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The polls continue to be terrible for the Tories – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited January 2023 in General
imageThe polls continue to be terrible for the Tories – politicalbetting.com

As PB regulars will know we tend not to focus on individual voting polls on PB but to take a batch every three or 4 weeks and see if we can see the trend or some indication that things might change.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    First again
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited January 2023
    Second.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    Second (possibly). To paraphrase May, nothing has changed. So no change in the polls…
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    100% less craziness thus far...
  • The Tories seemed as doomed as the Japanese at Midway.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Probably more than 40% of Remainers by this time. I suspect that right/wrong graph may have gone the other way.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    edited January 2023
    Surely a "surprise change" would be them voting en masse for someone else?
    Merely sloping back to voting Tory or staying at home would be the more predictable options.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    FPT
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    When did the euphiles ever take eurosceptics into account in the last 40 years when they tied us to mastriicht, the lisbon abomination, blair giving away our rebate for nothing, the lack of a moratorium for free movement form new accession states. If they had maybe brexit voters might not be sticking up two fingers and calling remainer folk "C****"
    Britain is not divided into Europhiles and Eurosceptics, who make up two clearly defined groups locked in perpetual competition.

    Britain has devoted Europhiles, massive Eurosceptics, and the vast majority of people in between.

    You are arguing that because one group had been c*nts, that you should ignore the vast majority of the people in the middle.

    That's pretty shameful.
    Did you proclaim it shameful when we were in the eu and europhiles ignored the people in the middle?
    Are you OK?

    Normally you are a sensible, intelligent poster.

    What I found shameful was you advocating that the people in the middle should be ignored.

    That is profoundly undemocratic and you genuinely should be ashamed of yourself.

    For the record, and as anyone whose read this board over significant periods, I was (and am) pro-Brexit, on the basis that small and nimble beats big and bureaucratic every day of the week, and because I believe that political decisions are best made as near to the people as possible. The EU fails on both counts.
    I am fine I have just lost faith in democracy to sort out the issues for not only our country but throughout the west. The decisions that need to be made wont be because any politician being straight about them wont get elected. I love democracy sadly its not fit for purpose if we want to sort the issues we, and the west have and I don't see any easy answers. It is a hard place to be in.

    Due to this yes I believe people have to be ignored for a decade or two and someone needs to sort the issues before we return to a democracy. At the same time I would hate that as well. Shrugs where do you go?
    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    When did the euphiles ever take eurosceptics into account in the last 40 years when they tied us to mastriicht, the lisbon abomination, blair giving away our rebate for nothing, the lack of a moratorium for free movement form new accession states. If they had maybe brexit voters might not be sticking up two fingers and calling remainer folk "C****"
    Britain is not divided into Europhiles and Eurosceptics, who make up two clearly defined groups locked in perpetual competition.

    Britain has devoted Europhiles, massive Eurosceptics, and the vast majority of people in between.

    You are arguing that because one group had been c*nts, that you should ignore the vast majority of the people in the middle.

    That's pretty shameful.
    Did you proclaim it shameful when we were in the eu and europhiles ignored the people in the middle?
    Are you OK?

    Normally you are a sensible, intelligent poster.

    What I found shameful was you advocating that the people in the middle should be ignored.

    That is profoundly undemocratic and you genuinely should be ashamed of yourself.

    For the record, and as anyone whose read this board over significant periods, I was (and am) pro-Brexit, on the basis that small and nimble beats big and bureaucratic every day of the week, and because I believe that political decisions are best made as near to the people as possible. The EU fails on both counts.
    I am fine I have just lost faith in democracy to sort out the issues for not only our country but throughout the west. The decisions that need to be made wont be because any politician being straight about them wont get elected. I love democracy sadly its not fit for purpose if we want to sort the issues we, and the west have and I don't see any easy answers. It is a hard place to be in.

    Due to this yes I believe people have to be ignored for a decade or two and someone needs to sort the issues before we return to a democracy. At the same time I would hate that as well. Shrugs where do you go?
    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?
    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,009
    Your mum continues to be terrible for the Tories.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    The major alternative what if scenario is - what if Cameron had campaigned for Leave?

    Sure, he would probably have lost Osborne to resignation, but he would have been able to say - "I tried to reform Britain's relationship with the EU. Some in my Cabinet wanted us to accept the deal the EU offered us, but I am recommending to you that Britain leaves the EU and builds a new relationship with the EU from outside the institutions."

    I'm confident that he would have won the referendum for Leave by a much wider margin. Farage, and other Brexit purists, would have been relatively sidelined. And Cameron would have been able to remain as PM after the referendum, and negotiate a much more positive, optimistic, deal with the EU.

    I think the main source of our problems with Brexit is that the government held a vote on a change it didn't want to happen. If the government that held the referendum on leaving the EU had actually wanted to leave the EU, then I think we'd have been in a better place.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited January 2023
    Sturgeon doubles down: It’s just that one rapist who was the problem, the other rapists will be just fine in the women’s prison, and any feminists who disagree are using womens’ rights as a ‘cloak’ to hide their transphobia.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/27/nicola-sturgeon-gender-law-opponents-womens-rights-transphobic/
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11683625/Nicola-Sturgeon-opens-door-transgender-rapists-sent-womens-prisons.html
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    Sandpit said:

    Sturgeon doubles down: It’s just that one rapist who was the problem, the other rapists will be just fine in the women’s prison, and any feminists who disagree are using womens’ rights as a ‘cloak’ to hide their transphobia.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/27/nicola-sturgeon-gender-law-opponents-womens-rights-transphobic/
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11683625/Nicola-Sturgeon-opens-door-transgender-rapists-sent-womens-prisons.html

    We can only hope she spends time in a womens prison with them
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Your mum continues to be terrible for the Tories.

    How many years are you going to be sour for that the Tories have royally messed up this spell in Government, brought their defeat upon themselves, and have precious little good to show for a decade and a half in government?
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741
    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    It's also likely a proportion of them don't know who they will vote for to best kick the Tories out.
    We just don't know how big that proportion is.
  • stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    Worth remembering this front page from 1997;


  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153
    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    edited January 2023
    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    Worth remembering this front page from 1997;


    Yep.
    Easy to forget how many were expecting a Tory win on May 1st 1997.
    Even as the polls closed.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    It helps that France, like the USA, has a system where you can change the face of politics without paying your dues to the party bosses or the party membership. If you are a Macron or Trump, you can "just win" and take over your half of the political spectrum. Of course this route to power looks a little bit like "patriotic strongman", in the sense that the voters could get a forced choice between extremes that a different system might have mitigated.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153
    dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    It's also likely a proportion of them don't know who they will vote for to best kick the Tories out.
    We just don't know how big that proportion is.
    I am assuming the entire currently expressed Refuk vote goes Tory in any marginal (they will pile up in safe Tory seats), about half of the green vote goes Labour, Lib Dem stays unchanged but gets a bit more tactically efficient, and DKs overwhelmingly go Tory. It generally gives us something around 48:35 at the moment.

