Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
Bank of England warns of risk to financial stability
Is the BBC headline.
PB is mulling over a 2016 referendum.
The 2016 referendum has cost the Tories three Prime Ministers. It was not without significance and still isn't. It looks likely to cost them a fourth and for those who believe in retribution it could bring about the destruction of the party.
eh? It cost them Cameron, certainly. You could argue TMay was brought down by Brexit - though I would put a lot of her downfall down to her inability to win a majority in 2017. Which you could put down to many things, chief among which I would put Dementia Tax (which I still think sat on the right side of the wrong/right thing to do balance, but was clearly unpopular). Boris was in no way whatsoever brought down by Brexit. And Liz won't be brought down by Brexit either; she will be brought down by not having sufficient support for her particular approach to economics - like what politics used to be about.
It's not about Brexit any more.
You don't think Boris was brought down by Brexit? His whole political career was the result of Brexit. If it wasn't for Brexit we'd have never hardly registered the revolting man. Do you think the revulsion would have been what it was if the climate his Brexit created didn't exist?
Saying "he never would have become PM if there hadn't been Brexit therefore he stopped being PM because of Brexit" is an interesting logical leap.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
Not if the SC granted the referendum and independence won
Scotland would become independent
No it wouldn't, as the future of the Union would still be reserved to Westminster even if a non binding referendum was allowed by the SC
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
Nope, for many of us it was definitely sinking. You might not see it that way but there were plenty who did and still do.
So it was sinking six years ago and it's still sinking? It's hardly going down like the Titanic.
Its been sinking for decades.
There's more than one way of going down.
I repeat the point I've oft-made before, in the 80s Thatcher proudly boasted that the Single Market would be bigger than America.
Its now vastly smaller than America, and was pre-Brexit.
What is that, if not sinking?
EU population: 450 million USA population: 325 million
EU GDP: $17.9 trillion USA GDP: $20.9 trillion
EU GDP per capita: $39.8k USA GDP per capita: $63.5k
The EU Single Market, as used by the EU, is a failure. Its taken a Europe that was economically bigger than America, and made it one much smaller than America.
Well, it's a good thing she didn't mention nominal GDP then.
She did. "A single market ... bigger than the United States", markets tend to be measured in nominal GDP and in 1988 it was true. Measuring in GDP in 1988 the 12 nations of the EEC was considerably wealthier than the USA.
By 2016 the 28 nations the EU were not. America has grown in leaps and bounds, while the "Single Market" has ossified and failed to do so.
America has its problems, largely race based, but when it comes to the economy Europe absolutely has been sinking.
Not true. The EU27 economy in 2021 was 87% of the size of the US economy ($20.3trn vs $23.3trn). Twenty years previously in 2001 it was 85% of the size ($9.0trn vs $10.6trn).
How many new states has the US added in those twenty years?
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
The difference is that any woman who dissents regardless of her actions is classified as terf, therefore fascist, therefore a valid target for male violence.
I mean, not all people who ask questions / are uncomfortable with trans people are fascist. But, increasingly, the people who actively campaign against trans rights are literally allying themselves with fascists, and far right pro life american evangelicals.
This is a facile argument. If a fascist supports the NHS would you want to abolish the NHS?
Women are fighting for their own rights, that fascists are jumping on a good cause for women's rights to further their own agenda is neither here nor there. Protect women's rights and you cut away the fascists excuse to use that and they will need to find something else.
LGBT people absolutely should be protected, but so too should women.
Women need and deserve single-sex safe spaces. Women who have been raped or abused by men may need and deserve a safe space where they can seek refuge where no members of the male sex are present.
Trans people who have been abused may need refuge too. In which case they should get the help and support they need, but that help and support should not be in conflict with members of the female sex getting the help and support they need.
Protect LGBT rights and protect women's rights. If your answer is to cut away women's single-sex spaces then you have the wrong answer, there must be other solutions.
Transphobes are not campaigning to protect women. Even if they believe that, in effect what they do is reinforce the policing of all women's bodies. Any and all policies that have passed to police trans people have already been weaponised against ciswomen - I shared the other day the story about Florida demanding the mapping of girls menstruation to prove they aren't trans, but policies to inspect childrens genitals are being passed and already being used to attack cis girls:
Because the campaign against transpeople cannot be separated from the desire to control womens bodies. That transwomen are the main victim of this is transmisogyny - the doubling of violence against women being easier in our society and the fact that it views transwomen as men who give up the benefits of being men as somehow threatening to the idea of men being the "superior" sex. It is also noteworthy that so many attacks on transmen are about how they are no longer beautiful, or that men have lost the ability to find them attractive, or the focus on potential risk to their fertility. These are all the same campaign against bodily autonomy, and most queer people and most women see that. Cismen are the most aggrieved by trans people, not ciswomen.
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
Wow, just wow. So you have no objection to a man going on social media and threatening to beat up women, using a derogatory term for women?
I'm sorry but if instead of "terfs" it had been "fags" would you be as blasé?
Anyone who threatens to beat up women, or gay people, or anyone else is utterly disgusting and has no place being an "equalities office" two years later, especially when he's not apologised to the community he threatened to beat up.
The idea you think "terfs" are like "racists" shows something rather broken about your mindset. Yes gay people can be victims of crime and need protection. So are women too though, and crimes against women are just as serious a problem, which is what what you dismiss as "terfs" are dealing with.
TERF is not synonymous with women - again, it would be like saying "I wanna bash some racists" is a threat to women because some racists are women. Men are much more likely to care about these issues, and to be openly transphobic. At demos, whilst fronted by some women, there are mostly men in the crowds, and a lot of the membership organisations are predominantly men.
TERF is an ideology, a belief, a political view, that has evolved over time and has become radicalised. In it's beginnings I would say it was an understandable if ultimately inaccurate position; now it is an active campaign of bigotry and misinformation. The links to the far right and other conspiratorial right wing politics are well mapped. Again, I see no difference between this and "bash the fash".
I think you misunderstand the history of the term. It was coined by "trans-inclusionary" radical feminists who wanted to define themselves against those who drew a distinction between transwomen and biological women.
“I expect NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity”
I really hope you are wrong - and I am sure you are - because this is the perfect recipe for World War 3. NATO planes directly meeting Russian planes in a hot war zone. They will fight each other. That’s how you start nuclear war
This is Basic Deterrence Theory. It’s why NATO and the USSR fought countless wars by proxy. Direct confrontation was too dangerous. And even the loons in the Kremlin realised this
The fact that the adolescent would-be SAS warriors of PB, sitting in Cheshire or Dubai, have totally forgotten this, will - I hope and expect - not influence anyone in Washington.
Not attacking Russia, defending Ukraine from within Ukraine.
Unlike the many armchair warriors sitting in London or on a ‘holiday’ by a nice beach, some of us actually have a stake in this conflict, have already had to replace one load of windows, and don’t want to have to do it again!
No, I think Leon is right on this one. The difference between "defence" and "offence" is far less clear than we like to think (witness the Ukraine defensive/preemptive strikes on arms dumps just inside Russia), and will be further eroded by individual commanders making split-second decisions. "There's a plane that might be about to attack, let's shoot it down" = "Our reconnaissance aircraft conducting a non-offensive mission was shot down". Direct fighting between Western and Russian forces is open war. It's possible to argue for open war, but we shouldn't do it by accident or with a half-plausible excuse - if WW3 starts, nobody will be interested in who started it.
Moreover, Ukraine seems to be winning anyway - why escalate?
I think it depends on what you mean by "escalate". The argument from the Govt of Ukraine for more formidable armaments is because not doing it results in tens of thousands of extra citizens of Ukraine and members of the Ukraine Armed Forces being killed unnecessarily. Never mind the occurrence of continuing war crimes.
