrisy of a PM introducing then breaking his own law - but I suspect you can and are just playing Devils Advocate.
    I'm with you on this one. If the PM banned cigarettes, and was then caught having a sneaky fag in the Downing Street garden, he'd have to go, wouldn't he?
    Exactly!

    Whereas PM having a sneaky fag when the guidance is that you shouldn't smoke may be politically an issue but it isn't breaking the rules.
    But if the PM said in Parliament "I followed the guidance about not smoking at all times".... that's a bigger issue isn't it?

    This comes down to two things: "criminality" (I realise that's not quite accurate in the context of PCNs but it's how the public see "breaking the law") and misleading Parliament. I don't think there's any significant doubt that the Tory party would tolerate and justify criminality if they thought the PM was their best route to retain power despite the criminality. I'm less sure that they will be prepared to line up behind the principle that it's OK for the PM to lie to Parliament to get himself out of trouble.
    But isn't that what is already happening?
    I'm afraid it is, yes. He has beyond all reasonable doubt to a reasonable person lied to parliament multiple times. Yet he has not resigned and his MPs have not sacked him. Ergo lying to parliament is no longer a resigning matter. Such is the damage that this man is doing to our politics. It will continue until he's gone.
    I am not sure his MPs have decided not to sack him for lying to Parliament because they are still able to pretend to themselves that it's not proven and that due process has to be followed. The crunch point will be when it's completely evident and they have to defend the position they take. If they justify it and insist it's not a resigning matter the damage will be permanent though, because a system that allows lying will be one in which politicians prepared to be dishonest will have an advantage over those who try to be truthful.
    Let's hope so. Let's hope they've decided he has to go and are just waiting to pull the trigger at a time that suits. I'm in the 'believe it when I see it' camp now though.
  • Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    edited February 2022
    That's OK, then.

    FIA’s integrity will remain intact in Abu Dhabi analysis outcome – Ben Sulayem
    https://www.racefans.net/2022/02/15/fias-integrity-will-remain-intact-in-abu-dhabi-analysis-outcome-ben-sulayem/
    ...However following yesterday’s commission meeting Ben Sulayem confirmed the inquiry into the race remains incomplete. “We agreed on certain things,” he told Sky. “The analysis is still going on, it will come soon but it was a good discussion there so we will see.”...

    https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/fia-changes-f1-points-rules-after-belgian-gp-washout/8170151/
    ...F1 found itself in controversy when the Belgian GP was hit by heavy and persistent rain at Spa-Francorchamps last August, resulting in race start delays before it was officially begun with formation laps behind the safety car.

    After further delays, the race was stopped by the stewards to target a period when the rain was forecast to ease off. But when that didn't arrive to provide sufficient safe conditions to restart the race, two full race laps were completed behind the safety car to ensure a classification could be issued.

    As a result, Max Verstappen was declared the winner, with the top 10 awarded half points in the shortest grand prix in F1's recorded history.

    Following backlash from fans, the FIA has changed the rules around shortened races, with no points awarded for a race unless a minimum of two laps have been completed by the race leader without a safety car or virtual safety car – meaning no points would have been awarded for last year's Belgian GP under the new rules...
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    I doubt that it will have that effect TBH. In any event Ed Whotsit simply lacks the pizzazz to make much impact. Best the LibDems can hope for is to slipstream behind Labour and pick up a few marginals from the Tories.

    From Starmer's POV this is all about future-proofing the General Election campaign and preventing Boris from exploiting fears about a referendum re-run.

    If we accept that Boris may hang on, then the biggest threat to the opposition is their respective leaders' extraordinary lack of personality or oomph. Major was facing Blair and Ashdown. What a contrast with Starmer and thingummy. This personality issue matters - look how Theresa May threw away her apparently unassailable poll lead in 2017.
    May still won most seats in 2017 though.

    Starmer's lack of personality is not a votewinner but if Boris remains unpopular then Starmer is a dull aceptable alternative whereas Corbyn was not even that for swing voters
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083
    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    I don't follow this thread header. The worst thing surely is Boris being fined, but then not being VONCed? Having a confirmed law breaker in post is surely the worst scenario.

    If he's not fined, because he's not broken the law, then that would be strange given all the reporting that has happened - but if he's not actually broken the law then he's not broken the rules. But I expect he will be and surely being fined and then kept on is the worst case scenario?

    Is fined = speeding fine type fine.

    If the PM was clocked going at 81mph on the motorway I genuinely wouldn't know how much of one there would be or even if there would be an outcry.

    Bl**dy idiot is what people might say and also there but for the grace of god...

    And yes he did make the lockdown rules; he also made the speeding rules.
    When did Boris make the speeding rules?

    Not repealing existing laws is not the same thing as introducing new ones. If there had never been a speed limit, then Boris introduced it, then that would be comparable, not having existing laws already being there.
    He is in charge of all rules and laws isn't he?
    Breaking your own rules that you foist upon others is simply worse than breaking pre-existing rules that society is used to and socially accepts that they get broken from time to time like speeding.
    "worse" - so it is less bad for a PM to break pre-existing laws.
    Yes. The PM should not be above the law so should be subject to the relevant punishment, eg in that case 3 points and a fixed penalty notice.

