The energy regulator has cut its price cap by £999 but households are still expected to see a rise of up to £500 in their bills from April.
Ofgem has reduced the cap on the amount that energy suppliers would be able to charge a dual-fuel household from £4,279 to £3,280 from April 1. However, at the same time the government’s energy price guarantee, which determines the price households are actually charged at present, is becoming less generous.
Predictions are that by summer prices could be returning toward ‘normal’. So surely the government will bridge the gap by extending support for a few more months?
Commentators were over pessimistic on wholesale gas prices last Autumn but I think they may be over-optimistic now. There's a potentially cold March to come which will deplete reserves, and a big challenge to refill storage during the summer and autumn fast enough with LNG. I don't think we're out of the woods just yet.
I think it's also fair to say that the winter, overall, has been less windy than average, and that as it looks like predictions of a recession were overdone, that might imply higher levels of energy use.
However, I'm quite optimistic. It looks like the strong price signal from very high prices helped to lead to a very rapid response and an increase in supply and distribution capacity that was ahead of expectations. If someone wanted to look into the detail then they might find that it's a good case study of how the price mechanism works in a market economy.
Belarusian anti-war partisans claim to have severely damaged a Russian military aircraft in what an opposition leader has called the “most successful diversion” since the beginning of the war.
Apparently the Russian AF only have nine of these specialised AWACS aircraft. If that’s correct, then losing one is a big deal for them. They’re 1970s vintage, based on IL-76, and must be a right pain to keep serviceable at the best of times. Well done to the saboteurs.
Not cheap, either. I think they sold a couple to India for somewhere around $1bn.
*If* this was done by partisans, it'd be interesting to know how it was done (when the war's over, obvs.). If it had been an attack on the airfield, I might have expected to see more planes or infrastructure damaged. I do wonder if someone was given access to the aircraft to do some work, and left a few presents inside...
Whatever, it's an action that complicates things for Russian and Belarus. Every man, every SAM system, every tank, they leave outside Ukraine to guard infrastructure is one that cannot be used in Ukraine.
The previous post said it was by drones, so assuem they flew drones over it and either dropped explosives or did kamikaze by drones.
The claim was further that it was a U model IL-76 - the modernised one, which has a useful look down capability (looking for low flying aircraft and missiles from above).
The older models are much less capable.
Russia has 7 of these U models, I believe. You’d need 4 to maintain a 24/7 patrol (might manage with 3). So losing even one is a chunk of capability.
They are supposed to work in conjunction with MIg-31 interceptors. Apparently a lot of he Russian suppression of the Ukrainian airforce has been from Mig-31 lobbing ultra long range AAMs at low flying Ukrainian planes, from Russian airspace. Low hit rate, but the attrition rate adds up, over time.
The Mig-31 can use its own radar to find targets - but this would be much less effective than getting data from an IL-76U
Even better if it was one of the U models. One down, six to go!
One of those modified DJI drones carrying a grenade, that were used in Ukraine early in the war, would be enough to make one hell of a mess of an aircraft if dropped close by.
Yes - a friend in the drone hobby stuff has one that can carry a DSLR, complete with a big lens. For miles.
Doesn’t take much imagination to replace x kilos of camera with, say, thermite….
Yep. There’s a six-rotor DJI that comes in around £10k, that can carry a DSLR on a three-axis gimbal, up to 6kg payload. https://www.dji.com/ae/mobile/matrice600
5kg of anything explosive, plus a release mechanism, can render any aircraft permanently unserviceable.
Oh no, imagine wanting to actually read something and come to your own conclusion, rather than make a knee-jerk reaction based on what others are saying about it.
We would still have PM May if Boris and hangers on adhered to that....
The DUP want rid of the Good Friday Agreement, and won’t work under an SF first minister; kicking up a fuss about the protocol is merely a means to an end.
That NI voters are tiring of their never-ending negativity and student politics is the silver lining.
They are fine with the GFA - and are using it to block an SF first minister.
Many unionist voters are actually moderately impressed that the DUP haven't folded for the convenience of others, the way unionist politicians are supposed to do. According to outsiders.
Paisley's DUP opposed the GFA in 1998 unlike Trimble's UUP
Can we all agree that we need a better term than “eurosceptic” which was just all over the 1pm Radio 4 news? Having left the EU the way we did, the term makes little sense.
Europhobes
I quite like that, but I think they’ll evolve into a school of thought on all treaties.
Sovereignty fundamentalists? Too long.
Just call them Isolationists?
Constitutionalists?
Hard line unionists?
Brit Nats nails it best for me.
I thought about British Nationalist but I do think “nationalist” has some unfair nazi connotations.
Ok - we do want to be fair, I suppose.
One of yours then - Isolationists. The core feeltone being that Britain is strong and rather special, stands alone, walks alone, drinks alone, needs nobody telling it what to do.
A misnomer. It is Remainers that tend to be doing everything to fight a trade deal with the world's largest economy.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The Johnson/Frost spin will no doubt be a deal was only possible because they scared the EU rigid with their hardball Protocol Cancellation bill. Nothing at all to do with us dropping the macho theatrics and behaving like mature adults.
Another good reason to ditch the unelected monarchy.
The King is to meet the president of the European Commission today, a decision that was immediately criticised by unionists and Brexiteer Conservatives as crass, tone deaf and antagonistic.
Buckingham Palace said the decision had been made on the advice of the prime minister and insisted that the King and Ursula von der Leyen would discuss “a range of topics” not simply the Brexit deal that she is expected to seal with Rishi Sunak in Windsor today.
“The King is pleased to meet any world leader if they are visiting Britain and it is the government’s advice that he should do so,” the palace said.
Charles and Von der Leyen will sit down to tea late this afternoon during their meeting in which a range of topics are expected to be discussed, including climate change and the situation in Ukraine.
But Arlene Foster, the former DUP first minister, tweeted: “I cannot quite believe that No 10 would ask the King to become involved in the finalising of a deal as controversial as this one. It’s crass and will go down very badly in NI. We must remember this is not the King’s decision but the government who it appears are tone deaf.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister, told Sky News: “It is surprising that the King will meet Ursula von der Leyen today as it antagonises the people the PM needs to conciliate. It is also constitutionally unwise to involve the King in a matter of immediate political controversy.”
Downing Street insisted the meeting with von der Leyen was a matter for Buckingham Palace. “He firmly believes it’s for the King to make those decisions,” Sunak’s spokesman said.
“It’s not uncommon for his majesty to accept invitations to meet certain leaders, he has met President Duda and President Zelensky recently. He is meeting with the president of the EU today.”
Von Der Leyen is effectively Head of State of the EU, so the King is merely meeting a fellow Head of State.
Sunak actually did the Deal with her, not the King, in terms of their roles as Heads of Government. The King as a constitutional monarch is only Head of State however, not Head of Government
Von der Leyen is closer to a Head of Government than a Head of State.
The Council head (whose name I have forgotten) is closer to “Head of State” for the EU, albeit an effectively powerless one.
Somewhat pertinent. This is the story of how the EU went to war.
Three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU took a decision that had previously been considered impossible: to send weapons to a conflict.
Belarusian anti-war partisans claim to have severely damaged a Russian military aircraft in what an opposition leader has called the “most successful diversion” since the beginning of the war.
Apparently the Russian AF only have nine of these specialised AWACS aircraft. If that’s correct, then losing one is a big deal for them. They’re 1970s vintage, based on IL-76, and must be a right pain to keep serviceable at the best of times. Well done to the saboteurs.
Not cheap, either. I think they sold a couple to India for somewhere around $1bn.
*If* this was done by partisans, it'd be interesting to know how it was done (when the war's over, obvs.). If it had been an attack on the airfield, I might have expected to see more planes or infrastructure damaged. I do wonder if someone was given access to the aircraft to do some work, and left a few presents inside...