I find that convincing.
Plus that it risks convincing Putin that there is value and effect in his 'nuclear threats'.
I'd say it is more about getting Russia out of Ukraine asap, and particularly stopping once and for all the trend that we have permitted of Putin creating a series of chaotic and failed states around his borders to make a new sphere of influence.
I think the Russia / Ukraine geographical division may be the wrong one - military / civilian is more relevant. When Russia is launching cruise missiles to attack civilians from Russian airspace the geographical demarcation is quite ridiculous imo.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
Not if the SC granted the referendum and independence won
Scotland would become independent
No it wouldn't, as the future of the Union would still be reserved to Westminster even if a non binding referendum was allowed by the SC
Yes it would despite your tanks
No it wouldn't as the Scotland Act 1998 is clear the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
Wow, just wow. So you have no objection to a man going on social media and threatening to beat up women, using a derogatory term for women?
I'm sorry but if instead of "terfs" it had been "fags" would you be as blasé?
Anyone who threatens to beat up women, or gay people, or anyone else is utterly disgusting and has no place being an "equalities office" two years later, especially when he's not apologised to the community he threatened to beat up.
The idea you think "terfs" are like "racists" shows something rather broken about your mindset. Yes gay people can be victims of crime and need protection. So are women too though, and crimes against women are just as serious a problem, which is what what you dismiss as "terfs" are dealing with.
TERF is not synonymous with women - again, it would be like saying "I wanna bash some racists" is a threat to women because some racists are women. Men are much more likely to care about these issues, and to be openly transphobic. At demos, whilst fronted by some women, there are mostly men in the crowds, and a lot of the membership organisations are predominantly men.
TERF is an ideology, a belief, a political view, that has evolved over time and has become radicalised. In it's beginnings I would say it was an understandable if ultimately inaccurate position; now it is an active campaign of bigotry and misinformation. The links to the far right and other conspiratorial right wing politics are well mapped. Again, I see no difference between this and "bash the fash".
Sorry but this is just bigotry, pure and simple. Sexist bigotry.
Women seeking to protect their own spaces are not "fash" anymore than gays are "fags".
Your resorting to insults because you can't answer the questions the women are raising about their concerns for their own physical safety and why they need single sex spaces is just depressing. Address legitimate concerns, don't violate the safety of single sex spaces, and move on.
You are the one out here conflating trans exclusionary feminists, a phrase they created for their own philosophy and political stance, to all women. TERFS are not all women. Not all women hold TERF views. TERF views are held by a subsection, a minority, of women.
Edit: TERF may have been coined by trans inclusive feminists, but it was not originally derogatory in nature and TERFs did originally accept and use that label themselves.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
It is this boundary between the legal and the political which the Brexit referendum has erased. The Brexit referendum did not legally bind the 2017 parliament. But politically it was the immovable object.
The same would be true with a 2023 independence vote. Yes will win due to the unionist boycott. And once the will of the people has been clearly expressed its a brave politician to tell them no, regardless of the law or political and constitutional precedents. As May and scores of Labour MPs found out.
If there has been a boycott by one side then the other needs to get 50% of voters on the electoral register to win, because the referendum otherwise lacks legitimacy.
A 60:40 win for Yes, on a reduced turnout of 55%, in the context of a Unionist boycott, so that Yes receives fewer votes than in 2014, is no mandate at all.
I don't personally advocate a boycott. I accept that the result of the last Holyrood election provides a mandate for a second referendum, but if a boycott happens the referendum isn't legitimate.
It would certainly make for fun political arguments! I do wonder how effective a unionist party political boycott would be. The ScotTories are absolutely riven as it is - would their electorate accept a "sit on your hands" edict from DRoss? What would Labour do - hard to see them just sitting the campaign out when it would give them the opportunity to try and reconnect with voters.
My own party (SLD, not SNP as HY suggested) is locally despairing of the endless whining about independence distracting from real issues, and nationally Alex Cole-Hamilton is stridently against to try and raise his profile (which it doesn't). Put on the spot I can see that resistance weakening.
So a boycott that was party political led only by the Tories would be dismissed at irrelevant. If all the anti-independence parties (not pro-union, remember that the SLDs are NOT pro-union, we're pro-federalism) all boycott then its a real mess. The problem is that Yes would then win big and the "English plot to enslave us" whine would be endless.
No it wouldn't. We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do. Ideally all Unionist parties would boycott but either way the Tory government would ignore the result
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
Wow, just wow. So you have no objection to a man going on social media and threatening to beat up women, using a derogatory term for women?
I'm sorry but if instead of "terfs" it had been "fags" would you be as blasé?
Anyone who threatens to beat up women, or gay people, or anyone else is utterly disgusting and has no place being an "equalities office" two years later, especially when he's not apologised to the community he threatened to beat up.
The idea you think "terfs" are like "racists" shows something rather broken about your mindset. Yes gay people can be victims of crime and need protection. So are women too though, and crimes against women are just as serious a problem, which is what what you dismiss as "terfs" are dealing with.
TERF is not synonymous with women - again, it would be like saying "I wanna bash some racists" is a threat to women because some racists are women. Men are much more likely to care about these issues, and to be openly transphobic. At demos, whilst fronted by some women, there are mostly men in the crowds, and a lot of the membership organisations are predominantly men.
TERF is an ideology, a belief, a political view, that has evolved over time and has become radicalised. In it's beginnings I would say it was an understandable if ultimately inaccurate position; now it is an active campaign of bigotry and misinformation. The links to the far right and other conspiratorial right wing politics are well mapped. Again, I see no difference between this and "bash the fash".
I think you misunderstand the history of the term. It was coined by "trans-inclusionary" radical feminists who wanted to define themselves against those who drew a distinction between transwomen and biological women.
Sorry, it may have been coined by trans inclusive feminists, but it was not derogatory in nature and TERFs did originally accept and use that label themselves.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
Nope, for many of us it was definitely sinking. You might not see it that way but there were plenty who did and still do.
So it was sinking six years ago and it's still sinking? It's hardly going down like the Titanic.
Its been sinking for decades.
There's more than one way of going down.
I repeat the point I've oft-made before, in the 80s Thatcher proudly boasted that the Single Market would be bigger than America.
Its now vastly smaller than America, and was pre-Brexit.
What is that, if not sinking?
EU population: 450 million USA population: 325 million
EU GDP: $17.9 trillion USA GDP: $20.9 trillion
EU GDP per capita: $39.8k USA GDP per capita: $63.5k
The EU Single Market, as used by the EU, is a failure. Its taken a Europe that was economically bigger than America, and made it one much smaller than America.
Well, it's a good thing she didn't mention nominal GDP then.
She did. "A single market ... bigger than the United States", markets tend to be measured in nominal GDP and in 1988 it was true. Measuring in GDP in 1988 the 12 nations of the EEC was considerably wealthier than the USA.
By 2016 the 28 nations the EU were not. America has grown in leaps and bounds, while the "Single Market" has ossified and failed to do so.
America has its problems, largely race based, but when it comes to the economy Europe absolutely has been sinking.
Not true. The EU27 economy in 2021 was 87% of the size of the US economy ($20.3trn vs $23.3trn). Twenty years previously in 2001 it was 85% of the size ($9.0trn vs $10.6trn).
Odd that you would cherrypick 2001 as the date for the comparison, especially given the expansion to Eastern Europe occurred just after that and Eastern Europe absolutely has grown of course.
1988 when the quotation was made would be a better comparison.