    Come the election though the Tories will always do better. If I were a pollster I’d just take the raw results and add a few percentage points to Con every time.
  • dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    Worth remembering this front page from 1997;


    Yep.
    Easy to forget how many were expecting a Tory win on May 1st 1997.
    Even as the polls closed.
    To be fair most of them were Labour people after the traumas of 1992 and 1987.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741
    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    edited January 2023

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    Nigelb said:

    kle4 said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Tax bill. UGH

    For the first time in more than 30 years I got what is apparently called a wage slip today. A deeply depressing document. A small number at the top from which numerous deductions are made leaving an even smaller number at the bottom.

    I am seriously perplexed we don’t have more revolutions in this country.
    Worse still is realising how little we get for it. The UK is a classic example of the state doing too much and doing it badly, the last few years of big government conservatism should become a learning experience for all other countries to avoid going down the same path that Theresa May set us on.
    And it’s getting worse. Yesterday my M-in-L had an online appointment for old age psychiatry. This is not a joke. She does not have internet or a computer so she had to be brought to our house to do the call.

    After this travesty, which inevitably concluded that a face to face meeting was required, in 3 months time, my wife gets a form to complete confirming how wonderful this service was. Negative answers were not allowed. So, for example, you could record how many miles you had saved. A negative number, as in our case, was not permitted. Every question was slanted this way but no doubt this will be “evidence” in due course of how wonderful this is.

    My MiL is suffering delusions which are scaring her to the point she doesn’t feel safe in her own home. A crap meeting like this, where she struggled to hear, and a 3 month wait. These are what these deductions from my pay slip are for?
    You’ve continually voted for this, though.
    Austerity, then Brexit, then Johnson.

    Edit: this sound like a personal attack, not especially. “You” is the general public.
    You forget that I live in Scotland and live under the glory of the Scottish government which has never had a Tory element. The fact that it provides services which are at least as bad despite spending more per capita should really get a lot more thought by those deluding themselves that a Labour government is going to make it better.
    The SNP must be the most effective political party ever, the situation with public servies in Scotland seems to be worse than in England, yet they, as the governing party, never get the blame for it. A remarkable feat.
    I'm curious if they deny it is as bad (obviously I've no idea if it is), or acknowledge it is but blame Westminster for that.
    No idea, but the stats indicate that it is worse. Think of what happened this morning, a made up story about HS2 and Euston and people are outraged, "fucking useless tories" etc etc. They never seems to happen to the SNP. They have even got away with the prison rapist stuff.
    But who made up the story ?
    The suggestion is that it was a deliberate distraction exercise by government. Someone senior briefed it, since the BBC also took it seriously, first thing this morning.
    I wouldn't be surprised if the HS2 service did start initially at Old Oak Common. It is a fairly common approach to projects that are late and over budget. Get something working to buy time and generate at least some cash.
    It is actually surprisingly common historically; there have been loads of 'temporary' terminuses. Who remembers Minories (13 years until Fenchurch Street was built)? Devonshire Street (Mile End - a temporary terminus for the line to Bishopsgate, which operated as a terminus for a year). Bishop’s Bridge Road - the first Paddington, whilst Paddington was built? And they're just from London.

    Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.

    But in the case of HS2, it's unlikely, as OOC is not suited for a terminus - there could only be a very limited number of trains.
    I haven't been following HS2 closely but it seems as it is (ie Nov 22) that Old Oak Common with six platforms was targeted to be the initial London terminus from about 2030, and designed as such, with the revamped Euston Station following on about five years later. I can see both dates pushing to the right.
    I'd be fascinated to know your reasoning on that.
    (Snip)

    HS2 services between London and Birmingham are due to start running between 2029 and 2033, with a target date of 2030. Trains will initially run between the new stations at Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street ... The plans [for Euston Station] were changed on government orders — at a cost of £105.6 million — from an 11-platform design, which would have opened in two stages, to a 10-platform scheme that is due for completion between 2031 and 2036.
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/euston-tube-station-upgrade-plans-hs2-architects-design-london-train-b1043757.html

    There seems to be a planned gap between initial service from Old Oak Station to the full service from Euston. My guess is that gap will get longer.
    Thanks, I have also been keeping up fairly well with the project (or thought I had...) and had not seen that claim in the Standard.

    The problem with operating a terminus at OOC - even a temporary one - is that it really limits the numbers of trains that can be run. That may be acceptable for a short period, but not an appreciable amount of time.

    Is that Standard claim available in any official format?
    It's covered in the Oakervee Report section 12. From my reading a terminus at Old Oak Common would allow an additional 10 trains per hour, which is the current capacity shortfall on the London to Birmingham route. Euston would allow 18 tph according to Oakervee, but other people suggest 14 or 17 tph from Euston, any of which would allow future growth compared with OOC.

    Oakervee also discusses convenience to passengers of starting and ending their journeys at Euston or OOC. Euston isn't massively more convenient overall - you get on the Northern Line rather than the Elizabeth Line to go onto your destination. The key point is, if Euston terminus is built, passengers get a choice.

    I would say a terminus at Old Oak Common is viable, but not ideal.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oakervee-review-of-hs2
  • dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    Worth remembering this front page from 1997;


    Yep.
    Easy to forget how many were expecting a Tory win on May 1st 1997.
    Even as the polls closed.
    To be fair most of them were Labour people after the traumas of 1992 and 1987.
    Have you read Gyles Brandreth's diaries? They're awfully good on that strange campaign, and the number of Conservative campaigners saying "well, it doesn't feel that bad on the doorsteps..."
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153
    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,787
    stodge said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
    Not unless you can persuade them to abandon the EEA and persuade the EU to negotiate an alternative arrangement.

    If you want to create an alternative model, it would be better to start with something new.
  • EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
  • That last sentence seems a much more realistic view of the Con DKs than I have read here before.

    Could they prevent a Lab majority? Yes. Will they do so? Very dubious in my view. Not just because of the nature of Mr Sunak and his Cabinet but also because the maths look very tight to me even if the Con DKs all discover a sudden love for Mr Sunak and his High Tax Low Growth Collapsing Services administration
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    stodge said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
    Half its current membership is Iceland and Liechtenstein; the former is half the size of Northants and the latter is the side of a mountain. This won't exactly need a new unloading bay in Dover. The other half is a little larger but not close to even the Netherlands. And as soon as the UK joins, it will have absolutely no relationship with the EU beyond what the UK currently enjoys, because the EU are not mugs.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153
    stodge said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
    Bring Ukraine and Georgia into EFTA, perhaps together with Morocco, and then we’re talking.

    Better still we could add the newly democratic and friendly post-Lukashenko Belarus and post-imperial post-nuclear Russia once Putin’s gone and they grant independence to their many colonies.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
    Reading the list yes he acheived little of consequence to sort the problems out.

    Most western states and the uk in particular have 1 problem with 2 ways to deal with it

    Tax income does not equal services cost even when services are underfunded.

    so either
    1) raise taxes and taxing the rich wont be enough you will need to tax everyone more

    2) cut the services the state offers

    Good luck getting elected on either premise
  • TimS said:

    dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    It's also likely a proportion of them don't know who they will vote for to best kick the Tories out.
    We just don't know how big that proportion is.
    I am assuming the entire currently expressed Refuk vote goes Tory in any marginal (they will pile up in safe Tory seats), about half of the green vote goes Labour, Lib Dem stays unchanged but gets a bit more tactically efficient, and DKs overwhelmingly go Tory. It generally gives us something around 48:35 at the moment.