    But to break a law you've imposed on others, that is definitely far, far worse. Which means the inverse is clearly less bad.
    Bizarre that you should have constructed a hierarchy of transgressions wrt the law and the PM. It of course exists only in your head.
    Not that bizarre considering its the conversation that has been dominating issues for months so we've all thought about it already. And yes, my opinions do reside in my head - yours reside in yours too.

    Hypocrisy being an issue to take objection to is not just something that exists in my head. I find it odd you can't wrap your head around the hypocrisy of a PM introducing then breaking his own law - but I suspect you can and are just playing Devils Advocate.
    I'm with you on this one. If the PM banned cigarettes, and was then caught having a sneaky fag in the Downing Street garden, he'd have to go, wouldn't he?
    Exactly!

    Whereas PM having a sneaky fag when the guidance is that you shouldn't smoke may be politically an issue but it isn't breaking the rules.
    But if the PM said in Parliament "I followed the guidance about not smoking at all times".... that's a bigger issue isn't it?

    This comes down to two things: "criminality" (I realise that's not quite accurate in the context of PCNs but it's how the public see "breaking the law") and misleading Parliament. I don't think there's any significant doubt that the Tory party would tolerate and justify criminality if they thought the PM was their best route to retain power despite the criminality. I'm less sure that they will be prepared to line up behind the principle that it's OK for the PM to lie to Parliament to get himself out of trouble.
    But isn't that what is already happening?
    I'm afraid it is, yes. He has beyond all reasonable doubt to a reasonable person lied to parliament multiple times. Yet he has not resigned and his MPs have not sacked him. Ergo lying to parliament is no longer a resigning matter. Such is the damage that this man is doing to our politics. It will continue until he's gone.
    I am not sure his MPs have decided not to sack him for lying to Parliament because they are still able to pretend to themselves that it's not proven and that due process has to be followed. The crunch point will be when it's completely evident and they have to defend the position they take. If they justify it and insist it's not a resigning matter the damage will be permanent though, because a system that allows lying will be one in which politicians prepared to be dishonest will have an advantage over those who try to be truthful.
    Let's hope so. Let's hope they've decided he has to go and are just waiting to pull the trigger at a time that suits. I'm in the 'believe it when I see it' camp now though.
    The opposite of "have not decided not to sack him" is not "have decided to sack him".
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727

    Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.

    Which they now hate
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Scott_xP said:
    "Government Breaks Law!"
    It isn't the headline it once was.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited February 2022
    dixiedean said:

    There is great disgust among many natural Tories. They won't want to vote to endorse a Johnson led Party.
    There is no great enthusiasm for a Starmer led government.
    Both things are true at once. Makes the next GE more difficult to call than any recent one I think.
    These factors may change, even with no leadership changes. But I think it will be easier for Starmer to do that, as he only needs to keep buggering on. Johnson needs to change character.

    As long as the narrative continues about Tory decadence, not foreign wars or Labour splits, I think Labour will probably win. Starmer just has to continue looking like the living embodiment of the absolute opposite of Johnsonite corruption and dissolute, who-cares laxity to win.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    Norway+ was never an option. The ERG and most Tory backbenchers would have voted it down as would diehard Remainers and many Labour backbenchers from Leave seats too as it required free movement.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    Are you absolving Jeremy Corbyn?

    Had he not been so ambivalent about the EU, had he not been such a vile, nasty, anti-Semitic Marxist, then we would be living in a very different country right now, under a very different Prime Minister.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This Norway plus was never an option even if MPs had agreed it as May would have been brought down within days . The idea that an option which still allowed a form of freedom of movement would survive isn’t based on reality . The Leave vote won because of the immigration argument . If anything Mays fatal mistake was in not concentrating on that aspect.

    Strong trade ties with restrictions on immigration is what she should have gone for .
  • Scott_xP said:

    Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.

    Which they now hate
    Hence the casting around for Scapegoats.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    edited February 2022
    duplicate deleted.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
  • At the risk of going over very very well tread ground

    Labour/Starmers position was pretty clear as per the manifesto:

    Labour will give the people the final say on Brexit. Within three months of coming to power, a Labour government will secure a sensible deal. And within six months, we will put that deal to a public vote alongside the option to remain. A Labour government will implement whatever the people decide.

    It was pretty clear that was a path to remain, as argued at the time. No matter what 'deal' was there.



  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.
  • Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.

    It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
  • dixiedean said:

    There is great disgust among many natural Tories. They won't want to vote to endorse a Johnson led Party.
    There is no great enthusiasm for a Starmer led government.
    Both things are true at once. Makes the next GE more difficult to call than any recent one I think.
    These factors may change, even with no leadership changes. But I think it will be easier for Starmer to do that, as he only needs to keep buggering on. Johnson needs to change character.

    There are some on here who have declared the next GE a labour win with the conservative party doomed, but that does not take into account the changing circumstances and narratives over the next 2 years and is a very complacent attitude

    It is always wise to remember a week is a long time in politics
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    Nigelb said:
    Well, that's one way of spinning a court case where Jolyon got his arse handed to him.
  • Nigelb said:

    duplicate deleted.

    "The campaign group the Good Law Project had joined the trust in making complaints – arguing the government had not adopted an “open” process when making appointments to posts “critical to the pandemic response”.