Try running your numbers again since 1988, ideally with the EEC12 rather than the EU27, or with the EU27 if you prefer since its still the same result even bearing in mind of course growth in Eastern Europe flatters the EU27.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
Not if the SC granted the referendum and independence won
Scotland would become independent
Sturgeon is asking for a referendum without legal force. And unlike the Brexit referendum this is very much out in the open before the vote.
So independence winning the ref (If granted by the SC) doesn't mean Scotland would become independent.
It would be impossible to refuse the Scots if they won that referendum both democratically and logically
For clarification I do not support independence but recognise reality when it comes to this matter
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
Not if the SC granted the referendum and independence won
Scotland would become independent
Sturgeon is asking for a referendum without legal force. And unlike the Brexit referendum this is very much out in the open before the vote.
So independence winning the ref (If granted by the SC) doesn't mean Scotland would become independent.
It doesn't mean it 100%, but it almost certainly does though.
If Scotland votes to leave the UK that will be global news leading news bulletins around the globe. Americans, Europeans, even Russians and Chinese etc will all instantly get that news. Britain is still, despite what some think, a major power that people are interested in around the planet, especially when it comes to stuff like that.
The agenda will become "how" and "when", not "if", which is precisely what it should be if that's the democratic will of the Scottish public.
Simply ignoring that would turn the UK into pariahs, like China over Hong Kong, or Russia.
Sorry but no, the whole basis of Sturgeon's argument to the SC is that the referendum does not have legal force. A unionist boycott is perfectly reasonable in the circumstances and Truss (Or AN Other Con leader) will not allow Scotland to become independent after such a referendum. Starmer might acquiesce to a Westminster granted referendum if he needs the numbers. But if he has a majority then that's out too. Anyway this is academic since I think the SC will not grant such a referendum. But if they do it will clearly be stated that - though they can not stop Sturgeon it is no more than a large scale opinion polling exercise.
I do wonder if part of what will take the SC months to consider is this boundary between a legally large scale polling exercise - "Should the United Kingdom leave the European Union or remain in the European Union" - and the political reality of once people give their opinions on that scale they are politically binding.
Legally there is no argument against them granting a non-binding referendum as it does not take over reserved power. So any ruling against must be considering the political reality. That is the can of worms that 2016 opened.
We would be better not granting any further referenda. We are a representative democracy - our elected representatives are supposed to be sovereign.
That only works if viewpoints which have significant support have political representation. When the major parties agree with each other and disagree with the voters, that's when you have to step outside the general election system and decide the matter directly. This was the case with Euroscepticism and is definitely not the case with Scottish seperatism.
But in any case, the established principle worldwide for many decades has been that political secession should be by direct democracy. The problem with Scotland is that there was a decision, and the losers have never accepted it, and wouldn't accept it if they lost for a second time.
Some of them absolutely wouldn't. But most? If we held a proper referendum. Where both Holyrood and Westminster agreed it was binding as they did for 2014, with an agreement up front that this genuinely is the last one for a political generation, then it wouldn't matter what the minority think because the majority would accept it.
Preferable would be to fix the mess that is the UK constitution, devolve the maximum powers to all 4 nations and let independence recede off into background noise.
If I didn't believe that the SNP would react to defeat in IndyRef2 by immediately demanding IndyRef3, and continuing to get 40%+ support in Scotland on that basis, then I would support holding IndyRef2.
But the idea when phrased that way is risible.
I strongly agree with the last part - the failure to devolve to an English parliament was a disaster.
Bank of England warns of risk to financial stability
Is the BBC headline.
PB is mulling over a 2016 referendum.
The 2016 referendum has cost the Tories three Prime Ministers. It was not without significance and still isn't. It looks likely to cost them a fourth and for those who believe in retribution it could bring about the destruction of the party.
eh? It cost them Cameron, certainly. You could argue TMay was brought down by Brexit - though I would put a lot of her downfall down to her inability to win a majority in 2017. Which you could put down to many things, chief among which I would put Dementia Tax (which I still think sat on the right side of the wrong/right thing to do balance, but was clearly unpopular). Boris was in no way whatsoever brought down by Brexit. And Liz won't be brought down by Brexit either; she will be brought down by not having sufficient support for her particular approach to economics - like what politics used to be about.
It's not about Brexit any more.
You don't think Boris was brought down by Brexit? His whole political career was the result of Brexit. If it wasn't for Brexit we'd have never hardly registered the revolting man. Do you think the revulsion would have been what it was if the climate his Brexit created didn't exist?
The revulsion was the way he partied during covid and lied and absolutely nothing to do with brexit at all
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
It is this boundary between the legal and the political which the Brexit referendum has erased. The Brexit referendum did not legally bind the 2017 parliament. But politically it was the immovable object.
The same would be true with a 2023 independence vote. Yes will win due to the unionist boycott. And once the will of the people has been clearly expressed its a brave politician to tell them no, regardless of the law or political and constitutional precedents. As May and scores of Labour MPs found out.
There's night and day between a SC granted (Probably won't be but let's run with it) advisory referendum and the Brexit referendum. Absolutely noone was arguing about how the referendumn was "advisory" prior to it being lost by remain whereas it's clearly front and centre of the Unionist likely boycott prior to the vote taking place if granted by the SC.
Was it advisory? Its a binary yes / no answer.
Legally yes. And nobody claimed it was legally binding. Because it wasn't. Politically no. And the same would be true of a Scexit vote. And politicians claiming it can be ignored will mostly be the ones who said the legally identical Brexit vote couldn't be ignored.
Its a mess. If the SC allow it. Which legally they should do as its does not legally bind the Westminster government who reserve those powers...
EDIT because I have seen your other similar post: "Sturgeon is asking for a referendum without legal force." As David Cameron did. In 2014 his government made the Sindy referendum legally binding. In 2016 he made the Brexit referendum advisory. He knew the difference.
Just looked at the "when will there be a Ref?" market on betfair. It settles as Yes when a Ref is held that is "approved by the UK courts", ie this one would seem to count if the SC says ok and Sturgeon goes ahead and holds it. The price for 2023 is double digits - so it must be that the overwhelming expectation is the SC is going to either pass or say No.
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
The difference is that any woman who dissents regardless of her actions is classified as terf, therefore fascist, therefore a valid target for male violence.
I mean, not all people who ask questions / are uncomfortable with trans people are fascist. But, increasingly, the people who actively campaign against trans rights are literally allying themselves with fascists, and far right pro life american evangelicals.
This is a facile argument. If a fascist supports the NHS would you want to abolish the NHS?
Women are fighting for their own rights, that fascists are jumping on a good cause for women's rights to further their own agenda is neither here nor there. Protect women's rights and you cut away the fascists excuse to use that and they will need to find something else.
LGBT people absolutely should be protected, but so too should women.
Women need and deserve single-sex safe spaces. Women who have been raped or abused by men may need and deserve a safe space where they can seek refuge where no members of the male sex are present.
Trans people who have been abused may need refuge too. In which case they should get the help and support they need, but that help and support should not be in conflict with members of the female sex getting the help and support they need.
Protect LGBT rights and protect women's rights. If your answer is to cut away women's single-sex spaces then you have the wrong answer, there must be other solutions.
Transphobes are not campaigning to protect women. Even if they believe that, in effect what they do is reinforce the policing of all women's bodies. Any and all policies that have passed to police trans people have already been weaponised against ciswomen - I shared the other day the story about Florida demanding the mapping of girls menstruation to prove they aren't trans, but policies to inspect childrens genitals are being passed and already being used to attack cis girls:
Because the campaign against transpeople cannot be separated from the desire to control womens bodies. That transwomen are the main victim of this is transmisogyny - the doubling of violence against women being easier in our society and the fact that it views transwomen as men who give up the benefits of being men as somehow threatening to the idea of men being the "superior" sex. It is also noteworthy that so many attacks on transmen are about how they are no longer beautiful, or that men have lost the ability to find them attractive, or the focus on potential risk to their fertility. These are all the same campaign against bodily autonomy, and most queer people and most women see that. Cismen are the most aggrieved by trans people, not ciswomen.