Whatever, it's an action that complicates things for Russian and Belarus. Every man, every SAM system, every tank, they leave outside Ukraine to guard infrastructure is one that cannot be used in Ukraine.
The previous post said it was by drones, so assuem they flew drones over it and either dropped explosives or did kamikaze by drones.
The claim was further that it was a U model IL-76 - the modernised one, which has a useful look down capability (looking for low flying aircraft and missiles from above).
The older models are much less capable.
Russia has 7 of these U models, I believe. You’d need 4 to maintain a 24/7 patrol (might manage with 3). So losing even one is a chunk of capability.
They are supposed to work in conjunction with MIg-31 interceptors. Apparently a lot of he Russian suppression of the Ukrainian airforce has been from Mig-31 lobbing ultra long range AAMs at low flying Ukrainian planes, from Russian airspace. Low hit rate, but the attrition rate adds up, over time.
The Mig-31 can use its own radar to find targets - but this would be much less effective than getting data from an IL-76U
Even better if it was one of the U models. One down, six to go!
One of those modified DJI drones carrying a grenade, that were used in Ukraine early in the war, would be enough to make one hell of a mess of an aircraft if dropped close by.
Yes - a friend in the drone hobby stuff has one that can carry a DSLR, complete with a big lens. For miles.
Doesn’t take much imagination to replace x kilos of camera with, say, thermite….
Indeed. I made a hexacopter about 10 years ago from Chinese tat parts which runs open source control software.
It could definitely be used for untraceable sabotage as it could lift 500g at least and fly anywhere within a reasonable radius automatically (ie all radios off). Too heavy for bothering with now, but I still have it on the shelf.
It is no wonder governments are bit paranoid about this kind of thing.
DJI are introducing various broadcast signals into their consumer craft (Remote ID etc) thanks to legislation and also sell equipment for tracking them (Aeroscope), but the average hobbyist could get round all of that easily, never mind the military (who may of course have smuggled equipment in to Belarus).
These are exciting times. The deal is definitely going to be done. Of that there is now no doubt. This is very definitely good for the UK for multiple reasons: 1. It will reset our relationship with the EU 2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not 3. It will make further deals more likely 4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
The energy regulator has cut its price cap by £999 but households are still expected to see a rise of up to £500 in their bills from April.
Ofgem has reduced the cap on the amount that energy suppliers would be able to charge a dual-fuel household from £4,279 to £3,280 from April 1. However, at the same time the government’s energy price guarantee, which determines the price households are actually charged at present, is becoming less generous.
Predictions are that by summer prices could be returning toward ‘normal’. So surely the government will bridge the gap by extending support for a few more months?
Wasn't today the day they had to have made that decision so we don't get our letters from British Gas explaining pricing for the next quarter?
Maybe the Government forgot, what with all that DUP cat wrangling.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The Johnson/Frost spin will no doubt be a deal was only possible because they scared the EU rigid with their hardball Protocol Cancellation bill. Nothing at all to do with us dropping the macho theatrics and behaving like mature adults.
I thought the Johnson spin was going to be that Sunak was a closet Remainer who had surrendered to the EU?
These are exciting times. The deal is definitely going to be done. Of that there is now no doubt. This is very definitely good for the UK for multiple reasons: 1. It will reset our relationship with the EU 2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not 3. It will make further deals more likely 4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
Yes - I think Frost and Johnson come out of this badly
These are exciting times. The deal is definitely going to be done. Of that there is now no doubt. This is very definitely good for the UK for multiple reasons: 1. It will reset our relationship with the EU 2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not 3. It will make further deals more likely 4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
I struggle to see how "policy is enacted that you disagree with" humiliates people.
The other element to this is that it puts a US trade deal back on the table.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
And would that really have been worse than what we got?
It would have been several times worse. Quite aside from the constant background awfulness of a Corbyn-led government and the economic shambles from day one, can you imagine Corbyn in charge during either Covid or the war?
These are exciting times. The deal is definitely going to be done. Of that there is now no doubt. This is very definitely good for the UK for multiple reasons: 1. It will reset our relationship with the EU 2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not 3. It will make further deals more likely 4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
If it passes, and passes well, then effectively Johnson is, well, irreverent.
Ukraine's General Staff says that Russian proxies in Oleshky and Skadovsk in Kherson are preparing to flee to Crimea
Russian war hawks have debated the efficacy of fortifications and now they might be taking extra precautions ahead a spring Ukrainian counter-offensive
Ukraine says that the spring counter-offensive will feature more strikes on Russian arms depots and military equipment
Vadym Skibitsky singled out Belgorod as an area for more intense Ukrainian attacks …
With these remarks, Skibitsky is framing the spring counter-offensive as a potential turning point that will liberate Ukraine and expel an estimated 370,000 Russian forces from its territory
Ukraine is downplaying fears of a long war, while Russia is ramping that expectation up
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
I suspect that comment says more about Frost and Johnson's chaotic double act than it does about Sunak's statesmanship.
Although TBF anything is several notches up from Hardy and Hardy do Europe and Northern Ireland (neither Johnson nor Frost are slim enough to be Stan Laurel).
These are exciting times. The deal is definitely going to be done. Of that there is now no doubt. This is very definitely good for the UK for multiple reasons: 1. It will reset our relationship with the EU 2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not 3. It will make further deals more likely 4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
If it passes, and passes well, then effectively Johnson is, well, irreverent.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
I suspect that comment says more about Frost and Johnson's chaotic double act than it does about Sunak's statesmanship.
Although TBF anything is several notches up from Hardy and Hardy do Europe and Northern Ireland (neither Johnson nor Frost are slim enough to be Stan Laurel).
Frost still tweeting away like he’s god gift (despite blocking replies to those who don’t agree with him).
Though the next election is lost, it is good to see things changing with a hopefully constructive relationship with the EU
The DUP want rid of the Good Friday Agreement, and won’t work under an SF first minister; kicking up a fuss about the protocol is merely a means to an end.
That NI voters are tiring of their never-ending negativity and student politics is the silver lining.
They are fine with the GFA - and are using it to block an SF first minister.
Many unionist voters are actually moderately impressed that the DUP haven't folded for the convenience of others, the way unionist politicians are supposed to do. According to outsiders.
Paisley's DUP opposed the GFA in 1998 unlike Trimble's UUP
Like SF, they have learned to love it.
"The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was the only major political group in Northern Ireland to oppose the Good Friday Agreement.[2]"
The DUP want rid of the Good Friday Agreement, and won’t work under an SF first minister; kicking up a fuss about the protocol is merely a means to an end.
That NI voters are tiring of their never-ending negativity and student politics is the silver lining.
They are fine with the GFA - and are using it to block an SF first minister.
Many unionist voters are actually moderately impressed that the DUP haven't folded for the convenience of others, the way unionist politicians are supposed to do. According to outsiders.
Paisley's DUP opposed the GFA in 1998 unlike Trimble's UUP
If the DUP claim that their hard line has won, that will be interesting.
What would be even more interesting is them settling into Storming as second fiddle to Sinn Fein. Hell will have indeed frozen over and Sunak deserves a by for the next five GEs.
You assume that accepting the deal with the EU and reconvening Stormont are linked. Why is that?
The DUP implied they were, but yes you are correct it was a foolish and wildly unrealistic assumption to have made. Sorry.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Not really, since there isn't anybody whose job it really was to stop Putin invading Ukraine in the way that it was J. Gordon Brown's job to regulate the City,
WTF is J. Gordon Brown?
Chancellor 1997-2007, PM 2007-2010.
Ah ok. You should have said that in the first place. Nobody uses the J - makes him sound like one of the Gettys.