    However, judges dismissed the claim by the Good Law Project."
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096

    Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.

    It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.

    You may wish to but the majority of Britain does not agree with you. So that kind of tory party wishcasting won't wash.

    We gave up so much and the visceral scars of that will still be etched into our beings fifty years from now, let alone five. To see the very man who forced these laws on us so flagrantly piss all over us is something we will never ever forget. He stays in power, you lose.

    You don't like it? Then you don't understand us.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557

    Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.

    It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.

    "Let's wait for the outcome of the....


    ... time to move on now."

    Time for the PM to move out.
  • Heathener said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    Are you absolving Jeremy Corbyn?

    Had he not been so ambivalent about the EU, had he not been such a vile, nasty, anti-Semitic Marxist, then we would be living in a very different country right now, under a very different Prime Minister.
    Corbyn was dreadful and I voted against him as leader twice. However, I would note that we now have a perfectly decent leader (although FWIW I didn't vote for him either) while the leader of the Conservative party is a vile, nasty, racist liar who appoints Marxists to the House of Lords and debases the office of prime minister with every second that he squats in Number 10.
  • Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    It would also have required the Europhobes to admit defeat. Norway+ is BRINO remember, and completely frustrates the Singapore-on-Thames Brexiteer group.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096

    dixiedean said:

    There is great disgust among many natural Tories. They won't want to vote to endorse a Johnson led Party.
    There is no great enthusiasm for a Starmer led government.
    Both things are true at once. Makes the next GE more difficult to call than any recent one I think.
    These factors may change, even with no leadership changes. But I think it will be easier for Starmer to do that, as he only needs to keep buggering on. Johnson needs to change character.


    It is always wise to remember a week is a long time in politics
    It is also wise to reading the writing on the wall
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
  • Scott_xP said:
    See full judgement upthread.

    Good Law Project had no standing - their case thrown out in its entirety.

    Runnymede won on one out of three complaints, two not upheld.

    Not that you’d gather that from the Guardian headline.
  • Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    When May immediately ruled it out via her red lines. Is she one of your Eurozealots?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,838
    edited February 2022

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    I don't follow this thread header. The worst thing surely is Boris being fined, but then not being VONCed? Having a confirmed law breaker in post is surely the worst scenario.

    If he's not fined, because he's not broken the law, then that would be strange given all the reporting that has happened - but if he's not actually broken the law then he's not broken the rules. But I expect he will be and surely being fined and then kept on is the worst case scenario?

    Is fined = speeding fine type fine.

    If the PM was clocked going at 81mph on the motorway I genuinely wouldn't know how much of one there would be or even if there would be an outcry.

    Bl**dy idiot is what people might say and also there but for the grace of god...

    And yes he did make the lockdown rules; he also made the speeding rules.
    When did Boris make the speeding rules?

    Not repealing existing laws is not the same thing as introducing new ones. If there had never been a speed limit, then Boris introduced it, then that would be comparable, not having existing laws already being there.
    He is in charge of all rules and laws isn't he?
    Breaking your own rules that you foist upon others is simply worse than breaking pre-existing rules that society is used to and socially accepts that they get broken from time to time like speeding.
    "worse" - so it is less bad for a PM to break pre-existing laws.
    Yes. The PM should not be above the law so should be subject to the relevant punishment, eg in that case 3 points and a fixed penalty notice.

    But to break a law you've imposed on others, that is definitely far, far worse. Which means the inverse is clearly less bad.
    Bizarre that you should have constructed a hierarchy of transgressions wrt the law and the PM. It of course exists only in your head.
    Not that bizarre considering its the conversation that has been dominating issues for months so we've all thought about it already. And yes, my opinions do reside in my head - yours reside in yours too.

    Hypocrisy being an issue to take objection to is not just something that exists in my head. I find it odd you can't wrap your head around the hypocrisy of a PM introducing then breaking his own law - but I suspect you can and are just playing Devils Advocate.
    I'm with you on this one. If the PM banned cigarettes, and was then caught having a sneaky fag in the Downing Street garden, he'd have to go, wouldn't he?
    Exactly!

    Whereas PM having a sneaky fag when the guidance is that you shouldn't smoke may be politically an issue but it isn't breaking the rules.
    But if the PM said in Parliament "I followed the guidance about not smoking at all times".... that's a bigger issue isn't it?

    This comes down to two things: "criminality" (I realise that's not quite accurate in the context of PCNs but it's how the public see "breaking the law") and misleading Parliament. I don't think there's any significant doubt that the Tory party would tolerate and justify criminality if they thought the PM was their best route to retain power despite the criminality. I'm less sure that they will be prepared to line up behind the principle that it's OK for the PM to lie to Parliament to get himself out of trouble.
    But isn't that what is already happening?
    I'm afraid it is, yes. He has beyond all reasonable doubt to a reasonable person lied to parliament multiple times. Yet he has not resigned and his MPs have not sacked him. Ergo lying to parliament is no longer a resigning matter. Such is the damage that this man is doing to our politics. It will continue until he's gone.
    I wouldn't assume it will all improve when he finally slopes off. The sickness in the Tory party goes way beyond one man.
    His facetious gurning persona in number 10 is in itself corrosive, so seeing the back of it will bring tangible benefits imo. But, god, yes then there's the party. Its collective heart & mind been rotted by Brexit. And it's not like I was a fan before.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited February 2022