Women campaigning to protect single sex safe spaces are not transphobes, they're women.
Yes things can go wrong, and there's right and wrong ways to do anything, but saying that single sex refuges should exist for women is not transphobic.
If you insist on labelling women who want single sex safe spaces "transphobic" then you won't be taken seriously.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
Nope, for many of us it was definitely sinking. You might not see it that way but there were plenty who did and still do.
So it was sinking six years ago and it's still sinking? It's hardly going down like the Titanic.
Its been sinking for decades.
There's more than one way of going down.
I repeat the point I've oft-made before, in the 80s Thatcher proudly boasted that the Single Market would be bigger than America.
Its now vastly smaller than America, and was pre-Brexit.
What is that, if not sinking?
EU population: 450 million USA population: 325 million
EU GDP: $17.9 trillion USA GDP: $20.9 trillion
EU GDP per capita: $39.8k USA GDP per capita: $63.5k
The EU Single Market, as used by the EU, is a failure. Its taken a Europe that was economically bigger than America, and made it one much smaller than America.
Well, it's a good thing she didn't mention nominal GDP then.
She did. "A single market ... bigger than the United States", markets tend to be measured in nominal GDP and in 1988 it was true. Measuring in GDP in 1988 the 12 nations of the EEC was considerably wealthier than the USA.
By 2016 the 28 nations the EU were not. America has grown in leaps and bounds, while the "Single Market" has ossified and failed to do so.
America has its problems, largely race based, but when it comes to the economy Europe absolutely has been sinking.
Not true. The EU27 economy in 2021 was 87% of the size of the US economy ($20.3trn vs $23.3trn). Twenty years previously in 2001 it was 85% of the size ($9.0trn vs $10.6trn).
How many new states has the US added in those twenty years?
How many states of roughly the size of the UK has it lost?
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
You mean, like the customs and reguilatory checks at Dover?
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
The difference is that any woman who dissents regardless of her actions is classified as terf, therefore fascist, therefore a valid target for male violence.
I mean, not all people who ask questions / are uncomfortable with trans people are fascist. But, increasingly, the people who actively campaign against trans rights are literally allying themselves with fascists, and far right pro life american evangelicals.
This is a facile argument. If a fascist supports the NHS would you want to abolish the NHS?
Women are fighting for their own rights, that fascists are jumping on a good cause for women's rights to further their own agenda is neither here nor there. Protect women's rights and you cut away the fascists excuse to use that and they will need to find something else.
LGBT people absolutely should be protected, but so too should women.
Women need and deserve single-sex safe spaces. Women who have been raped or abused by men may need and deserve a safe space where they can seek refuge where no members of the male sex are present.
Trans people who have been abused may need refuge too. In which case they should get the help and support they need, but that help and support should not be in conflict with members of the female sex getting the help and support they need.
Protect LGBT rights and protect women's rights. If your answer is to cut away women's single-sex spaces then you have the wrong answer, there must be other solutions.
Transphobes are not campaigning to protect women.
Except that you see people who are campaignign to protect women as "transphobes", which is entirely the problem.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
You mean, like the customs and reguilatory checks at Dover?
Indeed. Scotland would be a foreign country and treated as such. English Scottish relations would be at their lowest since Flodden
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
It is this boundary between the legal and the political which the Brexit referendum has erased. The Brexit referendum did not legally bind the 2017 parliament. But politically it was the immovable object.
The same would be true with a 2023 independence vote. Yes will win due to the unionist boycott. And once the will of the people has been clearly expressed its a brave politician to tell them no, regardless of the law or political and constitutional precedents. As May and scores of Labour MPs found out.
If there has been a boycott by one side then the other needs to get 50% of voters on the electoral register to win, because the referendum otherwise lacks legitimacy.
A 60:40 win for Yes, on a reduced turnout of 55%, in the context of a Unionist boycott, so that Yes receives fewer votes than in 2014, is no mandate at all.
I don't personally advocate a boycott. I accept that the result of the last Holyrood election provides a mandate for a second referendum, but if a boycott happens the referendum isn't legitimate.
It would certainly make for fun political arguments! I do wonder how effective a unionist party political boycott would be. The ScotTories are absolutely riven as it is - would their electorate accept a "sit on your hands" edict from DRoss? What would Labour do - hard to see them just sitting the campaign out when it would give them the opportunity to try and reconnect with voters.
My own party (SLD, not SNP as HY suggested) is locally despairing of the endless whining about independence distracting from real issues, and nationally Alex Cole-Hamilton is stridently against to try and raise his profile (which it doesn't). Put on the spot I can see that resistance weakening.
So a boycott that was party political led only by the Tories would be dismissed at irrelevant. If all the anti-independence parties (not pro-union, remember that the SLDs are NOT pro-union, we're pro-federalism) all boycott then its a real mess. The problem is that Yes would then win big and the "English plot to enslave us" whine would be endless.
No it wouldn't. We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do. Ideally all Unionist parties would boycott but either way the Tory government would ignore the result
What Tory government
It has gone into an internal civil war and is tearing itself and the country apart
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
It is this boundary between the legal and the political which the Brexit referendum has erased. The Brexit referendum did not legally bind the 2017 parliament. But politically it was the immovable object.
The same would be true with a 2023 independence vote. Yes will win due to the unionist boycott. And once the will of the people has been clearly expressed its a brave politician to tell them no, regardless of the law or political and constitutional precedents. As May and scores of Labour MPs found out.
If "Yes" ends up with 98.3% of the vote as a result of the boycott, as happened to the Unionist side in the 1973 Border Poll, then few will regard it as the will of the people any more than a North Korean police commissioner election
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
Nope, for many of us it was definitely sinking. You might not see it that way but there were plenty who did and still do.
So it was sinking six years ago and it's still sinking? It's hardly going down like the Titanic.
Its been sinking for decades.
There's more than one way of going down.
I repeat the point I've oft-made before, in the 80s Thatcher proudly boasted that the Single Market would be bigger than America.
Its now vastly smaller than America, and was pre-Brexit.
What is that, if not sinking?
EU population: 450 million USA population: 325 million
EU GDP: $17.9 trillion USA GDP: $20.9 trillion
EU GDP per capita: $39.8k USA GDP per capita: $63.5k
The EU Single Market, as used by the EU, is a failure. Its taken a Europe that was economically bigger than America, and made it one much smaller than America.
Well, it's a good thing she didn't mention nominal GDP then.
She did. "A single market ... bigger than the United States", markets tend to be measured in nominal GDP and in 1988 it was true. Measuring in GDP in 1988 the 12 nations of the EEC was considerably wealthier than the USA.
By 2016 the 28 nations the EU were not. America has grown in leaps and bounds, while the "Single Market" has ossified and failed to do so.
America has its problems, largely race based, but when it comes to the economy Europe absolutely has been sinking.
Not true. The EU27 economy in 2021 was 87% of the size of the US economy ($20.3trn vs $23.3trn). Twenty years previously in 2001 it was 85% of the size ($9.0trn vs $10.6trn).
How many new states has the US added in those twenty years?
How many states of roughly the size of the UK has it lost?
Hah, I’ve clearly lost my mind. Thanks.
Edit: No, he was referring to EU27, which I think is ex-UK?
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
Wow, just wow. So you have no objection to a man going on social media and threatening to beat up women, using a derogatory term for women?