Gordon Brown not only presided over a huge increase in government debt and bank debt. He also saw household debt increase massively. We are still paying for his mistakes.
In the Tory hive mind there is no crime that cannot be laid at the door of the one-eyed Scotsman. In the shires they blame him when their crops fail or their cows' milk runs dry. Red-cheeked Tory matrons tell their children to be good or Gordon will steal them away in the night. He stalks their dreams and gives life to their night terrors, a great clunking fist, a scowl, a menacing Fife brogue, whose baleful presence - rather than their own staggering stupidity - must be invoked to explain their twelve years of malfeasance and failure.
Oh no, imagine wanting to actually read something and come to your own conclusion, rather than make a knee-jerk reaction based on what others are saying about it.
We would still have PM May if Boris and hangers on adhered to that....
We;d still be in the EU, in all but name, as well.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The Johnson/Frost spin will no doubt be a deal was only possible because they scared the EU rigid with their hardball Protocol Cancellation bill. Nothing at all to do with us dropping the macho theatrics and behaving like mature adults.
But that will not wash. The current, grown-up UK government has made the legal advice clear: the bill was never going to work from a legal standpoint and would have exposed the UK to large compensation payments if enacted. And if the UK government knew that, the EU did too.
The DUP want rid of the Good Friday Agreement, and won’t work under an SF first minister; kicking up a fuss about the protocol is merely a means to an end.
That NI voters are tiring of their never-ending negativity and student politics is the silver lining.
They are fine with the GFA - and are using it to block an SF first minister.
Many unionist voters are actually moderately impressed that the DUP haven't folded for the convenience of others, the way unionist politicians are supposed to do. According to outsiders.
Paisley's DUP opposed the GFA in 1998 unlike Trimble's UUP
Like SF, they have learned to love it.
Actually, rubbish. They only endured it so long as voters would continue to give them the first minister position.
Another good reason to ditch the unelected monarchy.
The King is to meet the president of the European Commission today, a decision that was immediately criticised by unionists and Brexiteer Conservatives as crass, tone deaf and antagonistic.
Buckingham Palace said the decision had been made on the advice of the prime minister and insisted that the King and Ursula von der Leyen would discuss “a range of topics” not simply the Brexit deal that she is expected to seal with Rishi Sunak in Windsor today.
“The King is pleased to meet any world leader if they are visiting Britain and it is the government’s advice that he should do so,” the palace said.
Charles and Von der Leyen will sit down to tea late this afternoon during their meeting in which a range of topics are expected to be discussed, including climate change and the situation in Ukraine.
But Arlene Foster, the former DUP first minister, tweeted: “I cannot quite believe that No 10 would ask the King to become involved in the finalising of a deal as controversial as this one. It’s crass and will go down very badly in NI. We must remember this is not the King’s decision but the government who it appears are tone deaf.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister, told Sky News: “It is surprising that the King will meet Ursula von der Leyen today as it antagonises the people the PM needs to conciliate. It is also constitutionally unwise to involve the King in a matter of immediate political controversy.”
Downing Street insisted the meeting with von der Leyen was a matter for Buckingham Palace. “He firmly believes it’s for the King to make those decisions,” Sunak’s spokesman said.
“It’s not uncommon for his majesty to accept invitations to meet certain leaders, he has met President Duda and President Zelensky recently. He is meeting with the president of the EU today.”
Hang on, I assumed it was the republicans who would be annoyed at the King hosting an EU leader - but its the royalists? Time for the AI or aliens to take over.....
The Queen lost all support when she agreed to Boris Johnson's unlawful prorogation.
The Queen also signed Hilary Benn's delay Brexit Bill, the monarch is neutral on Brexit
One was lawful and the will of our sovereign Parliament, the other was unlawful.
So she wasn't neutral on Brexit.
It was lawful until the SC said it wasn't
It was not.
On your logic it is OK for me to come and steal your car. You can't take me to court, because it's lawful. And you can't prove it is unlawful till you take me to court. Which you can't, because ...
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Not really, since there isn't anybody whose job it really was to stop Putin invading Ukraine in the way that it was J. Gordon Brown's job to regulate the City,
WTF is J. Gordon Brown?
Chancellor 1997-2007, PM 2007-2010.
Ah ok. You should have said that in the first place. Nobody uses the J - makes him sound like one of the Gettys.
Gordon Brown not only presided over a huge increase in government debt and bank debt. He also saw household debt increase massively. We are still paying for his mistakes.
He did make mistakes. Not the 'didn't fix the roof while the sun was shining' baloney but definitely he made mistakes. His biggest imo was sucking up to the City. If he believed they could self-regulate he was foolish - although it was the consensus belief at the time - and if he didn't really think about it but just wanted the extra tax from a financial boom that's kind of worse. It would have taken real bravery and ideological commitment but what we needed was a Chancellor who would have gone against the grain of the prevailing 'light touch' and 'markets knows best' culture. Pity John McDonnell was out of favour back then.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Just as those who are primarily to blame for crashing our national Treasury accounts are those who did it (ie Gordon Brown), not those who supposedly provoked it like the Americans, or the financial sector or anyone else.
Brown was responsible for the Treasury, borrowed in the good times, then when the bad times came he inevitably had to borrow more but had no room left to manoeuvre. You can try and pin the blame on anyone else if you want a scapegoat, but those who did it, are the Treasury.
Ah I see. So 'he didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining' then?
This really is the most frightful tosh but I'm minded to cut some slack - because I sense your take on the Crash derives mainly from the Tory GE campaign of 2010. You swallowed it hook line & sinker at an impressionable time of life.
A nice political slogan but the problem is much more pernicious than that.
The country had a fantastic roof in 2001/02 that the Iron Chancellor had pledged to maintain. That's part of why I voted Labour for the only and first time in my life in 2001. Had the crisis struck in 01/02 then the Treasury would have been prepared and had the wherewithal to cope.
What's worse about Gordon Brown is that he took a fixed roof and broke it. He took the roof off in 2002 and never replace it as he'd abolished winter/boom and bust.
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
And would that really have been worse than what we got?
It would have been several times worse. Quite aside from the constant background awfulness of a Corbyn-led government and the economic shambles from day one, can you imagine Corbyn in charge during either Covid or the war?
On Covid - we might not have had quite so much Mone-esque corruption. Agreed on Ukraine he would have been disastrous
Breaking - Brexit deal is now done. Announced in an hour’s time. Press Conference 3.30 pm Uk time.
I don’t think I will ever vote Tory, but am genuinely impressed by Sunak on this.
If this is a measure of how he goes about governing more generally, I wish he was given the job five years ago!
Tories had the choice of a grown up, back then, but chose instead to make a dishonest and narcissistic child our national leader. Much of current politics is about clearing up his mess.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Not really, since there isn't anybody whose job it really was to stop Putin invading Ukraine in the way that it was J. Gordon Brown's job to regulate the City,
WTF is J. Gordon Brown?
Chancellor 1997-2007, PM 2007-2010.
Ah ok. You should have said that in the first place. Nobody uses the J - makes him sound like one of the Gettys.
Gordon Brown not only presided over a huge increase in government debt and bank debt. He also saw household debt increase massively. We are still paying for his mistakes.
He did make mistakes. Not the 'didn't fix the roof while the sun was shining' baloney but definitely he made mistakes. His biggest imo was sucking up to the City. If he believed they could self-regulate he was foolish - although it was the consensus belief at the time - and if he didn't really think about it but just wanted the extra tax from a financial boom that's kind of worse. It would have taken real bravery and ideological commitment but what we needed was a Chancellor who would have gone against the grain of the prevailing 'light touch' and 'markets knows best' culture. Pity John McDonnell was out of favour back then.