    Come the election though the Tories will always do better. If I were a pollster I’d just take the raw results and add a few percentage points to Con every time.
    Pollsters aren't, in fairness, in the business of being Mystic Meg, and projecting what's going to happen in 18 months time or so based on a bit of data gathering and a bit of educated guesswork. That's for punters here and elsewhere.

    They are there to do the best job they can of taking a sample of typically about 1000 people now, and scaling that up to the population level to say what people would do NOW.

    Predicting how the next 18 months will pan out is a very different (and very speculative) skillset, and pollsters don't claim to be in that game.

  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,787

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    TimS said:

    stodge said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
    Bring Ukraine and Georgia into EFTA, perhaps together with Morocco, and then we’re talking.

    Better still we could add the newly democratic and friendly post-Lukashenko Belarus and post-imperial post-nuclear Russia once Putin’s gone and they grant independence to their many colonies.
    The problem is that EFTA currently includes three hyper-rich countries and one country with high but volatile national income, all of which are as economically developed as you get and very efficient. When countries are on very different national incomes, there are a lot more losers from trade and you need political solutions to compensate them. Ergo the CAP, structural funds and all the other things the UK would rather not pay.
  • EPG said:

    stodge said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
    Half its current membership is Iceland and Liechtenstein; the former is half the size of Northants and the latter is the side of a mountain. This won't exactly need a new unloading bay in Dover. The other half is a little larger but not close to even the Netherlands. And as soon as the UK joins, it will have absolutely no relationship with the EU beyond what the UK currently enjoys, because the EU are not mugs.
    It will have exactly the same relationship as it has now because that relationship is defined by a specific treaty which forms the EEA. EFTA as an organisation has no relationship with the EU except through the EEA treaty.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    edited January 2023

    Pagan2 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sturgeon doubles down: It’s just that one rapist who was the problem, the other rapists will be just fine in the women’s prison, and any feminists who disagree are using womens’ rights as a ‘cloak’ to hide their transphobia.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/27/nicola-sturgeon-gender-law-opponents-womens-rights-transphobic/
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11683625/Nicola-Sturgeon-opens-door-transgender-rapists-sent-womens-prisons.html

    We can only hope she spends time in a womens prison with them
    < hopefully this comment will be edited >
    You still have time to rethink that comment and edit it.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    edited January 2023

    stodge said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
    Not unless you can persuade them to abandon the EEA and persuade the EU to negotiate an alternative arrangement.

    If you want to create an alternative model, it would be better to start with something new.
    For various reasons I don't think EEA/Single Market arrangements is realistic for the UK following the Brexit and probably never was, following the Brexit vote. It's either full membership or outer orbit - the first is not likely any time soon, so outer orbit is what it is.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,161
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    and if my aunty had balls...
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    EPG said:

    stodge said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    It would be an opportunity for the UK to re-define EFTA as a counterpoint to the EU. Basically, EFTA would be more akin to the EEC of blessed memory - a common trading bloc of free nations, no Euro, no Single Market, no Schengen. It would have a similar free trade relationship with the EU but without any of the political overtones.
    Half its current membership is Iceland and Liechtenstein; the former is half the size of Northants and the latter is the side of a mountain. This won't exactly need a new unloading bay in Dover. The other half is a little larger but not close to even the Netherlands. And as soon as the UK joins, it will have absolutely no relationship with the EU beyond what the UK currently enjoys, because the EU are not mugs.
    It will have exactly the same relationship as it has now because that relationship is defined by a specific treaty which forms the EEA. EFTA as an organisation has no relationship with the EU except through the EEA treaty.
    Then the EEA treaty will cease to exist, because when push comes to shove, this idea is like renaming the UK as "Liechenstein, honest guv" and expecting immediate free trade with France.
  • dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    Worth remembering this front page from 1997;


    Yep.
    Easy to forget how many were expecting a Tory win on May 1st 1997.
    Even as the polls closed.
    To be fair most of them were Labour people after the traumas of 1992 and 1987.
    Have you read Gyles Brandreth's diaries? They're awfully good on that strange campaign, and the number of Conservative campaigners saying "well, it doesn't feel that bad on the doorsteps..."
    Great book.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    edited January 2023
    UK-EFTA would be a good idea for the UK in a world without the EU, but Norway and Switzerland would probably veto it in our timeline because they would prefer economic integration with the EU over deeper trade with the UK. That's great power politics for you.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    That, currently, is the grim reality that awaits the UK.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153
    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
    Reading the list yes he acheived little of consequence to sort the problems out.

    Most western states and the uk in particular have 1 problem with 2 ways to deal with it

    Tax income does not equal services cost even when services are underfunded.

    so either
    1) raise taxes and taxing the rich wont be enough you will need to tax everyone more

    2) cut the services the state offers

    Good luck getting elected on either premise
    First world problems

    UK median household income: $46.7k
    France median household income: $61k

    Similar net debt to UK. Vastly better healthcare (I can testify as someone who’s experienced it), virtually free childcare from birth, high quality state education, actual high speed rail lines, nice food, brilliant wine, lovely scenery and climate, pretty towns, affordable houses, good looking people with clothes that fit, and free firewood from your local communal woodland if you can find someone to cut it for you. (But admittedly their plumbers merchants are a complete cartel).
    France is doing fine.

    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-the-united-kingdom/
    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-france-2010---2021-/

  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
    Reading the list yes he acheived little of consequence to sort the problems out.

    Most western states and the uk in particular have 1 problem with 2 ways to deal with it

    Tax income does not equal services cost even when services are underfunded.

    so either
    1) raise taxes and taxing the rich wont be enough you will need to tax everyone more

    2) cut the services the state offers

    Good luck getting elected on either premise
    First world problems

    UK median household income: $46.7k
    France median household income: $61k

    Similar net debt to UK. Vastly better healthcare (I can testify as someone who’s experienced it), virtually free childcare from birth, high quality state education, actual high speed rail lines, nice food, brilliant wine, lovely scenery and climate, pretty towns, affordable houses, good looking people with clothes that fit, and free firewood from your local communal woodland if you can find someone to cut it for you. (But admittedly their plumbers merchants are a complete cartel).
    France is doing fine.

    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-the-united-kingdom/
    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-france-2010---2021-/

    I’ll repost the chart I posted this morning.



    Normal people enjoy a better quality life across very much of the OECD.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    edited January 2023

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    That's not quite true.

    Switzerland has free movement, but it does not have the requirement - embedded in Maastricht and the EEA treaty - that requires you to treat foreign (EEA) nationals the way you treat your own citizens.

    This means that - while a Swiss firm can happily hire a German or Spaniard or Pole - there is no requirement to offer him Housing Benefit. Switzerland therefore uses its healthcare system - and you are obliged to purchase healthcare if you are resident in the country - as an effective way of limiting low wage immigration, while at the same time maximising the ability of Swiss firms to hire talent from around the continent.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    edited January 2023
    TimS said:

    dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Far be it from me to disagree with OGH (though that's never stopped me before) but your continuing argument around a large pool of 2019 GE voters now in the "Don't Know" category just doesn't hold water.