I'm sorry but if instead of "terfs" it had been "fags" would you be as blasé?
Anyone who threatens to beat up women, or gay people, or anyone else is utterly disgusting and has no place being an "equalities office" two years later, especially when he's not apologised to the community he threatened to beat up.
The idea you think "terfs" are like "racists" shows something rather broken about your mindset. Yes gay people can be victims of crime and need protection. So are women too though, and crimes against women are just as serious a problem, which is what what you dismiss as "terfs" are dealing with.
TERF is not synonymous with women - again, it would be like saying "I wanna bash some racists" is a threat to women because some racists are women. Men are much more likely to care about these issues, and to be openly transphobic. At demos, whilst fronted by some women, there are mostly men in the crowds, and a lot of the membership organisations are predominantly men.
TERF is an ideology, a belief, a political view, that has evolved over time and has become radicalised. In it's beginnings I would say it was an understandable if ultimately inaccurate position; now it is an active campaign of bigotry and misinformation. The links to the far right and other conspiratorial right wing politics are well mapped. Again, I see no difference between this and "bash the fash".
I think you misunderstand the history of the term. It was coined by "trans-inclusionary" radical feminists who wanted to define themselves against those who drew a distinction between transwomen and biological women.
Sorry, it may have been coined by trans inclusive feminists, but it was not derogatory in nature and TERFs did originally accept and use that label themselves.
Which doesn't stop it becoming a derogatory term, which it absolutely is now, and you are clearly using it as such.
Language changes. Even the term "Prime Minister" was originally an insult.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
The one thing I do agree is that it would make Brexit look like a walk in the park
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
Nope, for many of us it was definitely sinking. You might not see it that way but there were plenty who did and still do.
So it was sinking six years ago and it's still sinking? It's hardly going down like the Titanic.
Its been sinking for decades.
There's more than one way of going down.
I repeat the point I've oft-made before, in the 80s Thatcher proudly boasted that the Single Market would be bigger than America.
Its now vastly smaller than America, and was pre-Brexit.
What is that, if not sinking?
EU population: 450 million USA population: 325 million
EU GDP: $17.9 trillion USA GDP: $20.9 trillion
EU GDP per capita: $39.8k USA GDP per capita: $63.5k
The EU Single Market, as used by the EU, is a failure. Its taken a Europe that was economically bigger than America, and made it one much smaller than America.
Well, it's a good thing she didn't mention nominal GDP then.
She did. "A single market ... bigger than the United States", markets tend to be measured in nominal GDP and in 1988 it was true. Measuring in GDP in 1988 the 12 nations of the EEC was considerably wealthier than the USA.
By 2016 the 28 nations the EU were not. America has grown in leaps and bounds, while the "Single Market" has ossified and failed to do so.
America has its problems, largely race based, but when it comes to the economy Europe absolutely has been sinking.
Not true. The EU27 economy in 2021 was 87% of the size of the US economy ($20.3trn vs $23.3trn). Twenty years previously in 2001 it was 85% of the size ($9.0trn vs $10.6trn).
Odd that you would cherrypick 2001 as the date for the comparison, especially given the expansion to Eastern Europe occurred just after that and Eastern Europe absolutely has grown of course.
1988 when the quotation was made would be a better comparison.
Try running your numbers again since 1988, ideally with the EEC12 rather than the EU27, or with the EU27 if you prefer since its still the same result even bearing in mind of course growth in Eastern Europe flatters the EU27.
I would say comparing the EU 27 to the whole US makes most sense because they are similar sizes, so long as we're doing like for like across the period. The EU has rich and slow growing states, rich and fast-growing states, poor and fast growing and poor and slow growing. So does the US.
If we were instead looking at EEC12 then the appropriate comparison would be with the 20 or so richest US states as of the start of the 1990s, whichever they were. .
Busy sporting week for me Speedway at Belle Vue last night, non league football at Boldmere St Michaels tonight, Staveley MW tomorrow, Speedway at Owlerton Thursday and non league football on Friday.
I would say comparing the EU 27 to the whole US makes most sense because they are similar sizes, so long as we're doing like for like across the period. The EU has rich and slow growing states, rich and fast-growing states, poor and fast growing and poor and slow growing. So does the US.
If we were instead looking at EEC12 then the appropriate comparison would be with the 20 or so richest US states as of the start of the 1990s, whichever they were. .
The USA didn't have anywhere as impoverished as Eastern Europe.
The EEC 12 had a GDP of more than the entire USA combined, all 50 states, not just 20 of them in 1988. They don't even come close anymore.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
Nope, for many of us it was definitely sinking. You might not see it that way but there were plenty who did and still do.
So it was sinking six years ago and it's still sinking? It's hardly going down like the Titanic.
Its been sinking for decades.
There's more than one way of going down.
I repeat the point I've oft-made before, in the 80s Thatcher proudly boasted that the Single Market would be bigger than America.
Its now vastly smaller than America, and was pre-Brexit.
What is that, if not sinking?
EU population: 450 million USA population: 325 million
EU GDP: $17.9 trillion USA GDP: $20.9 trillion
EU GDP per capita: $39.8k USA GDP per capita: $63.5k
The EU Single Market, as used by the EU, is a failure. Its taken a Europe that was economically bigger than America, and made it one much smaller than America.
Well, it's a good thing she didn't mention nominal GDP then.
She did. "A single market ... bigger than the United States", markets tend to be measured in nominal GDP and in 1988 it was true. Measuring in GDP in 1988 the 12 nations of the EEC was considerably wealthier than the USA.
By 2016 the 28 nations the EU were not. America has grown in leaps and bounds, while the "Single Market" has ossified and failed to do so.
America has its problems, largely race based, but when it comes to the economy Europe absolutely has been sinking.
Not true. The EU27 economy in 2021 was 87% of the size of the US economy ($20.3trn vs $23.3trn). Twenty years previously in 2001 it was 85% of the size ($9.0trn vs $10.6trn).
Odd that you would cherrypick 2001 as the date for the comparison, especially given the expansion to Eastern Europe occurred just after that and Eastern Europe absolutely has grown of course.
1988 when the quotation was made would be a better comparison.
Try running your numbers again since 1988, ideally with the EEC12 rather than the EU27, or with the EU27 if you prefer since its still the same result even bearing in mind of course growth in Eastern Europe flatters the EU27.
I didn't cherry pick anything. I chose 2001 simply because it was twenty years prior to 2021, the last available date with numbers. I chose the EU27 because that is the EU and you were comparing the EU to the US, not a subset of one to the other. Eastern Europe has indeed grown strongly, precisely because they joined the EU and gained access to the single market. Why do you think Ukraine is so eager to join? The fact is, over a long period of time growth in the EU has kept up with growth in the US. While UK GDP has fallen from 16% of US GDP to 13% over the same period. And *all* of that relative decline has happened since 2015. I wonder what might have happened in 2016 to have made that happen? If you want to find a sinking ship, look closer to home. The sick man of Europe once again.
Just getting up to speed. I see Coffey has said our pensions are safe.
Buy baked beans and a gun.
There's nothing more reassuring than ministers doing the media rounds to say our pensions are safe. And I say that as someone who had an Equitable Life pension (oldest insurer, literally couldn't be any safer).
Ah sympathies re the Equitable pension.
I was working for them when they went bust. One reason: hubris. Ideologue in charge, surrounded by yes men (and they were all men at that time).
I was lucky we were only in their scheme for a couple of years, so relatively speaking we got off very lightly. But the turn around from "blue chip, it can't be beat" to "it's gone bust" couldn't have been starker.