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    When May immediately ruled it out via her red lines. Is she one of your Eurozealots?
    Exactly. It was almost immediately after the referendum that May precisely ruled this out, purely to appease the ERG and keep her job.
  • Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Nor the Guardian…
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708
    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    edited February 2022
    The larger issue is, of course, the many billions wasted through an ill conceived track and trace system.
    Set up by someone with no background whatsoever in what she was supposed to be running.
  • HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    And fundamentally having a non-contributory benefits system, unlike most EU countries - but no one wanted to touch that.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    If Corbyn had been balls out for Remain rather than the lukewarm 7/10 he gave it then I'm pretty sure you and I would have been on the winning side and Remain would have won.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Applicant said:

    I don't follow this thread header. The worst thing surely is Boris being fined, but then not being VONCed? Having a confirmed law breaker in post is surely the worst scenario.

    If he's not fined, because he's not broken the law, then that would be strange given all the reporting that has happened - but if he's not actually broken the law then he's not broken the rules. But I expect he will be and surely being fined and then kept on is the worst case scenario?

    The bit in bold doesn't actually follow to the average person, because so much of what they considered "the rules" was merely guidance not law.
    As Cyclefree and others have long pointed out, guidance was never a rule. The law is a rule, guidance is not.

    Drinking 22 units of alcohol in a week in your living room is against government guidance, the guidance limit for a week for a male is 21 units.
    Drinking 22 units of alcohol in a night in the pub then driving home is against the law.

    Only the latter is a breach of the rules. Even if some people chose to treat "guidance" as rules, it never was, and never has been.
    So what happens to all the people who were fined?
    Genuine question: has anyone actually been convicted by a court, for a breach of the Coronavirus regulations?

    A lot of people have paid fixed penalty notices, including Kay Burley, but every report I’ve seen about people going to court the result has been an acquittal, due to the police and prosecutors failing to make their case in the context of what was actually the law in effect at the time of the alleged offence.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,112

    Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Nor the Guardian…
    You mean, you are arguing that a newspaper should headline the story "Tory Minister Follows the Law"? Newspapers normally print news, so if that is news ...
  • Nigelb said:

    That's OK, then.

    FIA’s integrity will remain intact in Abu Dhabi analysis outcome – Ben Sulayem
    https://www.racefans.net/2022/02/15/fias-integrity-will-remain-intact-in-abu-dhabi-analysis-outcome-ben-sulayem/
    ...However following yesterday’s commission meeting Ben Sulayem confirmed the inquiry into the race remains incomplete. “We agreed on certain things,” he told Sky. “The analysis is still going on, it will come soon but it was a good discussion there so we will see.”...

    https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/fia-changes-f1-points-rules-after-belgian-gp-washout/8170151/
    ...F1 found itself in controversy when the Belgian GP was hit by heavy and persistent rain at Spa-Francorchamps last August, resulting in race start delays before it was officially begun with formation laps behind the safety car.

    After further delays, the race was stopped by the stewards to target a period when the rain was forecast to ease off. But when that didn't arrive to provide sufficient safe conditions to restart the race, two full race laps were completed behind the safety car to ensure a classification could be issued.

    As a result, Max Verstappen was declared the winner, with the top 10 awarded half points in the shortest grand prix in F1's recorded history.

    Following backlash from fans, the FIA has changed the rules around shortened races, with no points awarded for a race unless a minimum of two laps have been completed by the race leader without a safety car or virtual safety car – meaning no points would have been awarded for last year's Belgian GP under the new rules...

    The Belgian GP "win" for Verstappen was the problem with most of the Abu Dhabi scenarios. If they both retired or crashed Max wins due to more wins - Belgium being his plus one. Had there been no points awarded Hamilton was 10 pints ahead going into Abu Dhabi and the last lap fiasco wouldn't have mattered as Hamilton wins the championship.

    Belgium was absurd in so many ways and its fitting that the FIA's greed in not wanting to refund race tickets screwed them at the end.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago
    “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”

    If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?

    So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?

    Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    Nigelb said:

    That's OK, then.

    FIA’s integrity will remain intact in Abu Dhabi analysis outcome – Ben Sulayem......

    FIA will not disclose findings of inquiry into Abu Dhabi Grand Prix controversy
    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/14/fia-formula-one-inquiry-abu-dhabi-grand-prix-max-verstappen-lewis-hamilton
  • timpletimple Posts: 117
    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    We could also have imposed, AT ANY TIME, the rules on free movement some countries have in place. i.e. Austria. https://www.academics.com/guide/visa-permit-austria#subnav_austrian_residence_permit_for_eu_citizens
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708
    timple said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    We could also have imposed, AT ANY TIME, the rules on free movement some countries have in place. i.e. Austria. https://www.academics.com/guide/visa-permit-austria#subnav_austrian_residence_permit_for_eu_citizens
    Yes but it was the transition controls on the surge of migrants from poorer Eastern Europe that was key.