    Looking at the Redfield & Wilton data from earlier in the week, among likely voters, 53% of the Conservative 2019 vote remained loyal, 18% were Labour and 14% were Don't Knows (DKs).

    The Conservative "Don't Knows" in R&W represent just 39% of the total DK share. The second largest proportion of DKs came from those who didn't vote last time.

    Friday night fatigue may have intervened but adding the Conservative DKs to the Conservative score would make the vote shares Labour 45%, Conservative 31% - better but a long way from a triumphant re-election.

    That pre-supposes the Conservative DKs will return en masse to the blue camp - it's also possible they won't and may choose to abstain.

    It's also likely a proportion of them don't know who they will vote for to best kick the Tories out.
    We just don't know how big that proportion is.
    I am assuming the entire currently expressed Refuk vote goes Tory in any marginal (they will pile up in safe Tory seats), about half of the green vote goes Labour, Lib Dem stays unchanged but gets a bit more tactically efficient, and DKs overwhelmingly go Tory. It generally gives us something around 48:35 at the moment.

    Come the election though the Tories will always do better. If I were a pollster I’d just take the raw results and add a few percentage points to Con every time.
    In 2019 the Brexit Party vote did not go to the Tories. Indeed it was directly responsible for a whole stack of seats staying Labour.

    When you are a foaming at the mouth loon you do jot get swayed by oven ready deals. Only a punishment Brexit would get you off. And these people are now furious about the betrayal by the Tories of their precious.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    rcs1000 said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    That's not quite true.

    Switzerland has free movement, but it does not have the requirement - embedded in Maastricht and the EEA treaty - that requires you to treat foreign (EEA) nationals the way you treat your own citizens.

    This means that - while a Swiss firm can happily hire a German or Spaniard or Pole - there is no requirement to offer him Housing Benefit. Switzerland therefore uses its healthcare system - and you are obliged to purchase healthcare if you are resident in the country - as an effective way of limiting low wage immigration, while at the same time maximising the ability of Swiss firms to hire talent from around the continent.
    Right, try explaining that to the average voter. They will still come in to compete with you and your kids for jobs and housing, but we'll protect the bottom 10% (who you think are scroungers anyway).

    I don't deny that this would be the ideal solution for Brexit millionaires, of which PB.com has many.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
    The ILO produces "Labour Market Flexibility" ratings by country, and Macron has dramatically improved France's rigid labour market.

    It's still no UK (or even Spain or Sweden), but it has moved from being dreadful and comparable to Greece or Italy's, to being reasonably free.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
    Reading the list yes he acheived little of consequence to sort the problems out.

    Most western states and the uk in particular have 1 problem with 2 ways to deal with it

    Tax income does not equal services cost even when services are underfunded.

    so either
    1) raise taxes and taxing the rich wont be enough you will need to tax everyone more

    2) cut the services the state offers

    Good luck getting elected on either premise
    First world problems

    UK median household income: $46.7k
    France median household income: $61k

    Similar net debt to UK. Vastly better healthcare (I can testify as someone who’s experienced it), virtually free childcare from birth, high quality state education, actual high speed rail lines, nice food, brilliant wine, lovely scenery and climate, pretty towns, affordable houses, good looking people with clothes that fit, and free firewood from your local communal woodland if you can find someone to cut it for you. (But admittedly their plumbers merchants are a complete cartel).
    France is doing fine.

    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-the-united-kingdom/
    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-france-2010---2021-/

    You think france is doing fine then all good I dont really care as I dont live there the argument is not about france its about the uk and we have underfunded services that dont deliver and cost more than tax.

    Yes I believe most of the west has the same issue but will happily concede the point to you and focus on the uk because I do live there and its important to me therefore.

    The point remains the same we have two options, tax a hell of a lot more on everyone or cut services.

    I would estimate that if we full fund everything then the tax required would be about double what we currently pay though thats a guess admittedly

    So which political party is going to stand on tax more or reduce services and win? answer none
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    Tres said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    and if my aunty had balls...
    In Scotland, it is of course perfectly acceptable for one's auntie to have balls.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    That's not quite true.

    Switzerland has free movement, but it does not have the requirement - embedded in Maastricht and the EEA treaty - that requires you to treat foreign (EEA) nationals the way you treat your own citizens.

    This means that - while a Swiss firm can happily hire a German or Spaniard or Pole - there is no requirement to offer him Housing Benefit. Switzerland therefore uses its healthcare system - and you are obliged to purchase healthcare if you are resident in the country - as an effective way of limiting low wage immigration, while at the same time maximising the ability of Swiss firms to hire talent from around the continent.
    Right, try explaining that to the average voter. They will still come in to compete with you and your kids for jobs and housing, but we'll protect the bottom 10% (who you think are scroungers anyway).

    I don't deny that this would be the ideal solution for Brexit millionaires, of which PB.com has many.
    Remind me, is Switzerland a prosperous and successful place?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Are you saying the anti farage is amongst us heralding the end of days?
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    I don't know Erickson, but we've done the numbers on the price of EU vs EEA membership before, and however you cut it, Norway pays a fraction of the sums paid by EU members.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    ...
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    rcs1000 said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    That's not quite true.

    Switzerland has free movement, but it does not have the requirement - embedded in Maastricht and the EEA treaty - that requires you to treat foreign (EEA) nationals the way you treat your own citizens.

    This means that - while a Swiss firm can happily hire a German or Spaniard or Pole - there is no requirement to offer him Housing Benefit. Switzerland therefore uses its healthcare system - and you are obliged to purchase healthcare if you are resident in the country - as an effective way of limiting low wage immigration, while at the same time maximising the ability of Swiss firms to hire talent from around the continent.
    Right, try explaining that to the average voter. They will still come in to compete with you and your kids for jobs and housing, but we'll protect the bottom 10% (who you think are scroungers anyway).

    I don't deny that this would be the ideal solution for Brexit millionaires, of which PB.com has many.
    Remind me, is Switzerland a prosperous and successful place?
    Sure, especially for rich folks. But it is small, and being Germany's tax-efficient periphery that imports EU skilled workers would not be a scalable strategy for the UK even if they were neighbours.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    rcs1000 said:

    Tres said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    and if my aunty had balls...
    In Scotland, it is of course perfectly acceptable for one's auntie to have balls.
    Did they not make it obligatory?

    Though having said that the Scots parliament has actually made scottish people far more employable due to the GRC....got a gender imbalance just require some of your scottish staff to self id and sorted
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    Of course Norway can refuse to implement EU rules, just like EU countries regularly refuse, but at scale it means an end to the relationship.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,787
    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    In practice they can't without putting the whole trade relationship on the line.
  • EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    Norway has a veto over any new regulation that, after it has gone through the process of development - which Norway plays a full part of - it does not agree with. If they choose to go this route then that portion of the EEA agreement is suspended until a mutual settlement is reached. They did this with the Postal Directive in 2011.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    Scott_xP said:

    ...