He believed central bank independence and inflation targeting had elimimated the economic cycle. Therefore you didn't need to fix the roof because the sun would always shine.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
And would that really have been worse than what we got?
By quite a margin.
I am not sure how your 0/10 beats our 0/10. COVID, vaccines and Ukraine would have been interesting, but your lad (BigDog) didn't cover himself with glory over "Get Brexit Done" as today's news confirms loud and clear.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Not really, since there isn't anybody whose job it really was to stop Putin invading Ukraine in the way that it was J. Gordon Brown's job to regulate the City,
WTF is J. Gordon Brown?
Chancellor 1997-2007, PM 2007-2010.
Ah ok. You should have said that in the first place. Nobody uses the J - makes him sound like one of the Gettys.
Gordon Brown not only presided over a huge increase in government debt and bank debt. He also saw household debt increase massively. We are still paying for his mistakes.
In the Tory hive mind there is no crime that cannot be laid at the door of the one-eyed Scotsman. In the shires they blame him when their crops fail or their cows' milk runs dry. Red-cheeked Tory matrons tell their children to be good or Gordon will steal them away in the night. He stalks their dreams and gives life to their night terrors, a great clunking fist, a scowl, a menacing Fife brogue, whose baleful presence - rather than their own staggering stupidity - must be invoked to explain their twelve years of malfeasance and failure.
I have given you a like for a post that made me chuckle, but you didn’t really refute Will’s point, did you?
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
This will cement Brexit in place
If we end up with a relationship that is similar to the one the EU has with Switzerland, 75% of the country will be OK with that. Only the loons on both sides won't be.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
And would that really have been worse than what we got?
By quite a margin.
I am not sure how your 0/10 beats our 0/10. COVID, vaccines and Ukraine would have been interesting, but your lad (BigDog) didn't cover himself with glory over "Get Brexit Done" as today's news confirms loud and clear.
As anyone who's ever watched QI knows, zero beats minus 27.
Another good reason to ditch the unelected monarchy.
The King is to meet the president of the European Commission today, a decision that was immediately criticised by unionists and Brexiteer Conservatives as crass, tone deaf and antagonistic.
Buckingham Palace said the decision had been made on the advice of the prime minister and insisted that the King and Ursula von der Leyen would discuss “a range of topics” not simply the Brexit deal that she is expected to seal with Rishi Sunak in Windsor today.
“The King is pleased to meet any world leader if they are visiting Britain and it is the government’s advice that he should do so,” the palace said.
Charles and Von der Leyen will sit down to tea late this afternoon during their meeting in which a range of topics are expected to be discussed, including climate change and the situation in Ukraine.
But Arlene Foster, the former DUP first minister, tweeted: “I cannot quite believe that No 10 would ask the King to become involved in the finalising of a deal as controversial as this one. It’s crass and will go down very badly in NI. We must remember this is not the King’s decision but the government who it appears are tone deaf.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister, told Sky News: “It is surprising that the King will meet Ursula von der Leyen today as it antagonises the people the PM needs to conciliate. It is also constitutionally unwise to involve the King in a matter of immediate political controversy.”
Downing Street insisted the meeting with von der Leyen was a matter for Buckingham Palace. “He firmly believes it’s for the King to make those decisions,” Sunak’s spokesman said.
“It’s not uncommon for his majesty to accept invitations to meet certain leaders, he has met President Duda and President Zelensky recently. He is meeting with the president of the EU today.”
Hang on, I assumed it was the republicans who would be annoyed at the King hosting an EU leader - but its the royalists? Time for the AI or aliens to take over.....
The Queen lost all support when she agreed to Boris Johnson's unlawful prorogation.
The Queen also signed Hilary Benn's delay Brexit Bill, the monarch is neutral on Brexit
One was lawful and the will of our sovereign Parliament, the other was unlawful.
So she wasn't neutral on Brexit.
It was lawful until the SC said it wasn't
It was not.
On your logic it is OK for me to come and steal your car. You can't take me to court, because it's lawful. And you can't prove it is unlawful till you take me to court. Which you can't, because ...
False analogy. There is a law against theft of a motor vehicle. There wasn't a law against prorogation until the partisan court invented it.
These are exciting times. The deal is definitely going to be done. Of that there is now no doubt. This is very definitely good for the UK for multiple reasons: 1. It will reset our relationship with the EU 2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not 3. It will make further deals more likely 4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
The only reason this renegotiation has been possible is because of Frost sticking A16 into the protocol. Without that there would be no deal and, IMO, a return to violence in NI as the EU stuck to their line of not reopening the WA. It is the UK having legal grounds for pulling the A16 trigger that has precipitated these talks more than any single factor.
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
This will cement Brexit in place
If we end up with a relationship that is similar to the one the EU has with Switzerland, 75% of the country will be OK with that. Only the loons on both sides won't be.
I agree. I’m cool with it, as a Leaver
I imagine most Remainers will be, too
My point is that there is a hardcore on BOTH sides - as you note - who will not be reconciled to a normalized but also compromised Brexit
I see this evolution as the final and belated end of Brexit the Teething Years. The EU has run out of reasons to punish the UK for merely Brexiting (and maybe motivation),the UK has run out of desire to Stuff the EU to the Max. The Ukraine War has probably focused minds on all sides
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
And would that really have been worse than what we got?
By quite a margin.
I am not sure how your 0/10 beats our 0/10. COVID, vaccines and Ukraine would have been interesting, but your lad (BigDog) didn't cover himself with glory over "Get Brexit Done" as today's news confirms loud and clear.
The deal was always that the NI situation would be ironed-out later, when there wasn’t a ticking clock and a bunch of extremists on both sides screaming loudly. Hopefully, whatever is announced today will be that ironing-out of the NI deal.
From a partisan viewpoint, the comments from Junker that NI will be the “Price of Brexit” and the trusted trader scheme that was agreed to in principle but not in practice, show the EU in a very poor light, acting in bad faith in a way that disturbed the delicate NI situation more than it needed to be.
The NI situation should have been delegated to a committee of the UK, RoI, and NI parties, to agree a settlement, well outside of the UK-EU negotiations back in 2017 and 2018.
Breaking - Brexit deal is now done. Announced in an hour’s time. Press Conference 3.30 pm Uk time.
I don’t think I will ever vote Tory, but am genuinely impressed by Sunak on this.
If this is a measure of how he goes about governing more generally, I wish he was given the job five years ago!
Tories had the choice of a grown up, back then, but chose instead to make a dishonest and narcissistic child our national leader. Much of current politics is about clearing up his mess.
Oh I completely agree Ian. The Tory party deserves the annihilation it’ll get soon. In a way, that makes Sunak’s mode of governing a bit more impressive-he has had to face down the loons.
Breaking - Brexit deal is now done. Announced in an hour’s time. Press Conference 3.30 pm Uk time.
I don’t think I will ever vote Tory, but am genuinely impressed by Sunak on this.
If this is a measure of how he goes about governing more generally, I wish he was given the job five years ago!
Tories had the choice of a grown up, back then, but chose instead to make a dishonest and narcissistic child our national leader. Much of current politics is about clearing up his mess.
Had Hunt not Johnson won the Tory leadership in Summer 2019 I expect the December 2019 general election would still have been a hung parliament as he would not have won the redwall seats Boris did to get Brexit done and win a Conservative majority.
Corbyn would likely still be Leader of the Opposition therefore, not Starmer
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
This will cement Brexit in place
For oldsters like you and me Leon, Brexit is here to stay, and I never anticipated anything else. All today gives us is an unravelling of Johnson and Frost's Northern Ireland chaos. Hats off to Sunak and his team for that at least.
Nonetheless you will still queue with the Russians at Alicante Airport and have to wait for your passport to be stamped.The Germans will be throwing their towels on the sunbeds as you are still hailing your taxi. Oh and tomatoes are still rationed at Lidl.