    Immigration only became a problem when Blair failed to properly manage that, free movement from western European nations was never much of an issue
  • Heathener said:

    dixiedean said:

    There is great disgust among many natural Tories. They won't want to vote to endorse a Johnson led Party.
    There is no great enthusiasm for a Starmer led government.
    Both things are true at once. Makes the next GE more difficult to call than any recent one I think.
    These factors may change, even with no leadership changes. But I think it will be easier for Starmer to do that, as he only needs to keep buggering on. Johnson needs to change character.


    It is always wise to remember a week is a long time in politics
    It is also wise to reading the writing on the wall
    The writing can change very quickly and GE 24 is still all to play for

    Indeed, it is not impossible that even Boris could win, but I expect he will not fight the next election
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Applicant said:

    Nigelb said:
    Well, that's one way of spinning a court case where Jolyon got his arse handed to him.
    Again.
  • Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Oddly enough completely omits to mention they were found to have no standing:

    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    It would also have required the Europhobes to admit defeat. Norway+ is BRINO remember, and completely frustrates the Singapore-on-Thames Brexiteer group.
    If the Eurozealots(*) had reacted to the result by saying "yes we lost, but only by a narrow margin, we should go for EEA" they would have had a comfortable majority amongst the public and the "all out"ers would have been marginalised.

    (*) And yes, I include Cameron in this - his flounce was deeply damaging.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    And fundamentally having a non-contributory benefits system, unlike most EU countries - but no one wanted to touch that.
    Germany and France for example also have some non contributory benefits.

    It was the pressure on housing and public services and undercutting of low skilled workers' wages by lack of controls on Eastern European migration that was the key

  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    When May immediately ruled it out via her red lines. Is she one of your Eurozealots?
    Exactly. It was almost immediately after the referendum that May precisely ruled this out, purely to appease the ERG and keep her job.
    "almost" is doing a lot of work there.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    timple said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    We could also have imposed, AT ANY TIME, the rules on free movement some countries have in place. i.e. Austria. https://www.academics.com/guide/visa-permit-austria#subnav_austrian_residence_permit_for_eu_citizens
    But that would have required someone actually reading the EU rules and working out how to fix the mess created when we combined our welfare system with those rules.
  • Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    When May immediately ruled it out via her red lines. Is she one of your Eurozealots?
    Exactly. It was almost immediately after the referendum that May precisely ruled this out, purely to appease the ERG and keep her job.
    And she was grimly, pragmatically right to do that. Had she wobbled, even then, the ERG would have had her out of office faster than you can say "vassal state".

    This version of Brexit was baked in by the Vote Leave campaign. They just ignored (and continue to be outraged) by the downsides of taking back this much control.

    But dumb as the 2nd Ref campaign was, it wasn't as dumb as those who planned to ally with Farage to get out of the EU and then with the ex-remainers to land in EEA. They really messed up, forgetting that you have to dance with the one who brung ya.
  • Welcome to PB, Mr. Mondeo.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    timple said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    We could also have imposed, AT ANY TIME, the rules on free movement some countries have in place. i.e. Austria. https://www.academics.com/guide/visa-permit-austria#subnav_austrian_residence_permit_for_eu_citizens
    Sure, if we wanted to be seen as "bad Europeans".
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited February 2022
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    And fundamentally having a non-contributory benefits system, unlike most EU countries - but no one wanted to touch that.
    Germany and France for example also have some non contributory benefits.

    It was the pressure on housing and public services and undercutting of low skilled workers' wages by lack of controls on Eastern European migration that was the key

    It was the 2015 migration crisis that was the key, I would say. Before that the EU was still* near the bottom of most voters' priorities, even after all this Eastern European migration and 20 years of tabloid headlines. I also wouldn't say pressures on housing, compared to Germany and other countres, or low wages, again compared to Germany and other countries', were primarliy caused by immigration.

    I think the Tories have understood ever since then that there was a sizeable chunk of authoritarian, anti-minority populism contributing to the vote, although not all of it, that they have to appease in other ways, too.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    edited February 2022
    There used to be a much larger minimum distance (I think a third or half) required for a race stopped due to rain to deliver half-points. Happened to Button at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix.

    Edited extra bit: seems weird to note I offered tips for that race... 13 years ago.
  • Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    'Big, bad Eurozealots made us do it and ran away'
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited February 2022

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Which one is this one?

    Great Jumping Jolyon really needs to be giving his activist interventions in politics a four digit code number. We'll all lose count.

    Checking, I see it is the one where he claimed that Kate Bingham amongst others was a crony appointment, and therefore unlawful.

    I do love these lawyer names:

    Coppel
    Slarks
    Sweeney
    Pobjoy

    All we need is Johnson, Wesley, Bach, and we have a Trumpton Fire Brigade for the 18th Century.

    (PS: I see he is claiming victory:
    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/ )
  • Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.

    It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.

    Laughable
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    There used to be a much larger minimum distance (I think a third or half) required for a race stopped due to rain to deliver half-points. Happened to Button at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix.

    Edited extra bit: seems weird to note I offered tips for that race... 13 years ago.

    IIRC it’s always been two laps, up to 2/3 race distance for the half points. What’s changed, is that they could run the two laps behind the safety car.