It’s a good analogy for the DB pension discussion we had the other day
IIRC it all turned on the interpretation of certain guaranteed minimum performance that Equitable had entered into in their contracts
They wanted to abrogate those agreements (or at least interpret them narrowly) in order to protect the company and the pensions of those who were not protected.
The beneficiaries of those guarantees took them to court and won. They got paid in full - but everyone else was screwed
(But this is from memory 25 years ago so may be very wrong!)
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
It is this boundary between the legal and the political which the Brexit referendum has erased. The Brexit referendum did not legally bind the 2017 parliament. But politically it was the immovable object.
The same would be true with a 2023 independence vote. Yes will win due to the unionist boycott. And once the will of the people has been clearly expressed its a brave politician to tell them no, regardless of the law or political and constitutional precedents. As May and scores of Labour MPs found out.
If there has been a boycott by one side then the other needs to get 50% of voters on the electoral register to win, because the referendum otherwise lacks legitimacy.
A 60:40 win for Yes, on a reduced turnout of 55%, in the context of a Unionist boycott, so that Yes receives fewer votes than in 2014, is no mandate at all.
I don't personally advocate a boycott. I accept that the result of the last Holyrood election provides a mandate for a second referendum, but if a boycott happens the referendum isn't legitimate.
It would certainly make for fun political arguments! I do wonder how effective a unionist party political boycott would be. The ScotTories are absolutely riven as it is - would their electorate accept a "sit on your hands" edict from DRoss? What would Labour do - hard to see them just sitting the campaign out when it would give them the opportunity to try and reconnect with voters.
My own party (SLD, not SNP as HY suggested) is locally despairing of the endless whining about independence distracting from real issues, and nationally Alex Cole-Hamilton is stridently against to try and raise his profile (which it doesn't). Put on the spot I can see that resistance weakening.
So a boycott that was party political led only by the Tories would be dismissed at irrelevant. If all the anti-independence parties (not pro-union, remember that the SLDs are NOT pro-union, we're pro-federalism) all boycott then its a real mess. The problem is that Yes would then win big and the "English plot to enslave us" whine would be endless.
No it wouldn't. We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do. Ideally all Unionist parties would boycott but either way the Tory government would ignore the result
Fascinating that this issue has seen you discard you recent reality-driven musing back for "we are kings of this world".
Specifically: "We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do". There is a reason you are now 30 points behind in the polls and still falling. Its this sneering arrogance that only your own side matter.
There are very very few of your side left, so either your party starts thinking about what is good for the people of this country, or you will be very deserving of your extinction.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
Question. Your failing government have withdrawn most customs checks at the intra-UK border. And completely abandoned any notion of inbound customs checks. Why would an England - Scotland border be run differently?
Your party have demonstrated that they are incapable of running a border. So the idea that one would uniquely be created and successfully run along the Tweed is risible. Even for you.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
It is this boundary between the legal and the political which the Brexit referendum has erased. The Brexit referendum did not legally bind the 2017 parliament. But politically it was the immovable object.
The same would be true with a 2023 independence vote. Yes will win due to the unionist boycott. And once the will of the people has been clearly expressed its a brave politician to tell them no, regardless of the law or political and constitutional precedents. As May and scores of Labour MPs found out.
If there has been a boycott by one side then the other needs to get 50% of voters on the electoral register to win, because the referendum otherwise lacks legitimacy.
A 60:40 win for Yes, on a reduced turnout of 55%, in the context of a Unionist boycott, so that Yes receives fewer votes than in 2014, is no mandate at all.
I don't personally advocate a boycott. I accept that the result of the last Holyrood election provides a mandate for a second referendum, but if a boycott happens the referendum isn't legitimate.
It would certainly make for fun political arguments! I do wonder how effective a unionist party political boycott would be. The ScotTories are absolutely riven as it is - would their electorate accept a "sit on your hands" edict from DRoss? What would Labour do - hard to see them just sitting the campaign out when it would give them the opportunity to try and reconnect with voters.
My own party (SLD, not SNP as HY suggested) is locally despairing of the endless whining about independence distracting from real issues, and nationally Alex Cole-Hamilton is stridently against to try and raise his profile (which it doesn't). Put on the spot I can see that resistance weakening.
So a boycott that was party political led only by the Tories would be dismissed at irrelevant. If all the anti-independence parties (not pro-union, remember that the SLDs are NOT pro-union, we're pro-federalism) all boycott then its a real mess. The problem is that Yes would then win big and the "English plot to enslave us" whine would be endless.
No it wouldn't. We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do. Ideally all Unionist parties would boycott but either way the Tory government would ignore the result
Fascinating that this issue has seen you discard you recent reality-driven musing back for "we are kings of this world".
Specifically: "We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do". There is a reason you are now 30 points behind in the polls and still falling. Its this sneering arrogance that only your own side matter.
There are very very few of your side left, so either your party starts thinking about what is good for the people of this country, or you will be very deserving of your extinction.
However until the next general election we have a Tory majority government focused on current Tory voters and regaining 2019 Tory voters
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
You mean, like the customs and reguilatory checks at Dover?
Indeed. Scotland would be a foreign country and treated as such. English Scottish relations would be at their lowest since Flodden
Just shows how little you know about history. Numerous occasions in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, including the actual 1707 Union.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
Question. Your failing government have withdrawn most customs checks at the intra-UK border. And completely abandoned any notion of inbound customs checks. Why would an England - Scotland border be run differently?
Your party have demonstrated that they are incapable of running a border. So the idea that one would uniquely be created and successfully run along the Tweed is risible. Even for you.
Legally there is now a hard border between GB and Ireland with customs checks required under the UK EU trade deal. The UK government is trying to remove it but that is still the legal reality.
The same would apply to the English and Scottish border if Scotland voted for independence and rejoined the EU or EEA
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
It is this boundary between the legal and the political which the Brexit referendum has erased. The Brexit referendum did not legally bind the 2017 parliament. But politically it was the immovable object.
The same would be true with a 2023 independence vote. Yes will win due to the unionist boycott. And once the will of the people has been clearly expressed its a brave politician to tell them no, regardless of the law or political and constitutional precedents. As May and scores of Labour MPs found out.
If there has been a boycott by one side then the other needs to get 50% of voters on the electoral register to win, because the referendum otherwise lacks legitimacy.
A 60:40 win for Yes, on a reduced turnout of 55%, in the context of a Unionist boycott, so that Yes receives fewer votes than in 2014, is no mandate at all.
I don't personally advocate a boycott. I accept that the result of the last Holyrood election provides a mandate for a second referendum, but if a boycott happens the referendum isn't legitimate.
It would certainly make for fun political arguments! I do wonder how effective a unionist party political boycott would be. The ScotTories are absolutely riven as it is - would their electorate accept a "sit on your hands" edict from DRoss? What would Labour do - hard to see them just sitting the campaign out when it would give them the opportunity to try and reconnect with voters.
My own party (SLD, not SNP as HY suggested) is locally despairing of the endless whining about independence distracting from real issues, and nationally Alex Cole-Hamilton is stridently against to try and raise his profile (which it doesn't). Put on the spot I can see that resistance weakening.
So a boycott that was party political led only by the Tories would be dismissed at irrelevant. If all the anti-independence parties (not pro-union, remember that the SLDs are NOT pro-union, we're pro-federalism) all boycott then its a real mess. The problem is that Yes would then win big and the "English plot to enslave us" whine would be endless.
No it wouldn't. We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do. Ideally all Unionist parties would boycott but either way the Tory government would ignore the result
Fascinating that this issue has seen you discard you recent reality-driven musing back for "we are kings of this world".
Specifically: "We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do". There is a reason you are now 30 points behind in the polls and still falling. Its this sneering arrogance that only your own side matter.