    Lol. The solicitors just down the road from here is actually called Careless Solicitors!
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    Norway has a veto over any new regulation that, after it has gone through the process of development - which Norway plays a full part of - it does not agree with. If they choose to go this route then that portion of the EEA agreement is suspended until a mutual settlement is reached. They did this with the Postal Directive in 2011.
    They delayed it. The EU ploughed ahead regardless, because it can ignore five million non-members. And in the end Norway had to take it because they wanted to maintain a deeply integrated economic relationship. The UK doesn't want one of those apparently, so it shouldn't join EFTA. I'm not saying rejoin! Just don't join the worst of all worlds. That's all.
  • Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    In practice they can't without putting the whole trade relationship on the line.
    They did between 2011 and 2014. There were no wider consequences and the situation only changed because of a change of Government in Oslo.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited January 2023
    IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ...

    Lol. The solicitors just down the road from here is actually called Careless Solicitors!
    Best named law firm is Wright Hassall.

    https://www.wrighthassall.co.uk/
  • EPG said:

    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    Of course Norway can refuse to implement EU rules, just like EU countries regularly refuse, but at scale it means an end to the relationship.
    Nope. Again you are wrong. The mechanism for this is actually written into the EEA treaty. Moreover an EU country cannot legally refuse to implement an EU regulation. Of course some do but in doing so they are acting illegally. Are you advocating that as a viable alternative?
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,781

    IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ...

    Lol. The solicitors just down the road from here is actually called Careless Solicitors!
    Best named law firm is Wright Hassall.

    https://www.wrighthassall.co.uk/
    V.Good & Co in Edinburgh. Hmmmm.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    EPG said:

    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    Of course Norway can refuse to implement EU rules, just like EU countries regularly refuse, but at scale it means an end to the relationship.
    Nope. Again you are wrong. The mechanism for this is actually written into the EEA treaty. Moreover an EU country cannot legally refuse to implement an EU regulation. Of course some do but in doing so they are acting illegally. Are you advocating that as a viable alternative?
    Most eu countries seem to ignore eu regulations when they wish to cf France and the ban on british beef seemed was mostly the uk that religously followed them and indeed gold plated them which was not the fault of the eu but the civil service and that was part of the issue
  • Scott_xP said:

    ...

    Well quite


  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,614
    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    Free movement is a problem in proportion to the actions taken to protect the wages of those in low end jobs.

    See the rioting in France etc.

    Switzerland places high barriers to entering their job market - “You are entirely free to work here. Providing you speak the required languages and have a Swiss qualification.”

    On your coffee is very very expensive - and served by a Swiss person

    High end jobs do not require protection because of the world wide shortage in high end skills.
  • EPG said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    Norway has a veto over any new regulation that, after it has gone through the process of development - which Norway plays a full part of - it does not agree with. If they choose to go this route then that portion of the EEA agreement is suspended until a mutual settlement is reached. They did this with the Postal Directive in 2011.
    They delayed it. The EU ploughed ahead regardless, because it can ignore five million non-members. And in the end Norway had to take it because they wanted to maintain a deeply integrated economic relationship. The UK doesn't want one of those apparently, so it shouldn't join EFTA. I'm not saying rejoin! Just don't join the worst of all worlds. That's all.
    Of course the EU continued with it for the EU but it was not enforced in Norway. You are just getting desperate here - just as I said earlier, the most vocal critics of the EEA relationship have always been the most fanatically pro-EU.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    EPG said:

    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    Of course Norway can refuse to implement EU rules, just like EU countries regularly refuse, but at scale it means an end to the relationship.
    Nope. Again you are wrong. The mechanism for this is actually written into the EEA treaty. Moreover an EU country cannot legally refuse to implement an EU regulation. Of course some do but in doing so they are acting illegally. Are you advocating that as a viable alternative?
    That is like saying the right to begin divorce proceedings is written into family law. It is, but exercising it doesn't typically improve the marriage.
  • EPG said:

    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    Of course Norway can refuse to implement EU rules, just like EU countries regularly refuse, but at scale it means an end to the relationship.
    Nope. Again you are wrong. The mechanism for this is actually written into the EEA treaty. Moreover an EU country cannot legally refuse to implement an EU regulation. Of course some do but in doing so they are acting illegally. Are you advocating that as a viable alternative?
    Sadly this level of wilful ignorance was displayed by the UK negotiators as well...
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    Norway has a veto over any new regulation that, after it has gone through the process of development - which Norway plays a full part of - it does not agree with. If they choose to go this route then that portion of the EEA agreement is suspended until a mutual settlement is reached. They did this with the Postal Directive in 2011.
    They delayed it. The EU ploughed ahead regardless, because it can ignore five million non-members. And in the end Norway had to take it because they wanted to maintain a deeply integrated economic relationship. The UK doesn't want one of those apparently, so it shouldn't join EFTA. I'm not saying rejoin! Just don't join the worst of all worlds. That's all.
    Of course the EU continued with it for the EU but it was not enforced in Norway. You are just getting desperate here - just as I said earlier, the most vocal critics of the EEA relationship have always been the most fanatically pro-EU.
    No, Norway adopted it. It's not desperate, fanatical, or bigoted to talk about what happened in real life, even in Norway.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,043

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    That's my understanding too. The fora by which Norway and the others are consulted on the EU laws that concern them put them above full members in many ways.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    Of course Norway can refuse to implement EU rules, just like EU countries regularly refuse, but at scale it means an end to the relationship.
    Nope. Again you are wrong. The mechanism for this is actually written into the EEA treaty. Moreover an EU country cannot legally refuse to implement an EU regulation. Of course some do but in doing so they are acting illegally. Are you advocating that as a viable alternative?
    That is like saying the right to begin divorce proceedings is written into family law. It is, but exercising it doesn't typically improve the marriage.
    A lot of marriages are improved by divorce dont be silly
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    edited January 2023
    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    Norway has a veto over any new regulation that, after it has gone through the process of development - which Norway plays a full part of - it does not agree with. If they choose to go this route then that portion of the EEA agreement is suspended until a mutual settlement is reached. They did this with the Postal Directive in 2011.
    They delayed it. The EU ploughed ahead regardless, because it can ignore five million non-members. And in the end Norway had to take it because they wanted to maintain a deeply integrated economic relationship. The UK doesn't want one of those apparently, so it shouldn't join EFTA. I'm not saying rejoin! Just don't join the worst of all worlds. That's all.
    Of course the EU continued with it for the EU but it was not enforced in Norway. You are just getting desperate here - just as I said earlier, the most vocal critics of the EEA relationship have always been the most fanatically pro-EU.
    No, Norway adopted it. It's not desperate, fanatical, or bigoted to talk about what happened in real life, even in Norway.
    So you are claiming that a change of Government does not bring about a change of attitude and policy? Well its a novel idea.

    You quoted a man who has written a whole book about how European* solidarity and integration is a 'moral duty' as if he was a neutral authoritative voice for Norway. I think that says everything we need to know about your attitudes.