    What happened in Spa didn’t look like a serious effort to actually hold a race, but rather an exercise in doing the minimum necessary to avoid a cancellation (with refunds for the crowd).
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Oddly enough completely omits to mention they were found to have no standing:

    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/
    For an organisation run by a QC, it sometimes has an * ahem * "interesting" approach to accuracy.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708
    edited February 2022
    Farage backs Putin '‘I’ve thought for 30 years that the Nato policy of expanding ever eastwards was a huge strategic error’
    https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1493509238714478592?s=20&t=c5ldl9kn08a2lARpzbN2Qg.

  • Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.

    You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708
    edited February 2022

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.

    You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
    Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.

    For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited February 2022
    HYUFD said:

    Farage backs Putin '‘I’ve thought for 30 years that the Nato policy of expanding ever eastwards was a huge strategic error’
    https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1493509238714478592?s=20&t=c5ldl9kn08a2lARpzbN2Qg.

    Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct ; although not necessarily, if Ukraine never joins, I think. Unfortunately he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values and against the liberal conspiracy etc.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,838
    edited February 2022
    Phil said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    There is, naturally, plenty of blame to go around & the pro-Euro / anti-government factions’ refusal to vote for any of the saner options in the meaningful votes is absolutely on them.

    Equally, Brexiteer intransigence & unwillingness to understand EU red lines is /also/ what got us where we are today. Euro die hards and mad Brexiteers holding hands across the aisle: a love song for the ages.
    Ah the old perennial! When the world stops revolving and spins slowly down to die we'll still be doing this one - Who is to blame for the worst case Brexit we got? (with Tory landslide and worst PM in history thrown in for luck).

    My view on it is the same as 'TimS' posted a few days ago. Essentially nobody. The 2017 Parliament was fiendishly distributed into its various factions and each one played their hand logically (as they saw it) according to their different agendas and priorities and objectives.

    Fwiw (and I did say this at the time) imo the biggest error by the Forces of Light was the Benn Act aka Surrender Bill. This allowed Dick Dom Dastardly and his sidekick Muscly Muttley to frame the People v Parliament narrative which powered the GE result on Dec 12th (and therefore the Brexit outcome).
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708
    edited February 2022

    HYUFD said:

    Farage backs Putin '‘I’ve thought for 30 years that the Nato policy of expanding ever eastwards was a huge strategic error’
    https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1493509238714478592?s=20&t=c5ldl9kn08a2lARpzbN2Qg.

    Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
    Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).

    I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Oddly enough completely omits to mention they were found to have no standing:

    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/
    For an organisation run by a QC, it sometimes has an * ahem * "interesting" approach to accuracy.
    It would be rather amusing if one day a judge labels him a vexatious litigant.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.

    You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
    You're missing the point: by the time May became PM, and certainly by the time of the Lancaster House speech, the damage was done.

    And I'm not ascribing it to Labour as such - as shown by the fact that the person I blame most for it is Cameron.
  • Mr. Sandpit, I stand corrected. But agree entirely on it being an exercise in avoiding refunds.
  • Sandpit said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Oddly enough completely omits to mention they were found to have no standing:

    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/
    For an organisation run by a QC, it sometimes has an * ahem * "interesting" approach to accuracy.
    It would be rather amusing if one day a judge labels him a vexatious litigant.
    Champertous, perhaps. A good word and not often used.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,699
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    And fundamentally having a non-contributory benefits system, unlike most EU countries - but no one wanted to touch that.
    Germany and France for example also have some non contributory benefits.

    It was the pressure on housing and public services and undercutting of low skilled workers' wages by lack of controls on Eastern European migration that was the key

    It was and the tactic of telling anyone who dared to raise concerns they were ‘racist’ was far from helpful too.

    What also didn’t help also was govts talking tough on limiting migration while happily enabling migration levels way in excess of what we had ever seen before. Without any planning or infrastructure in place or a general debate with the public as to the benefits.
  • Heathener said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I would expect that by the time we rejoin it will be supported by political opinion across the spectrum including many Tories.

    Yes.

    If the Conservative and Unionist Party ever recovers from their takeover by parasitic Brexiteers they will propose "ever closer ties with our closest and largest trading partners" to avoid being the sick man of Europe. Again.
    You are facing years of fruitless 'howling in the wind' over this now Labour have ruled out rejoining
    I suspect the best route for anyone wanting to rejoin would be:

    1. Move to Scotland and claim Scottish nationality (which at the moment isn't a thing)
    2. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scottish independence
    3. Pray for, campaign for and vote for Scotland to join the EU

    Could be a tortuous wait ;)
    Lifetime probably
    Whose lifetime?
  • TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.

    We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.

    We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.

    We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
    If Corbyn had been balls out for Remain rather than the lukewarm 7/10 he gave it then I'm pretty sure you and I would have been on the winning side and Remain would have won.
    It is hard to escape the impression that Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May were leavers posing as remainers, while Boris was a remainer posing as a leaver.
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,179

    Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago
    “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”

    If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?

    So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?

    Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲

    The feeling here is that much of the build up was for domestic consumption and it failed to impress. Please note that on the day he is supposedly descalating, he has also slapped another 10 years on Navalny´s sentence on trumped up charges. The Kremlin did not expect NATO to tell him to go to hell, and Putin is in trouble and the West needs to makes sure he stays in trouble (and out of Ukraine (or Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, the Arctic etc etc etc). Now Putin is looking to learn how he can cause trouble, especially in Germany, "for next time". No compromises and no substantive deals can be made with Putin that he will not break, and that is the key take away from this.
  • PolruanPolruan Posts: 2,083
    HYUFD said:

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.

    You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
    Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.

    For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
    Gets boring saying it, but this continues to be untrue. Their constituents (some of them, in many of the seats you're referring to, a majority) had voted against being members of the EU. Norway+ refers to an arrangement entered into by a non-member of the EU. It's therefore within the scope of what those people had voted for. Nandy and others might have concluded that their constituents were opposed to freedom of movement but there is no sacrosanct democratic event that can be used to dress that up.

    No vote on freedom of movement took place. Fortunately, no vote on "the exact same benefits" took place either, or we'd really be in trouble with the will of the people.
  • HYUFD said:

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.

    You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
    Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.

    For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
    Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,410
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/15/no-10-pressure-money-laundering-measures-lord-faulks

    "Faulks, a distinguished barrister and now an independent peer, told the Guardian he was rung by Downing Street during May’s tenure and told to go to a meeting where he met civil servants from four government departments including the Foreign Office, business officials and the Home Office. They told him to drop the amendments – for which he had a voting majority in the Lords – because they assured him Whitehall had the issue in hand."
  • HYUFD said:

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.

    You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
    Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.

    For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
    Yep. But Labour MPs like Nandy didn't force May to exclude it or vote it down in the Commons. That was done by mouth-breathers like Brexit Hardman Steve Baker.
  • kinabalu said:

    Phil said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    There is, naturally, plenty of blame to go around & the pro-Euro / anti-government factions’ refusal to vote for any of the saner options in the meaningful votes is absolutely on them.

    Equally, Brexiteer intransigence & unwillingness to understand EU red lines is /also/ what got us where we are today. Euro die hards and mad Brexiteers holding hands across the aisle: a love song for the ages.
    Ah the old perennial! When the world stops revolving and spins slowly down to die we'll still be doing this one - Who is to blame for the worst case Brexit we got? (with Tory landslide and worst PM in history thrown in for luck).

    My view on it is the same as 'TimS' posted a few days ago. Essentially nobody. The 2017 Parliament was fiendishly distributed into its various factions and each one played their hand logically (as they saw it) according to their different agendas and priorities and objectives.

    Fwiw (and I did say this at the time) imo the biggest error by the Forces of Light was the Benn Act aka Surrender Bill. This allowed Dick Dom Dastardly and his sidekick Muscly Muttley to frame the People v Parliament narrative which powered the GE result on Dec 12th (and therefore the Brexit outcome).
    It's the key "what if?", that's for sure.

    Given the opportunity, would Boris'n'Dom have crashed out with no deal? Without the cover of the Benn Act, how would they have swerved?

    (I think the answer to the first is "no"; when push has come to shove, the UK has always blinked because not blinking is insane, but I don't see what the answer to the second is.)
  • Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Oddly enough completely omits to mention they were found to have no standing:

    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/
    For an organisation run by a QC, it sometimes has an * ahem * "interesting" approach to accuracy.
    Worse than that.

    Their headline is "BREAKING: High Court rules Dido Harding and Mike Coupe appointments were unlawful"

    The decision said quite clearly that: "We have already held that the individual appointment decisions themselves are not amenable to judicial review and the Runnymede Trust has no standing to challenge them as such" The Court declined to make a declaration that the appointments were illegal.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080

    Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago
    “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”

    If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?

    So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?

    Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲

    I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.

    The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.

    And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.

    If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,838
    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    kinabalu said:

    Polruan said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    I don't follow this thread header. The worst thing surely is Boris being fined, but then not being VONCed? Having a confirmed law breaker in post is surely the worst scenario.

    If he's not fined, because he's not broken the law, then that would be strange given all the reporting that has happened - but if he's not actually broken the law then he's not broken the rules. But I expect he will be and surely being fined and then kept on is the worst case scenario?

    Is fined = speeding fine type fine.

    If the PM was clocked going at 81mph on the motorway I genuinely wouldn't know how much of one there would be or even if there would be an outcry.

    Bl**dy idiot is what people might say and also there but for the grace of god...

    And yes he did make the lockdown rules; he also made the speeding rules.
    When did Boris make the speeding rules?

    Not repealing existing laws is not the same thing as introducing new ones. If there had never been a speed limit, then Boris introduced it, then that would be comparable, not having existing laws already being there.
    He is in charge of all rules and laws isn't he?
    Breaking your own rules that you foist upon others is simply worse than breaking pre-existing rules that society is used to and socially accepts that they get broken from time to time like speeding.
    "worse" - so it is less bad for a PM to break pre-existing laws.
    Yes. The PM should not be above the law so should be subject to the relevant punishment, eg in that case 3 points and a fixed penalty notice.

    But to break a law you've imposed on others, that is definitely far, far worse. Which means the inverse is clearly less bad.
    Bizarre that you should have constructed a hierarchy of transgressions wrt the law and the PM. It of course exists only in your head.
    Not that bizarre considering its the conversation that has been dominating issues for months so we've all thought about it already. And yes, my opinions do reside in my head - yours reside in yours too.