There are very very few of your side left, so either your party starts thinking about what is good for the people of this country, or you will be very deserving of your extinction.
However until the next general election we have a Tory majority government focused on current Tory voters and regaining 2019 Tory voters
The government is focused on regaining 2019 Tory voters? Really?
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
I know that has been your historic line on this, but your historic lines on other issues have shifted recently, so stop and think rather just regurgitating "the line".
The Brexit referendum was not "irrelevant for three years". It dominated and shaped our politics. Despite being legally advisory and not binding it was *politically* immovable.
An advisory referenda blessed by the UK Supreme Court would be held under Brexit rules. Except I can see many Tory unionists boycotting, thus guaranteeing that Yes wins.
The same people who said "The Brexit referendum was the binding will of the people" cannot with any credibility say "the Sindy2 referendum was advisory and can be ignored".
Once we get a Yes vote in a legal referendum - advisory or not - that is the genie out of the bottle. So we had better hope that the SC say no. Or the United Kingdom will end. What you think or the line that your former wing of your party thinks will not matter as you are getting flung out. Starmer will say "no deal" with the SNP, but the irresistible political grip of this will bind him and the 2024 parliament just as the previous one politically bound the 2017 parliament.
That is the true Brexit legacy. The only way to win is not to allow any referenda on any subject.
Yes Unionists could in exactly the same way as Remainers said the EU referendum result was non binding and could be ignored from 2016 to 2019.
If Starmer allowed a legal referendum and lost it that would be his fault and he would have to resign. The Conservatives would instantly switch from a Unionist to an English Nationalist party to take as hard a line as possible with you SNP in any Scexit talks
There's a caveat - oil, gas and active wind installations of Scotland relative to their population are a stronger card than they were a couple of years ago. So I think there is a deal can be done post independence winning a Westminster sanctioned referendum. But it's a long way off yet.
However most Scottish exports go to England too and Scottish independence now post Brexit means a hard border and customs posts being built from Berwick to Cumbria to deal with the regulatory checks. The Westminster tap would also be cut off and English voters would demand not a penny more of their taxes ever goes to Scotland again
You mean, like the customs and reguilatory checks at Dover?
Indeed. Scotland would be a foreign country and treated as such. English Scottish relations would be at their lowest since Flodden
Just shows how little you know about history. Numerous occasions in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, including the actual 1707 Union.
In the 18th century Scotland and England ceased to exist as independent countries due to the Act of Union.
In the 17th century divisions were more to the do with the Civil War in which Scotland changed sides.
You can add Solway Moss in the 16th century if you wish.
Before the Act of Union Scotland was England's most frequent enemy after France
Our prosperity has been based on cheap energy coming from Russia. Russian gas – cheap and supposedly affordable, secure, and stable. It has been proved not [to be] the case. And the access to the big China market, for exports and imports, for technological transfers, for investments, for having cheap goods. I think that the Chinese workers with their low salaries have done much better and much more to contain inflation than all the Central Banks together.
So, our prosperity was based on China and Russia – energy and market. Clearly, today, we have to find new ways for energy from inside the European Union, as much as we can, because we should not change one dependency for another. The best energy is the one that you produce at home. That will produce a strong restructuring of our economy – that is for sure. People are not aware of that but the fact that Russia and China are no longer the ones that [they] were for our economic development will require a strong restructuring of our economy.
If only we could have the same sort of critical self-reflection and honest analysis from our own politicians instead of the constant boosterism.
Though it leaves out the exporting of industries to Eastern Europe as opposed to China - the eternal search for cheap labour vs investing in productivity.
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
The difference is that any woman who dissents regardless of her actions is classified as terf, therefore fascist, therefore a valid target for male violence.
I mean, not all people who ask questions / are uncomfortable with trans people are fascist. But, increasingly, the people who actively campaign against trans rights are literally allying themselves with fascists, and far right pro life american evangelicals.
This is a facile argument. If a fascist supports the NHS would you want to abolish the NHS?
Women are fighting for their own rights, that fascists are jumping on a good cause for women's rights to further their own agenda is neither here nor there. Protect women's rights and you cut away the fascists excuse to use that and they will need to find something else.
LGBT people absolutely should be protected, but so too should women.
Women need and deserve single-sex safe spaces. Women who have been raped or abused by men may need and deserve a safe space where they can seek refuge where no members of the male sex are present.
Trans people who have been abused may need refuge too. In which case they should get the help and support they need, but that help and support should not be in conflict with members of the female sex getting the help and support they need.
Protect LGBT rights and protect women's rights. If your answer is to cut away women's single-sex spaces then you have the wrong answer, there must be other solutions.
Transphobes are not campaigning to protect women. Even if they believe that, in effect what they do is reinforce the policing of all women's bodies. Any and all policies that have passed to police trans people have already been weaponised against ciswomen - I shared the other day the story about Florida demanding the mapping of girls menstruation to prove they aren't trans, but policies to inspect childrens genitals are being passed and already being used to attack cis girls:
Because the campaign against transpeople cannot be separated from the desire to control womens bodies. That transwomen are the main victim of this is transmisogyny - the doubling of violence against women being easier in our society and the fact that it views transwomen as men who give up the benefits of being men as somehow threatening to the idea of men being the "superior" sex. It is also noteworthy that so many attacks on transmen are about how they are no longer beautiful, or that men have lost the ability to find them attractive, or the focus on potential risk to their fertility. These are all the same campaign against bodily autonomy, and most queer people and most women see that. Cismen are the most aggrieved by trans people, not ciswomen.
Women campaigning to protect single sex safe spaces are not transphobes, they're women.
Yes things can go wrong, and there's right and wrong ways to do anything, but saying that single sex refuges should exist for women is not transphobic.
If you insist on labelling women who want single sex safe spaces "transphobic" then you won't be taken seriously.
Again, this is a straw man - you seem to be only capable of the simplest of collations. TERF believes do not start and end with "single sex spaces" and include a refusal to accept the very concept of trans people or transitioning. Stated beliefs include the idea that every trans body is a failure. It is an exterminationist policy, in its minorest form of "trans people aren't real" all the way up to the Posy Parker's of the world who demand every trans person goes up against the wall. I have shown the actual impacts of policies that have been implemented and the culture that surrounds those policies - you're just falling back to your position that this is only about single sex spaces, which it isn't and even if it was would still involve the heavy policing of even ciswomen's' bodies.
Quite an interesting little insight into Nicola Sturgeon's trans quagmire (is it a quagmire?), and the wholly self-referential nature of some elements of that lobby.
SNP equalities officer threatened to 'beat the f*** out of terfs and transphobes' in abusive tweets
1 - The chap is still in his job. 2 - He has apologised to the 'LGBTQ+ community', and not to the people he was expressing a desire to "beat the f*ck out of". “I apologise for these tweets and for any offence caused to the LGBTQ+ community and have long since deleted them.” Tweets are from late 2020.
2 is perhaps more concerning for anyone wanting to take this debate forward.
I mean people say hyperbolic stuff on their social media all the time. But also - this article claims that terfs is a "derogatory term used against women who do not recognise the gender identity of trans women" when it is actually a term that they coined for themselves and stopped liking being associated with once they all started going weird on the main online.
Would we have an issue with someone saying "I wanna beat up homophobes" especially if it was known that person was queer and had experienced abuse from homophobes? Would we have an issue with "I wanna beat up racists" if they had friends or knew a community who had just been attacked by racists? Imagine Tommy Robinson crying about people online saying "they're thugs for saying that sort of stuff about racists" and the Sun printing it.