The DUP want rid of the Good Friday Agreement, and won’t work under an SF first minister; kicking up a fuss about the protocol is merely a means to an end.
That NI voters are tiring of their never-ending negativity and student politics is the silver lining.
They are fine with the GFA - and are using it to block an SF first minister.
Many unionist voters are actually moderately impressed that the DUP haven't folded for the convenience of others, the way unionist politicians are supposed to do. According to outsiders.
Paisley's DUP opposed the GFA in 1998 unlike Trimble's UUP
Like SF, they have learned to love it.
"The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was the only major political group in Northern Ireland to oppose the Good Friday Agreement.[2]"
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Just as those who are primarily to blame for crashing our national Treasury accounts are those who did it (ie Gordon Brown), not those who supposedly provoked it like the Americans, or the financial sector or anyone else.
Brown was responsible for the Treasury, borrowed in the good times, then when the bad times came he inevitably had to borrow more but had no room left to manoeuvre. You can try and pin the blame on anyone else if you want a scapegoat, but those who did it, are the Treasury.
Ah I see. So 'he didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining' then?
This really is the most frightful tosh but I'm minded to cut some slack - because I sense your take on the Crash derives mainly from the Tory GE campaign of 2010. You swallowed it hook line & sinker at an impressionable time of life.
A nice political slogan but the problem is much more pernicious than that.
The country had a fantastic roof in 2001/02 that the Iron Chancellor had pledged to maintain. That's part of why I voted Labour for the only and first time in my life in 2001. Had the crisis struck in 01/02 then the Treasury would have been prepared and had the wherewithal to cope.
What's worse about Gordon Brown is that he took a fixed roof and broke it. He took the roof off in 2002 and never replace it as he'd abolished winter/boom and bust.
Pure hubris.
There's your problem right there. You start with 'Brown to blame' and work backwards, trying to make things fit. End up saying bizarre things like this.
If Brown really did cause the GFC and financial markets malfunction was responsible for public spending you'd say the main problem was the GFC not public spending. So by accident you'd be right in that case.
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
This will cement Brexit in place
If we end up with a relationship that is similar to the one the EU has with Switzerland, 75% of the country will be OK with that. Only the loons on both sides won't be.
I agree. I’m cool with it, as a Leaver
I imagine most Remainers will be, too
My point is that there is a hardcore on BOTH sides - as you note - who will not be reconciled to a normalized but also compromised Brexit
I see this evolution as the final and belated end of Brexit the Teething Years. The EU has run out of reasons to punish the UK for merely Brexiting (and maybe motivation),the UK has run out of desire to Stuff the EU to the Max. The Ukraine War has probably focused minds on all sides
Yes, this is not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning. It's now a question of how much closer we get as allies living on the same continent, not how far we pull apart. All grown-ups will welcome that.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
Other choices were available….
In theory, but not in practice.
Under our [...] voting system, voters can only make their own best choices.
At the last election the effective choice for PM was between Boris and Corbyn, and would have been under any voting system.
Only if you accept that you are willing to be forced into making an invidious choice, as are so many other voters. But sometimes you just have to do the right thing, stand up, and be counted. Even if your vote gets directed straight into the bin, as all of my GE votes have been.
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
This will cement Brexit in place
For oldsters like you and me Leon, Brexit is here to stay, and I never anticipated anything else. All today gives us is an unravelling of Johnson and Frost's Northern Ireland chaos. Hats off to Sunak and his team for that at least.
Nonetheless you will still queue with the Russians at Alicante Airport and have to wait for your passport to be stamped The Germans will be throwing their towels on the sunbeds as you are still hailing your taxi. Oh and tomatoes are still rationed at Lidl.
Passport stamps are on their way out. Around the world. All the queues will go - for everyone
As in so many fields, AI is about to render this issue irrelevant
Breaking - Brexit deal is now done. Announced in an hour’s time. Press Conference 3.30 pm Uk time.
I don’t think I will ever vote Tory, but am genuinely impressed by Sunak on this.
If this is a measure of how he goes about governing more generally, I wish he was given the job five years ago!
Tories had the choice of a grown up, back then, but chose instead to make a dishonest and narcissistic child our national leader. Much of current politics is about clearing up his mess.
Had Hunt not Johnson won the Tory leadership in Summer 2019 I expect the December 2019 general election would still have been a hung parliament as he would not have won the redwall seats Boris did to get Brexit done and win a Conservative majority.
Corbyn would likely still be Leader of the Opposition therefore, not Starmer
So very typical of you to analyse everything through the prism of party political advantage and not consider the fate of our country, at all.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Just as those who are primarily to blame for crashing our national Treasury accounts are those who did it (ie Gordon Brown), not those who supposedly provoked it like the Americans, or the financial sector or anyone else.
Brown was responsible for the Treasury, borrowed in the good times, then when the bad times came he inevitably had to borrow more but had no room left to manoeuvre. You can try and pin the blame on anyone else if you want a scapegoat, but those who did it, are the Treasury.
Ah I see. So 'he didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining' then?
This really is the most frightful tosh but I'm minded to cut some slack - because I sense your take on the Crash derives mainly from the Tory GE campaign of 2010. You swallowed it hook line & sinker at an impressionable time of life.
A nice political slogan but the problem is much more pernicious than that.
The country had a fantastic roof in 2001/02 that the Iron Chancellor had pledged to maintain. That's part of why I voted Labour for the only and first time in my life in 2001. Had the crisis struck in 01/02 then the Treasury would have been prepared and had the wherewithal to cope.
What's worse about Gordon Brown is that he took a fixed roof and broke it. He took the roof off in 2002 and never replace it as he'd abolished winter/boom and bust.
Pure hubris.
There's your problem right there. You start with 'Brown to blame' and work backwards, trying to make things fit. End up saying bizarre things like this.
If Brown really did cause the GFC and financial markets malfunction was responsible for public spending you'd say the main problem was the GFC not public spending. So by accident you'd be right in that case.
Don't forget Sunak's victory today would not have been possible had Labour considered Brexit when they drew up the GFA.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Just as those who are primarily to blame for crashing our national Treasury accounts are those who did it (ie Gordon Brown), not those who supposedly provoked it like the Americans, or the financial sector or anyone else.
Brown was responsible for the Treasury, borrowed in the good times, then when the bad times came he inevitably had to borrow more but had no room left to manoeuvre. You can try and pin the blame on anyone else if you want a scapegoat, but those who did it, are the Treasury.
Ah I see. So 'he didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining' then?
This really is the most frightful tosh but I'm minded to cut some slack - because I sense your take on the Crash derives mainly from the Tory GE campaign of 2010. You swallowed it hook line & sinker at an impressionable time of life.
A nice political slogan but the problem is much more pernicious than that.
The country had a fantastic roof in 2001/02 that the Iron Chancellor had pledged to maintain. That's part of why I voted Labour for the only and first time in my life in 2001. Had the crisis struck in 01/02 then the Treasury would have been prepared and had the wherewithal to cope.
What's worse about Gordon Brown is that he took a fixed roof and broke it. He took the roof off in 2002 and never replace it as he'd abolished winter/boom and bust.
Pure hubris.
There's your problem right there. You start with 'Brown to blame' and work backwards, trying to make things fit. End up saying bizarre things like this.
If Brown really did cause the GFC and financial markets malfunction was responsible for public spending you'd say the main problem was the GFC not public spending. So by accident you'd be right in that case.
It was Brown's awful regulatory reform that allowed the GFC to have such a profound effect on the UK economy. Banks were leveraged at 70:1 and the FSA was mindlessly making sure that the banks had the right boxes ticked on their diversity forms.