    *Edited from EU
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,614

    Pagan2 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sturgeon doubles down: It’s just that one rapist who was the problem, the other rapists will be just fine in the women’s prison, and any feminists who disagree are using womens’ rights as a ‘cloak’ to hide their transphobia.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/27/nicola-sturgeon-gender-law-opponents-womens-rights-transphobic/
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11683625/Nicola-Sturgeon-opens-door-transgender-rapists-sent-womens-prisons.html

    We can only hope she spends time in a womens prison with them
    < hopefully this comment will be edited >
    You still have time to rethink that comment and edit it.
    Indeed - that comment was completely and utterly unacceptable. And vile.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153
    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
    Reading the list yes he acheived little of consequence to sort the problems out.

    Most western states and the uk in particular have 1 problem with 2 ways to deal with it

    Tax income does not equal services cost even when services are underfunded.

    so either
    1) raise taxes and taxing the rich wont be enough you will need to tax everyone more

    2) cut the services the state offers

    Good luck getting elected on either premise
    First world problems

    UK median household income: $46.7k
    France median household income: $61k

    Similar net debt to UK. Vastly better healthcare (I can testify as someone who’s experienced it), virtually free childcare from birth, high quality state education, actual high speed rail lines, nice food, brilliant wine, lovely scenery and climate, pretty towns, affordable houses, good looking people with clothes that fit, and free firewood from your local communal woodland if you can find someone to cut it for you. (But admittedly their plumbers merchants are a complete cartel).
    France is doing fine.

    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-the-united-kingdom/
    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-france-2010---2021-/

    You think france is doing fine then all good I dont really care as I dont live there the argument is not about france its about the uk and we have underfunded services that dont deliver and cost more than tax.

    Yes I believe most of the west has the same issue but will happily concede the point to you and focus on the uk because I do live there and its important to me therefore.

    The point remains the same we have two options, tax a hell of a lot more on everyone or cut services.

    I would estimate that if we full fund everything then the tax required would be about double what we currently pay though thats a guess admittedly

    So which political party is going to stand on tax more or reduce services and win? answer none
    Well that’s kind of the Tory policy position. And it’s wrong. In the short term we need to tax a bit more, focus tax reliefs and incentives on the areas of infrastructure investment where we’re most lacking, borrow as much as we can manage without pushing up gilt yields, and spend significantly more on the public infrastructure and services that will enable the economy to grow.

    Tax rises plus spending cuts equal a steadily falling apart and clinically depressed country.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    Free movement is a problem in proportion to the actions taken to protect the wages of those in low end jobs.

    See the rioting in France etc.

    Switzerland places high barriers to entering their job market - “You are entirely free to work here. Providing you speak the required languages and have a Swiss qualification.”

    On your coffee is very very expensive - and served by a Swiss person

    High end jobs do not require protection because of the world wide shortage in high end skills.
    Mostly fair, but:
    1. French people riot because it is written into their political DNA. In the modern era, they have never not rioted. They rioted during monarchy, Empire, the Fourth Republic, the Common Market and Maastricht. They will riot over train workers' nice pensions even if they are not train workers. They will riot against McDonalds even though they eat more McDonalds than any other Europeans.
    2. There is not currently a worldwide shortage in high-end skills. There is a rich-world shortage of low-skilled workers, in fact, but the most productive companies are falling over each other to lay off staff right now. And much as I like to scoff at it, with some probability I buy Leon's shpiel about AI changing the nature of employment in future.
  • EPG said:

    Pagan2 said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    he didnt say that so you are the one misleading what he said is Norway can veto any eu regulation and not implement it in Norway. Not that they can veto the EU implementing it
    Of course Norway can refuse to implement EU rules, just like EU countries regularly refuse, but at scale it means an end to the relationship.
    Nope. Again you are wrong. The mechanism for this is actually written into the EEA treaty. Moreover an EU country cannot legally refuse to implement an EU regulation. Of course some do but in doing so they are acting illegally. Are you advocating that as a viable alternative?
    Sadly this level of wilful ignorance was displayed by the UK negotiators as well...
    Hence the reason we were and are so wrong to renege on the NI Protocol. When you agree to rules and treaties you stick to them otherwise they are meaningless.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    @ftukpolitics: HMRC admits giving misleading information when asked about probes into ministers https://on.ft.com/3XY509C
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    rcs1000 said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    That's not quite true.

    Switzerland has free movement, but it does not have the requirement - embedded in Maastricht and the EEA treaty - that requires you to treat foreign (EEA) nationals the way you treat your own citizens.

    This means that - while a Swiss firm can happily hire a German or Spaniard or Pole - there is no requirement to offer him Housing Benefit. Switzerland therefore uses its healthcare system - and you are obliged to purchase healthcare if you are resident in the country - as an effective way of limiting low wage immigration, while at the same time maximising the ability of Swiss firms to hire talent from around the continent.
    Hmmm. Is that not one reason why the Brussels has been leaning very heavily on Switzerland to ditch the current set of x agreements?

    I think I recall force majeure threats to cut them off from the European Electricity Grid, amongst other things.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    EPG said:

    Modern-day EFTA is a club for EU enclaves and peripheries, i.e. rules takers. If the UK were to join, it would immediately comprise 75% of the EFTA economy. So the EFTA-EU negotiations and relationship would be virtually equivalent to today's UK-EU negotiations and relationship.

    The 'rule takers' claim is simply a myth perpetuated for many years by the the pro-EU supporters to undermine any possibility of it being considered an alternative. The EFTA members themselves certainly don't consider themselves simply rule takers.
    A view from a Norwegian:

    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/20/youll-hate-it-why-the-norway-option-amounts-to-self-inflicted-subservience-to-the-eu/

    In reality, the EU dominates EEA countries, not by intention, but by default. Because they have rejected membership in the EU, but seek access to the Single Market, the EEA members become acquiescent to the EU. Being dependent on the will, even the goodwill, of others is not freedom – it is dominance. By rejecting EU membership but not the Single Market, the associated non-members have become subject to the hegemonic dominance of the EU. These states have unintentionally turned the EU into a hegemon ruling over themselves.
    Hahaha.

    Erikson is a fanatical pro-EU advocate who has campaigned tirelessly for Norway to join the EU. That article is actually filled with what are, being generous, misleading claims and being less generous outright falsehoods. The most obvious that Norway pays roughly on a par with EU members - it doesn't, not even by a fraction. Nor is it simply a rule taker. It has full participation in the development of all EU rules and regulations affecting the EEA relationship with the exception of the final vote. And at that point if they don't agree they have a veto.

    Quoting Erikson, who betrays his own bigotry by describing Norwegian attitudes to the EU as 'demonised', as a neutral or reliable authority is as bad as quoting Farage as a neutral observer of the UK relationship with the EU.
    Now who's being misleading? No, Norway does not have a veto over the EU's trading framework.
    Norway has a veto over any new regulation that, after it has gone through the process of development - which Norway plays a full part of - it does not agree with. If they choose to go this route then that portion of the EEA agreement is suspended until a mutual settlement is reached. They did this with the Postal Directive in 2011.
    They delayed it. The EU ploughed ahead regardless, because it can ignore five million non-members. And in the end Norway had to take it because they wanted to maintain a deeply integrated economic relationship. The UK doesn't want one of those apparently, so it shouldn't join EFTA. I'm not saying rejoin! Just don't join the worst of all worlds. That's all.
    Of course the EU continued with it for the EU but it was not enforced in Norway. You are just getting desperate here - just as I said earlier, the most vocal critics of the EEA relationship have always been the most fanatically pro-EU.
    No, Norway adopted it. It's not desperate, fanatical, or bigoted to talk about what happened in real life, even in Norway.
    So you are claiming that a change of Government does not bring about a change of attitude and policy? Well its a novel idea.