Hate crimes against LGBT+, but especially trans people, are going through the roof. As a queer person, that makes me both scared and furious, for myself and my friends. So yeah, going on social media and being a bit mouthy is not a big deal to me.
The difference is that any woman who dissents regardless of her actions is classified as terf, therefore fascist, therefore a valid target for male violence.
I mean, not all people who ask questions / are uncomfortable with trans people are fascist. But, increasingly, the people who actively campaign against trans rights are literally allying themselves with fascists, and far right pro life american evangelicals.
This is a facile argument. If a fascist supports the NHS would you want to abolish the NHS?
Women are fighting for their own rights, that fascists are jumping on a good cause for women's rights to further their own agenda is neither here nor there. Protect women's rights and you cut away the fascists excuse to use that and they will need to find something else.
LGBT people absolutely should be protected, but so too should women.
Women need and deserve single-sex safe spaces. Women who have been raped or abused by men may need and deserve a safe space where they can seek refuge where no members of the male sex are present.
Trans people who have been abused may need refuge too. In which case they should get the help and support they need, but that help and support should not be in conflict with members of the female sex getting the help and support they need.
Protect LGBT rights and protect women's rights. If your answer is to cut away women's single-sex spaces then you have the wrong answer, there must be other solutions.
Transphobes are not campaigning to protect women. Even if they believe that, in effect what they do is reinforce the policing of all women's bodies. Any and all policies that have passed to police trans people have already been weaponised against ciswomen - I shared the other day the story about Florida demanding the mapping of girls menstruation to prove they aren't trans, but policies to inspect childrens genitals are being passed and already being used to attack cis girls:
Because the campaign against transpeople cannot be separated from the desire to control womens bodies. That transwomen are the main victim of this is transmisogyny - the doubling of violence against women being easier in our society and the fact that it views transwomen as men who give up the benefits of being men as somehow threatening to the idea of men being the "superior" sex. It is also noteworthy that so many attacks on transmen are about how they are no longer beautiful, or that men have lost the ability to find them attractive, or the focus on potential risk to their fertility. These are all the same campaign against bodily autonomy, and most queer people and most women see that. Cismen are the most aggrieved by trans people, not ciswomen.
Women campaigning to protect single sex safe spaces are not transphobes, they're women.
Yes things can go wrong, and there's right and wrong ways to do anything, but saying that single sex refuges should exist for women is not transphobic.
If you insist on labelling women who want single sex safe spaces "transphobic" then you won't be taken seriously.
Again, this is a straw man - you seem to be only capable of the simplest of collations. TERF believes do not start and end with "single sex spaces" and include a refusal to accept the very concept of trans people or transitioning. Stated beliefs include the idea that every trans body is a failure. It is an exterminationist policy, in its minorest form of "trans people aren't real" all the way up to the Posy Parker's of the world who demand every trans person goes up against the wall. I have shown the actual impacts of policies that have been implemented and the culture that surrounds those policies - you're just falling back to your position that this is only about single sex spaces, which it isn't and even if it was would still involve the heavy policing of even ciswomen's' bodies.
Comments
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11124369/Utah-parents-triggered-SECRET-probe-gender-girl-outclassed-opponents-sports-event.html
Women are not protected by a campaign of violence targeted at bodies that don't conform to societies ideas of what a real woman is:
https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/butch-lesbian-public-toilet-women-abuse-government-review-gender-neutral-facilities-833787
Because the campaign against transpeople cannot be separated from the desire to control womens bodies. That transwomen are the main victim of this is transmisogyny - the doubling of violence against women being easier in our society and the fact that it views transwomen as men who give up the benefits of being men as somehow threatening to the idea of men being the "superior" sex. It is also noteworthy that so many attacks on transmen are about how they are no longer beautiful, or that men have lost the ability to find them attractive, or the focus on potential risk to their fertility. These are all the same campaign against bodily autonomy, and most queer people and most women see that. Cismen are the most aggrieved by trans people, not ciswomen.
I find that convincing.
Plus that it risks convincing Putin that there is value and effect in his 'nuclear threats'.
I'd say it is more about getting Russia out of Ukraine asap, and particularly stopping once and for all the trend that we have permitted of Putin creating a series of chaotic and failed states around his borders to make a new sphere of influence.
I think the Russia / Ukraine geographical division may be the wrong one - military / civilian is more relevant. When Russia is launching cruise missiles to attack civilians from Russian airspace the geographical demarcation is quite ridiculous imo.
Edit: TERF may have been coined by trans inclusive feminists, but it was not originally derogatory in nature and TERFs did originally accept and use that label themselves.
1988 when the quotation was made would be a better comparison.
Try running your numbers again since 1988, ideally with the EEC12 rather than the EU27, or with the EU27 if you prefer since its still the same result even bearing in mind of course growth in Eastern Europe flatters the EU27.
But the idea when phrased that way is risible.
I strongly agree with the last part - the failure to devolve to an English parliament was a disaster.
Yes things can go wrong, and there's right and wrong ways to do anything, but saying that single sex refuges should exist for women is not transphobic.
If you insist on labelling women who want single sex safe spaces "transphobic" then you won't be taken seriously.
They are, in most cases, not.
It has gone into an internal civil war and is tearing itself and the country apart
Went to National Railway Museum a couple of weeks back to see her but only once seen her in action
Edit: No, he was referring to EU27, which I think is ex-UK?
Language changes. Even the term "Prime Minister" was originally an insult.
Turnover: £444,382
Loss: £43.3m
https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1579726108546994177
its.dead.jim
If we were instead looking at EEC12 then the appropriate comparison would be with the 20 or so richest US states as of the start of the 1990s, whichever they were.
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Good job Politics has got nothing going on
The EEC 12 had a GDP of more than the entire USA combined, all 50 states, not just 20 of them in 1988. They don't even come close anymore.
Why do you think that is?
So, whose £60m have they spent in the last two years, and what’s their plan to generate revenue for those shareholders and investors?
Or, do they just hope Garmin will buy them out for £250m, purely for the database of co-ordinates?
The fact is, over a long period of time growth in the EU has kept up with growth in the US. While UK GDP has fallen from 16% of US GDP to 13% over the same period. And *all* of that relative decline has happened since 2015. I wonder what might have happened in 2016 to have made that happen? If you want to find a sinking ship, look closer to home.
The sick man of Europe once again.
IIRC it all turned on the interpretation of certain guaranteed minimum performance that Equitable had entered into in their contracts
They wanted to abrogate those agreements (or at least interpret them narrowly) in order to protect the company and the pensions of those who were not protected.
The beneficiaries of those guarantees took them to court and won. They got paid in full - but everyone else was screwed
(But this is from memory 25 years ago so may be very wrong!)
https://twitter.com/geofflath/status/1454361917997334529
Specifically: "We have a Tory majority government so it only cares what Tory voters do". There is a reason you are now 30 points behind in the polls and still falling. Its this sneering arrogance that only your own side matter.
There are very very few of your side left, so either your party starts thinking about what is good for the people of this country, or you will be very deserving of your extinction.
Your party have demonstrated that they are incapable of running a border. So the idea that one would uniquely be created and successfully run along the Tweed is risible. Even for you.
The same would apply to the English and Scottish border if Scotland voted for independence and rejoined the EU or EEA
In the 17th century divisions were more to the do with the Civil War in which Scotland changed sides.
You can add Solway Moss in the 16th century if you wish.
Before the Act of Union Scotland was England's most frequent enemy after France
https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/germany-leapfrogs-uk-to-become-europes-most-shorted-market-as-recession-fears-surge-bridgewater-associates-to-list-of-asset-managers-with-greatest-short-exposure-short-seller-20221011
Down the tubes we all go.