Can we all agree that we need a better term than “eurosceptic” which was just all over the 1pm Radio 4 news? Having left the EU the way we did, the term makes little sense.
Europhobes
I quite like that, but I think they’ll evolve into a school of thought on all treaties.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Just as those who are primarily to blame for crashing our national Treasury accounts are those who did it (ie Gordon Brown), not those who supposedly provoked it like the Americans, or the financial sector or anyone else.
Brown was responsible for the Treasury, borrowed in the good times, then when the bad times came he inevitably had to borrow more but had no room left to manoeuvre. You can try and pin the blame on anyone else if you want a scapegoat, but those who did it, are the Treasury.
Ah I see. So 'he didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining' then?
This really is the most frightful tosh but I'm minded to cut some slack - because I sense your take on the Crash derives mainly from the Tory GE campaign of 2010. You swallowed it hook line & sinker at an impressionable time of life.
A nice political slogan but the problem is much more pernicious than that.
The country had a fantastic roof in 2001/02 that the Iron Chancellor had pledged to maintain. That's part of why I voted Labour for the only and first time in my life in 2001. Had the crisis struck in 01/02 then the Treasury would have been prepared and had the wherewithal to cope.
What's worse about Gordon Brown is that he took a fixed roof and broke it. He took the roof off in 2002 and never replace it as he'd abolished winter/boom and bust.
Pure hubris.
There's your problem right there. You start with 'Brown to blame' and work backwards, trying to make things fit. End up saying bizarre things like this.
If Brown really did cause the GFC and financial markets malfunction was responsible for public spending you'd say the main problem was the GFC not public spending. So by accident you'd be right in that case.
The UK was pretty much uniquely indebted as a country (in the West anyway, let’s ignore Japan for now) in 2007.
If Brown had continued to hold spending after the 2001 election, rather than acting like he was @Dura_Ace on shore leave looking for the brothel, then the UK would have been one of the best-placed countries in the world to come out of the 2009 recession in good order. But that’s not what happened, and the UK went *into* the sharp recession with a deficit, which was obviously going to balloon to the unsustainable levels we see now.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
Other choices were available….
In theory, but not in practice.
Under our [...] voting system, voters can only make their own best choices.
At the last election the effective choice for PM was between Boris and Corbyn, and would have been under any voting system.
Only if you accept that you are willing to be forced into making an invidious choice, as are so many other voters. But sometimes you just have to do the right thing, stand up, and be counted. Even if your vote gets directed straight into the bin, as all of my GE votes have been.
I'm sure your vote at every general election has been counted, and as you know in a democracy there's no right to vote for a winner.
I accept that roughly 25% of the electorate will always vote Tory and roughly 25% of the electorate will always vote Labour, and therefore we will always get either a Tory-led or Labour-led government, and either the Tory leader or Labour leader will always be PM.
When one of the candidates is as bad as Corbyn, I'm not prepared to wash my hands of the decision and leave it to others.
These are exciting times. The deal is definitely going to be done. Of that there is now no doubt. This is very definitely good for the UK for multiple reasons: 1. It will reset our relationship with the EU 2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not 3. It will make further deals more likely 4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
The only reason this renegotiation has been possible is because of Frost sticking A16 into the protocol. Without that there would be no deal and, IMO, a return to violence in NI as the EU stuck to their line of not reopening the WA. It is the UK having legal grounds for pulling the A16 trigger that has precipitated these talks more than any single factor.
That’s like saying the only reason the First World War happened was because a minor royal got assassinated.
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
Can we all agree that we need a better term than “eurosceptic” which was just all over the 1pm Radio 4 news? Having left the EU the way we did, the term makes little sense.
Europhobes
I quite like that, but I think they’ll evolve into a school of thought on all treaties.
Breaking - Brexit deal is now done. Announced in an hour’s time. Press Conference 3.30 pm Uk time.
I don’t think I will ever vote Tory, but am genuinely impressed by Sunak on this.
If this is a measure of how he goes about governing more generally, I wish he was given the job five years ago!
Tories had the choice of a grown up, back then, but chose instead to make a dishonest and narcissistic child our national leader. Much of current politics is about clearing up his mess.
Had Hunt not Johnson won the Tory leadership in Summer 2019 I expect the December 2019 general election would still have been a hung parliament as he would not have won the redwall seats Boris did to get Brexit done and win a Conservative majority.
Corbyn would likely still be Leader of the Opposition therefore, not Starmer
Yes, I think the choice of a grown-up Tory - Hunt, or Stewart perhaps, or one or two others - was something of an illusion. It would have led to nothing more than a continuation of the stalemate that May had suffered, followed by Corbyn as PM, supported by the SNP. There wasn't a good way out of the post-2017 impasse, and I struggle to see a viable less-bad one than Boris. Not to my taste, but anything but Corbyn...
Happily, we're through that period now. We have a choice of parties led by dull managerialists, and has been noted upthread ,the possibility of a boring relationship with Europe based on not being part of the EU but needing a good working relationship with it. Hopefully we can get back to arguing whether government should spend 38% or 42% of GDP as if it were a furious and irreconcilable difference between good and evil. Politics is always better when it is about which means to an agreed end, rather than about divergent issues of identity. Just ask Ulster.
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Just as those who are primarily to blame for crashing our national Treasury accounts are those who did it (ie Gordon Brown), not those who supposedly provoked it like the Americans, or the financial sector or anyone else.
Brown was responsible for the Treasury, borrowed in the good times, then when the bad times came he inevitably had to borrow more but had no room left to manoeuvre. You can try and pin the blame on anyone else if you want a scapegoat, but those who did it, are the Treasury.
Ah I see. So 'he didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining' then?
This really is the most frightful tosh but I'm minded to cut some slack - because I sense your take on the Crash derives mainly from the Tory GE campaign of 2010. You swallowed it hook line & sinker at an impressionable time of life.
A nice political slogan but the problem is much more pernicious than that.
The country had a fantastic roof in 2001/02 that the Iron Chancellor had pledged to maintain. That's part of why I voted Labour for the only and first time in my life in 2001. Had the crisis struck in 01/02 then the Treasury would have been prepared and had the wherewithal to cope.
What's worse about Gordon Brown is that he took a fixed roof and broke it. He took the roof off in 2002 and never replace it as he'd abolished winter/boom and bust.
Pure hubris.
There's your problem right there. You start with 'Brown to blame' and work backwards, trying to make things fit. End up saying bizarre things like this.
If Brown really did cause the GFC and financial markets malfunction was responsible for public spending you'd say the main problem was the GFC not public spending. So by accident you'd be right in that case.
It was Brown's awful regulatory reform that allowed the GFC to have such a profound effect on the UK economy. Banks were leveraged at 70:1 and the FSA was mindlessly making sure that the banks had the right boxes ticked on their diversity forms.
Sri Lanka had a brilliant ESG Score last year. But they ran out of food, because their farming community cared more about carbon emissions than actually feeding their people.
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
This will cement Brexit in place
For oldsters like you and me Leon, Brexit is here to stay, and I never anticipated anything else. All today gives us is an unravelling of Johnson and Frost's Northern Ireland chaos. Hats off to Sunak and his team for that at least.
Nonetheless you will still queue with the Russians at Alicante Airport and have to wait for your passport to be stamped The Germans will be throwing their towels on the sunbeds as you are still hailing your taxi. Oh and tomatoes are still rationed at Lidl.
Passport stamps are on their way out. Around the world. All the queues will go - for everyone
As in so many fields, AI is about to render this issue irrelevant
Can we all agree that we need a better term than “eurosceptic” which was just all over the 1pm Radio 4 news? Having left the EU the way we did, the term makes little sense.
Europhobes
I quite like that, but I think they’ll evolve into a school of thought on all treaties.