    You quoted a man who has written a whole book about how European* solidarity and integration is a 'moral duty' as if he was a neutral authoritative voice for Norway. I think that says everything we need to know about your attitudes.

    *Edited from EU
    Yes, Norway is of course free to change its policy to that of the EU. It's like the fellow who can choose the Model T in any colour, as long as it's black.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TimS said:

    FPT

    What this country needs is a patriotic strongman, right?

    No not saying that either, as I said I believe in democracy I have just reached a point where I look at problems we have and most western countries have the same and realise fixing those problems can't be done in a democracy unless politicians lie about their intent or we dont go democratic for a few years. Personally I prefer politician do not tarnish their already low credibility further.

    so two questions for you and second is only if you say no to the first

    1) Do you see the problems in the western countries solvable by any politician being honest and still getting elected?

    2) If no politician can get elected on what needs to be done what do you think should be done

    1. Yes, certainly as much as in previous eras. The West has its issues but overall it’s in robust health. Politicians lied to us for years and are now about to get their comeuppance.

    2. They can, and do in many countries. Democracy is a messy business but it always carries with it the hope and possibility of changing direction.

    As an example I would give you the not always popular Emmanuel Macron. He spent his first term pissing off just about every interest group in France by telling them hard truths, and subsequently got re-elected.

    And how many of those things he pissed them off about did he actually achieve wasnt the percentage 0? He didnt get his reforms to pensions through nor those on working practises. He achieved in fact bugger all of what he wanted

    Reason he got reelected in fact is it was him or lepen....like choosing between walter the softy and hitler
    There are a number of sources looking at Macrons successes and failures, but this one is a usefully short and balanced synthesis: https://atlanticsentinel.com/2022/03/macrons-successes-and-failures/

    Macron has achieved quite a bit. But not everything, though he is trying again on pensions. Rather like Blair, it’s too easy to simply say “he did nothing” when the evidence is he’s done rather a lot, particularly on labour law reform.
    Reading the list yes he acheived little of consequence to sort the problems out.

    Most western states and the uk in particular have 1 problem with 2 ways to deal with it

    Tax income does not equal services cost even when services are underfunded.

    so either
    1) raise taxes and taxing the rich wont be enough you will need to tax everyone more

    2) cut the services the state offers

    Good luck getting elected on either premise
    First world problems

    UK median household income: $46.7k
    France median household income: $61k

    Similar net debt to UK. Vastly better healthcare (I can testify as someone who’s experienced it), virtually free childcare from birth, high quality state education, actual high speed rail lines, nice food, brilliant wine, lovely scenery and climate, pretty towns, affordable houses, good looking people with clothes that fit, and free firewood from your local communal woodland if you can find someone to cut it for you. (But admittedly their plumbers merchants are a complete cartel).
    France is doing fine.

    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-the-united-kingdom/
    https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/median-household-income-in-france-2010---2021-/

    You think france is doing fine then all good I dont really care as I dont live there the argument is not about france its about the uk and we have underfunded services that dont deliver and cost more than tax.

    Yes I believe most of the west has the same issue but will happily concede the point to you and focus on the uk because I do live there and its important to me therefore.

    The point remains the same we have two options, tax a hell of a lot more on everyone or cut services.

    I would estimate that if we full fund everything then the tax required would be about double what we currently pay though thats a guess admittedly

    So which political party is going to stand on tax more or reduce services and win? answer none
    Well that’s kind of the Tory policy position. And it’s wrong. In the short term we need to tax a bit more, focus tax reliefs and incentives on the areas of infrastructure investment where we’re most lacking, borrow as much as we can manage without pushing up gilt yields, and spend significantly more on the public infrastructure and services that will enable the economy to grow.

    Tax rises plus spending cuts equal a steadily falling apart and clinically depressed country.
    NO MORE BORROWING FROM OUR CHILDREN AND GRAND CHILDREN. THEY WAY THINGS ARE GOING THE WHOLE TAX TAKE THEY PAY WILL BE SETTLING THE DEBTS OF OUR GENERATION. IT IS NOT JUST A TORY POSITION ITS AN ALL POLITICIAN POSITION BORROW MORE SO WE GET ELECTED NOW AND WE WONT BE AROUND WHEN THE BILLS ARE DUE.

    You are a selfish idiot.

    If we cant raise tax to pay for everything in the here and now then the state does less.

    If we can get more tax in the here and now to fully fund things fine
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,584

    IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ...

    Lol. The solicitors just down the road from here is actually called Careless Solicitors!
    Best named law firm is Wright Hassall.

    https://www.wrighthassall.co.uk/
    And the best estate agents ever are in Kidderminster.Doolittle and Dalley.
  • MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    That's not quite true.

    Switzerland has free movement, but it does not have the requirement - embedded in Maastricht and the EEA treaty - that requires you to treat foreign (EEA) nationals the way you treat your own citizens.

    This means that - while a Swiss firm can happily hire a German or Spaniard or Pole - there is no requirement to offer him Housing Benefit. Switzerland therefore uses its healthcare system - and you are obliged to purchase healthcare if you are resident in the country - as an effective way of limiting low wage immigration, while at the same time maximising the ability of Swiss firms to hire talent from around the continent.
    Hmmm. Is that not one reason why the Brussels has been leaning very heavily on Switzerland to ditch the current set of x agreements?

    I think I recall force majeure threats to cut them off from the European Electricity Grid, amongst other things.
    No I think that was specifically related to the result of the Swiss referendum in 2014 which voted to suspend unrestricted freedom of movement with the EU. This was in direct conflict with the bilateral treaty between the EU and Switzerland and caused a lot of issues until it was reversed in another referendum in 2020.

    The Swiss rules on what benefits EU nationals can get have been in place for a very long time and the EU tends not to mess with them because they know how volatile the Swiss relationship is in the first place.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    A new force has emerged in Europe. By acceding to their smaller allies’ demands, Germany and the U.S. are belatedly recognizing a slow but relentless shift in the Western approach toward Russia—which is being determined not in Washington or Berlin but in the capitals of countries that, until recently, have been seen as junior partners. Moreover, these new drivers of European security strategy are unlikely to ease up. They are among Europe’s richest and fastest-growing economies and have some of the continent’s best-equipped militaries. Plus, they will always have Russia close by, and that reality alone will keep them focused.

    Phillips O'Brien in The Atlantic
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/us-germany-ukraine-tanks-russia-nato/672859/
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770

    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    That's not quite true.

    Switzerland has free movement, but it does not have the requirement - embedded in Maastricht and the EEA treaty - that requires you to treat foreign (EEA) nationals the way you treat your own citizens.