    Hypocrisy being an issue to take objection to is not just something that exists in my head. I find it odd you can't wrap your head around the hypocrisy of a PM introducing then breaking his own law - but I suspect you can and are just playing Devils Advocate.
    I'm with you on this one. If the PM banned cigarettes, and was then caught having a sneaky fag in the Downing Street garden, he'd have to go, wouldn't he?
    Exactly!

    Whereas PM having a sneaky fag when the guidance is that you shouldn't smoke may be politically an issue but it isn't breaking the rules.
    But if the PM said in Parliament "I followed the guidance about not smoking at all times".... that's a bigger issue isn't it?

    This comes down to two things: "criminality" (I realise that's not quite accurate in the context of PCNs but it's how the public see "breaking the law") and misleading Parliament. I don't think there's any significant doubt that the Tory party would tolerate and justify criminality if they thought the PM was their best route to retain power despite the criminality. I'm less sure that they will be prepared to line up behind the principle that it's OK for the PM to lie to Parliament to get himself out of trouble.
    But isn't that what is already happening?
    I'm afraid it is, yes. He has beyond all reasonable doubt to a reasonable person lied to parliament multiple times. Yet he has not resigned and his MPs have not sacked him. Ergo lying to parliament is no longer a resigning matter. Such is the damage that this man is doing to our politics. It will continue until he's gone.
    I am not sure his MPs have decided not to sack him for lying to Parliament because they are still able to pretend to themselves that it's not proven and that due process has to be followed. The crunch point will be when it's completely evident and they have to defend the position they take. If they justify it and insist it's not a resigning matter the damage will be permanent though, because a system that allows lying will be one in which politicians prepared to be dishonest will have an advantage over those who try to be truthful.
    Let's hope so. Let's hope they've decided he has to go and are just waiting to pull the trigger at a time that suits. I'm in the 'believe it when I see it' camp now though.
    The opposite of "have not decided not to sack him" is not "have decided to sack him".
    If the polls and/or local elections make it clear to Tory MPs they need to ditch him for the sake of their GE prospects, then I can see them acting. What I can't quite see them doing is removing him because he's done bad things like lie to parliament and broken Covid laws and tried to abolish the system for enforcing standards and punishing corruption. But it could be I'm being too cynical about the Tory Party. Maybe they haven't fallen that far. To finish with the holy trinity - WE WILL SEE.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Oddly enough completely omits to mention they were found to have no standing:

    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/
    For an organisation run by a QC, it sometimes has an * ahem * "interesting" approach to accuracy.
    Worse than that.

    Their headline is "BREAKING: High Court rules Dido Harding and Mike Coupe appointments were unlawful"

    The decision said quite clearly that: "We have already held that the individual appointment decisions themselves are not amenable to judicial review and the Runnymede Trust has no standing to challenge them as such" The Court declined to make a declaration that the appointments were illegal.
    Important pedantry: "Unlawful", surely?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,708

    HYUFD said:

    Applicant said:

    Applicant said:

    eek said:

    If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.

    More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

    Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.

    Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.

    And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
    I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.

    If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
    Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
    So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
    Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
    You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
    Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
    Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.

    If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
    This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
    No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.

    The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
    Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.

    You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
    Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.

    For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
    Yep. But Labour MPs like Nandy didn't force May to exclude it or vote it down in the Commons. That was done by mouth-breathers like Brexit Hardman Steve Baker.
    There was a vote on it by the Commons in the indicative votes on 27th March 2019 and 1st April 2019.

    MPs voted down Nick Boles' EEA proposal by 283 to 189 on 27th March and by 282 to 261 on 1st April.

    Even fewer MPs voted for EEA than the 286 MPs who voted for May's deal on the 3rd Meaningful Vote on 29th March 2019.
  • MattW said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Disposal
    126. The collective effect of the conclusions set out during this judgment is that the claim brought by Good Law Project fails in its entirety. The claim by the Runnymede Trust fails on Grounds 1 and 3; it succeeds on Ground 2 only to the extent that the decisions on the process to be used when appointing to the positions of Interim Chair of NIHP in August 2020, and Director of Testing at NHSTT in September 2020 were made without compliance with the public sector equality duty.


    https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Queen-on-the-application-of-1-Good-Law-Project-2-Runnymede-Trust-v-1-Prime-Minister-SSHSC-judgment.pdf

    Unsurprisingly the Good Law project are putting an entirely different spin on it.
    Oddly enough completely omits to mention they were found to have no standing:

    https://goodlawproject.org/update/dido-harding-mike-coupe-unlawful/
    For an organisation run by a QC, it sometimes has an * ahem * "interesting" approach to accuracy.
    Worse than that.

    Their headline is "BREAKING: High Court rules Dido Harding and Mike Coupe appointments were unlawful"

    The decision said quite clearly that: "We have already held that the individual appointment decisions themselves are not amenable to judicial review and the Runnymede Trust has no standing to challenge them as such" The Court declined to make a declaration that the appointments were illegal.
    Important pedantry: "Unlawful", surely?
    You mean at the end of my post? Yes. It declined to hold they were "unlawful".

    Some hypocrisy in the use of language from me there...
This discussion has been closed.