It will be very interesting to see how Johnson and Truss play this. If they accept the deal, they will essentially be saying Sunak got something they couldn't get. If they don't, they further stoke the Tory civil war.
Another good reason to ditch the unelected monarchy.
The King is to meet the president of the European Commission today, a decision that was immediately criticised by unionists and Brexiteer Conservatives as crass, tone deaf and antagonistic.
Buckingham Palace said the decision had been made on the advice of the prime minister and insisted that the King and Ursula von der Leyen would discuss “a range of topics” not simply the Brexit deal that she is expected to seal with Rishi Sunak in Windsor today.
“The King is pleased to meet any world leader if they are visiting Britain and it is the government’s advice that he should do so,” the palace said.
Charles and Von der Leyen will sit down to tea late this afternoon during their meeting in which a range of topics are expected to be discussed, including climate change and the situation in Ukraine.
But Arlene Foster, the former DUP first minister, tweeted: “I cannot quite believe that No 10 would ask the King to become involved in the finalising of a deal as controversial as this one. It’s crass and will go down very badly in NI. We must remember this is not the King’s decision but the government who it appears are tone deaf.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister, told Sky News: “It is surprising that the King will meet Ursula von der Leyen today as it antagonises the people the PM needs to conciliate. It is also constitutionally unwise to involve the King in a matter of immediate political controversy.”
Downing Street insisted the meeting with von der Leyen was a matter for Buckingham Palace. “He firmly believes it’s for the King to make those decisions,” Sunak’s spokesman said.
“It’s not uncommon for his majesty to accept invitations to meet certain leaders, he has met President Duda and President Zelensky recently. He is meeting with the president of the EU today.”
Hang on, I assumed it was the republicans who would be annoyed at the King hosting an EU leader - but its the royalists? Time for the AI or aliens to take over.....
The Queen lost all support when she agreed to Boris Johnson's unlawful prorogation.
The Queen also signed Hilary Benn's delay Brexit Bill, the monarch is neutral on Brexit
One was lawful and the will of our sovereign Parliament, the other was unlawful.
So she wasn't neutral on Brexit.
It was lawful until the SC said it wasn't
It was not.
On your logic it is OK for me to come and steal your car. You can't take me to court, because it's lawful. And you can't prove it is unlawful till you take me to court. Which you can't, because ...
False analogy. There is a law against theft of a motor vehicle. There wasn't a law against prorogation until the partisan court invented it.
The law was always there, just needing to be fished out and thumped on the head of Boris Johnson and his government.
Labour pledges to help young people buy homes by relaxing planning rules
All parties promise this in opposition and ditch it in government when NIMBYs wear them down.
Starmer is the last person to face down determined opposition, so I imagine this proposal will face the same fate as all the previous ones.
There are fewer NIMBYS in inner city Labour heartlands than rural areas and suburban areas and commuter towns.
So Labour don't need the votes of NIMBYS as much as the Tories and LDs
I think most have continually underestimated Starmers ability to “get on” and make a impact. It’ll be the same here.
The devil will be in the details. "Protections for renters" will surely constrain rental supply - will that really be outweighed by a massive housebuilding programme - and how do people who can't afford to save for a deposit because they have to rent get to buy the new houses?
The government appears to be doing a pretty good job already of constraining rental supply, with policies around mortgage interest allowance and capital depreciation.
The answer is build more houses. Build More Houses. BUILD. LOTS. MORE. HOUSES.
Nothing else will work, except perhaps banning immigration until more houses are built.
We need immigrants to build the new houses........
Loads of industries are already heavily short of workers so can't "just raise wages".
Raise wages and let unproductive jobs that can't, die.
Given a large chunk of those jobs that we are short of are in the public sector (and possibly the new turbo charged house building too?) then that requires increasing taxes by several %. Whilst I may be in favour I know the electorate won't be and so do the politicians.
No, it requires culling unproductive jobs and letting productive ones get a higher wage.
No need to increase taxes to do that.
Or do you think the UK's public sector is emblematic of the best of productivity in recent years?
And how do you determine productive and unproductive public sector jobs? Goodness knows folk have tried. Does raising a Social Workers case load from 30 to 100 make them more or less productive?
One of the fallouts of Thatcherism is that the roles where there was money to be made from automation and reducing headcount have been privatised. The state is largely left with the roles that nobody has worked out how to do that for. And then we end up with...
Baumol’s cost disease, a bit of economics jargon that means sectors that aren’t getting more productive, often one’s involving a lot of human contact, see costs going up because they have to compete for staff against sectors that are. Of course healthcare can be made more productive through technology, and because of capital underinvestment the NHS IT systems are dire, but ultimately caring professions are just going to keep sucking up an ever greater part of our collective income.
To make it concrete, if pay goes up for other physics graduate jobs, physics teachers are likely to become more expensive, because otherwise physics teachers become physics something-else-ers. And that's true even if there's nothing you can do to make physics teachers become more productive.
Abolish national pay scales and let the market decide pay rates instead.
If physics teachers are in high demand, then pay them more. If there's an overabundance of people available to teach say English* instead, then pay them proportionately less.
Why pay English and Physics teachers the same, if they're not in the same demand and supply?
* Replace English with any other subject as appropriate, if this answer is not appropriate.
Academy chains can pay staff more than the national pay scales.
The fact they don't should tell you everything you need to know..
Oh and you could pay less but even in areas where house prices are low - many good schools can't get decent teachers at the moment because to many former teachers a job outside teaching looks far more attractive,
Key thing is that the government decides how much it is prepared to pay per pupil. And there's reasonable evidence that the amount is currently "not enough".
(And be careful what you wish for with individual schools negotiating. Leaving aside the extra work created by doing that, and the observation that some of us put a value on taking that off the table, consider what happened with train drivers. Rail unions played one firm off against another, which is one reason why train drivers are paid so much.)
Talking of which:
February ITT application stats for England are so bad that this year is now looking worse than last year, which is quite something 😲 - primary 15% lower than same time last year - secondary 2% higher despite big bursary uplifts
The bursary thing confuses me. As far as I understand it for in-demand subjects there's a bursary for teach training, but then post-training the initial pay is the same for in-demand and out of demand subjects? Or have I got that wrong.
Presumably those who are able to work for an in-demand subject are educated enough to look past the bursary alone and look at what the follow-on wage is and think that it isn't enough to tempt them?
Schools should have a per-pupil budget then spend that as they see fit. If they need to spend more to fill a Maths vacancy, than an English* vacancy, then they should have that freedom.
* Replace as appropriate.
But. If you are advocating a pure free market, then. Schools should have a per pupil budget which enables them to fill vacancies at the market rate. As I said earlier. This requires loads more cash from you. We've had a £550+ per pupil reduction this year. So. Over half the staff every day are on supply. Which is tempting everyone else onto supply. We've lost 13 permanent staff this year. Only one vacancy filled. That's a market failure.
Are supply staff cheaper?
If yes, look into why.
If no, then no the schools aren't operating on a proper per pupil budget.
Shifting staff from permanent to supply shouldn't liberate any budget, quite the opposite in fact. Supply budget should come from the exact same budget as permanent does.
Do supply teachers have todo all the tedious and unnecessary paperwork that permanent teachers are requird to do? And endless meetings? If not,that would explain why supply teaching is more popular.
We need to get rid of thisTory government and all its red tape.
@ClippP i bow to nobody in my deep loathing for the damage this government has done to education, but massive increases in red tape have been a feature of every government from at least the 1980s onwards. Be they Conservative, Labour, Coalition or Conservative.
It's not about misguided government policies so much as it is empire building by the DfE and OFSTED. To undo the damage, we would need to eliminate those.