    This means that - while a Swiss firm can happily hire a German or Spaniard or Pole - there is no requirement to offer him Housing Benefit. Switzerland therefore uses its healthcare system - and you are obliged to purchase healthcare if you are resident in the country - as an effective way of limiting low wage immigration, while at the same time maximising the ability of Swiss firms to hire talent from around the continent.
    Hmmm. Is that not one reason why the Brussels has been leaning very heavily on Switzerland to ditch the current set of x agreements?

    I think I recall force majeure threats to cut them off from the European Electricity Grid, amongst other things.
    No I think that was specifically related to the result of the Swiss referendum in 2014 which voted to suspend unrestricted freedom of movement with the EU. This was in direct conflict with the bilateral treaty between the EU and Switzerland and caused a lot of issues until it was reversed in another referendum in 2020.

    The Swiss rules on what benefits EU nationals can get have been in place for a very long time and the EU tends not to mess with them because they know how volatile the Swiss relationship is in the first place.
    IIRC, the Swiss divided the 2014 Treaty into two halves, and the Swiss voted for one and against the other. The EU said "oi, that's not how treaties work. you either accept the whole thing, or you reject the whole thing"
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571

    Your mum continues to be terrible for the Tories.

    Mine, too.
    They say people don’t change once they’re past a certain age, but the number of the Rod Stewart generation who seem to have decided enough is enough, is unusual, to say the least.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,153

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    Free movement is a problem in proportion to the actions taken to protect the wages of those in low end jobs.

    See the rioting in France etc.

    Switzerland places high barriers to entering their job market - “You are entirely free to work here. Providing you speak the required languages and have a Swiss qualification.”

    On your coffee is very very expensive - and served by a Swiss person

    High end jobs do not require protection because of the world wide shortage in high end skills.
    The English language (or rather our shitness at foreign languages) causes big distortions even in our high skilled labour market, but especially at the low skilled end.

    Only a small number of Brits have the language skills to be able to work successfully overseas, unless they go long haul to the US or beyond which is less suitable for temporary working abroad and much harder to get a Visa for unskilled work.

    If the promise of free movement were more truly reciprocal for unskilled or skilled manual workers in the UK perhaps the forces behind Brexit would have held less sway.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    geoffw said:

    A new force has emerged in Europe. By acceding to their smaller allies’ demands, Germany and the U.S. are belatedly recognizing a slow but relentless shift in the Western approach toward Russia—which is being determined not in Washington or Berlin but in the capitals of countries that, until recently, have been seen as junior partners. Moreover, these new drivers of European security strategy are unlikely to ease up. They are among Europe’s richest and fastest-growing economies and have some of the continent’s best-equipped militaries. Plus, they will always have Russia close by, and that reality alone will keep them focused.

    Phillips O'Brien in The Atlantic
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/us-germany-ukraine-tanks-russia-nato/672859/

    Hm? Estonia and Poland are not among Europe's richest countries, and the literal richest countries in Europe are mostly non-aligned to Nato or Russia.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    TimS said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    Free movement is a problem in proportion to the actions taken to protect the wages of those in low end jobs.

    See the rioting in France etc.

    Switzerland places high barriers to entering their job market - “You are entirely free to work here. Providing you speak the required languages and have a Swiss qualification.”

    On your coffee is very very expensive - and served by a Swiss person

    High end jobs do not require protection because of the world wide shortage in high end skills.
    The English language (or rather our shitness at foreign languages) causes big distortions even in our high skilled labour market, but especially at the low skilled end.

    Only a small number of Brits have the language skills to be able to work successfully overseas, unless they go long haul to the US or beyond which is less suitable for temporary working abroad and much harder to get a Visa for unskilled work.

    If the promise of free movement were more truly reciprocal for unskilled or skilled manual workers in the UK perhaps the forces behind Brexit would have held less sway.
    The Economist did an article on that very issue back in the late 90s, suggesting that English being such a (sorry) lingua franca, was a significant disadvantage for the UK and the US.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    edited January 2023
    There was an interesting review of Norway/EU relations published by the Norwergian parliament, which essentially accepted the Norwegian model is complete nonsense.

    The issue is that half the country wants to be in the EU and half wants to be out. The model allows Norway to be to all intents and purposes in the EU, while formally outside it. The model works as a compromise for domestic political purposes
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    TimS said:

    EPG said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mortimer said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Driver said:

    If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it

    We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
    Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
    The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
    No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
    This is all hindsight chat.

    May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.

    Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).

    Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
    Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.

    They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
    Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,

    But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.

    Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.

    His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.

    And he was right.

    But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
    Something I advocated in a thread header on here the day after the vote. There was a golden opportunity for Cameron - or certainly May - to say that they wanted the widest possible support and acceptance of the new direction and the best way to achieve that, in light of how close the vote was, was to look at compromise. Apply to EFTA as a first step and then see how things developed from there. That wouldn't even have needed Freedom of Movement but it would have indicated a willingness to travel towards a new, realistic relationship with the EU based on cooperation.

    But May had to be the hardest of Brexiteers because she fundamentally misunderstood the attitude of both Parliament and the country as a whole. Hence no compromise on anything.
    May understood that Efta would have divided her party, perhaps blown it in half. That's why she couldn't contemplate it. Every step of the process - calling the referendum, May's red lines, the refusal to compromise in parliament, Johnson's signing up to a Brexit deal in bad faith - has been determined by the goal of Tory Party unity, over the interests of the country. And it has failed because the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party can never be satisfied, as they are at war with reality.
    I think that's right.

    And I also think that EFTA/EEA (while it would probably have won a narrow majority) would not have honoured the spirit of the referendum.

    But @Richard_Tyndall is absolutely right that if someone other than May had been in charge - someone with vision and charisma and courage - then it might have been possible to build a Brexit that looked more like Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

    And which would have satisfied 80% of Leavers and 40% of Remainers.
    Switzerland has free movement. No shot. It would have satisfied the rich Leavers but there's be no GE votes for it in Bishop Auckland or Bolsover.
    Free movement is a problem in proportion to the actions taken to protect the wages of those in low end jobs.

    See the rioting in France etc.

    Switzerland places high barriers to entering their job market - “You are entirely free to work here. Providing you speak the required languages and have a Swiss qualification.”

    On your coffee is very very expensive - and served by a Swiss person

    High end jobs do not require protection because of the world wide shortage in high end skills.
    The English language (or rather our shitness at foreign languages) causes big distortions even in our high skilled labour market, but especially at the low skilled end.

    Only a small number of Brits have the language skills to be able to work successfully overseas, unless they go long haul to the US or beyond which is less suitable for temporary working abroad and much harder to get a Visa for unskilled work.

    If the promise of free movement were more truly reciprocal for unskilled or skilled manual workers in the UK perhaps the forces behind Brexit would have held less sway.
    Considering that people think it's appalling that people should consider moving out of low-wage regions of the UK for better-paid jobs within the country itself, I don't think emigration options further afield would have helped perceptions of the EU much. It would still have benefitted mostly wealthier older people and intrinsically open-minded grads.
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