I fear the odds of a Labour government firing large numbers of civil servants merely because they are a useless deadweight on the system is the same as the odds of Stuart Dickson speaking in praise of England.
It will be very interesting to see how Johnson and Truss play this. If they accept the deal, they will essentially be saying Sunak got something they couldn't get. If they don't, they further stoke the Tory civil war.
I like Boris, still, and I think history will be much kinder to him than PB - for multiple reasons. He is one of the most significant postwar UK PMs, despite his short tenure
But as Boris would say, “Fuck Boris”. Enough. Haddaway and write your memoirs, and make your millions
It's odd that so many here on a political betting site describe the DUP and ERG as bonkers. They are far from that, being quite rational, calculating and disciplined in their political positioning. Where they differ from those calling them bonkers is in their values and aspirations for NI.
It helps to be bonkers. The ERG seems to have been pretty successful in terms of obtaining political goals over the last decades. (True, the DUP are both bonkers and been unsuccessful ).
Let's, e.g., compare it to politicians who are keen on reducing wealth inequality. This is a political goal that has gone backwards over the last decades (or at best stagnated). No matter who is in power, there has been pretty meagre progress.
As we are (probably) coming to an end of a period of Tory rule, it is instructive to consider how Tory Governments (first Thatcher and then the Brexiteers) have changed the UK very dramatically.
By comparison, the Labour Governments of my lifetime -- though sometimes competent and sometimes incompetent -- have not achieved any comparably lasting changes in the UK.
I'm no fan of the last Labour government, but the last Labour Government achieved some lasting changes in the UK. Notably more equality for homosexuality, although that was a global phenomenon and they fell short of legalising equality in marriage itself which fell to David Cameron to achieve.
Devolution and BoE independence too, and the Minimum Wage.
What's remarkable though is that almost everything that the last Labour Government achieved was done in 1997/98. I'd be curious if even the most ardent of Labour supporters can name any lasting changes that were introduced from 1999 onwards?
Minimum wage -- I grant you. The Tories would never introduced that. But, it has not had much effect in reducing wealth inequality. So, in my book, it falls into the category of tinkering at the edges.
Devolution has been a disaster for Wales. It is poorer now that it was before 1999. The standard of Government has been abysmally low.
I will leave our Scottish posters to describe whether devolution has been good for Scotland.
You didn't ask for changes for the better, just lasting changes. Devolution certainly is a lasting change, even if it hasn't improved things.
On the same basis, perhaps you could include our indebtedness now as a lasting change brought about by Labour, but I don't know anyone from Labour who admits that was intentional, unlike devolution.
Increase in debt under last Labour government: £681bn. Increase in debt under current Tory government: £1,543bn. And counting.
That's a legacy of the deficit that Labour bequeathed.
Unless you think the Tories could or should have implemented a form of austerity so severe they ran a neutral budget from year one?
It was a legacy of the worst global financial crisis since WW2.
Which thanks to Brown's decade of preparation we were uniquely well-placed to weather?
You think Gordon Brown should have shut down the City and dug a big hole in the Midlands to sell commodities to China? Well, it worked for Australia.
If he'd been running a budget surplus as he should have for that stage of the economic cycle, then the deficit spending would have been far less significant afterwards and purely cyclical.
I’d say that Labour’s biggest long-term failure was letting house prices rip from 1999 to 2007.
2007 was the year that levels of home ownership began falling.
Not sure Labour could have donw much about it.
Banks shifted their lending criteria from 3x+1x earnings to 4x joint earnings and prices across the country increased to reflect the additional money people could borrow (for good and bad).I watched it happen down south in 2001/2 and then up north between 2003/4....
Brown wasn't shy about regulating the banks.
The problem is, he regulated all the wrong things...
Every CDO trader had lodged a photocopy of their passport with HR.
They had all completed their multiple choice exams (or got the desk junior to do it for them) - in how not to commit fraud. “An Orc from Mordor emails you, claiming to have a large stash of Mithril, following the fall of the Barad- Dur. Do you (a) help him sell it on the metals exchange, bypassing all regulations…. (e) call compliance”
And that's who to primarily blame for crashing the financial system. Those who did it, not those who supposedly provoked it by being lax or complacent. Similar to Putin and Ukraine.
Not really, since there isn't anybody whose job it really was to stop Putin invading Ukraine in the way that it was J. Gordon Brown's job to regulate the City,
WTF is J. Gordon Brown?
Chancellor 1997-2007, PM 2007-2010.
Ah ok. You should have said that in the first place. Nobody uses the J - makes him sound like one of the Gettys.
Gordon Brown not only presided over a huge increase in government debt and bank debt. He also saw household debt increase massively. We are still paying for his mistakes.
He did make mistakes. Not the 'didn't fix the roof while the sun was shining' baloney but definitely he made mistakes. His biggest imo was sucking up to the City. If he believed they could self-regulate he was foolish - although it was the consensus belief at the time - and if he didn't really think about it but just wanted the extra tax from a financial boom that's kind of worse. It would have taken real bravery and ideological commitment but what we needed was a Chancellor who would have gone against the grain of the prevailing 'light touch' and 'markets knows best' culture. Pity John McDonnell was out of favour back then.
He believed central bank independence and inflation targeting had elimimated the economic cycle. Therefore you didn't need to fix the roof because the sun would always shine.
Greenspan believed this too and was by far the more influential as regards how the financial sector spiralled out of control. It's a bit 'off' to blame particular individuals for the GFC - a 'markets know best' culture was king at the time - but if I had to pick one for starters I think I'd probably go with him. Gordon would be in there - the City was a significant contributing culprit - but not near the top of the list.
Another good reason to ditch the unelected monarchy.
The King is to meet the president of the European Commission today, a decision that was immediately criticised by unionists and Brexiteer Conservatives as crass, tone deaf and antagonistic.
Buckingham Palace said the decision had been made on the advice of the prime minister and insisted that the King and Ursula von der Leyen would discuss “a range of topics” not simply the Brexit deal that she is expected to seal with Rishi Sunak in Windsor today.
“The King is pleased to meet any world leader if they are visiting Britain and it is the government’s advice that he should do so,” the palace said.
Charles and Von der Leyen will sit down to tea late this afternoon during their meeting in which a range of topics are expected to be discussed, including climate change and the situation in Ukraine.
But Arlene Foster, the former DUP first minister, tweeted: “I cannot quite believe that No 10 would ask the King to become involved in the finalising of a deal as controversial as this one. It’s crass and will go down very badly in NI. We must remember this is not the King’s decision but the government who it appears are tone deaf.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister, told Sky News: “It is surprising that the King will meet Ursula von der Leyen today as it antagonises the people the PM needs to conciliate. It is also constitutionally unwise to involve the King in a matter of immediate political controversy.”
Downing Street insisted the meeting with von der Leyen was a matter for Buckingham Palace. “He firmly believes it’s for the King to make those decisions,” Sunak’s spokesman said.
“It’s not uncommon for his majesty to accept invitations to meet certain leaders, he has met President Duda and President Zelensky recently. He is meeting with the president of the EU today.”
Hang on, I assumed it was the republicans who would be annoyed at the King hosting an EU leader - but its the royalists? Time for the AI or aliens to take over.....
The Queen lost all support when she agreed to Boris Johnson's unlawful prorogation.
The Queen also signed Hilary Benn's delay Brexit Bill, the monarch is neutral on Brexit
One was lawful and the will of our sovereign Parliament, the other was unlawful.
So she wasn't neutral on Brexit.
It was lawful until the SC said it wasn't
It was not.
On your logic it is OK for me to come and steal your car. You can't take me to court, because it's lawful. And you can't prove it is unlawful till you take me to court. Which you can't, because ...
False analogy. There is a law against theft of a motor vehicle. There wasn't a law against prorogation until the partisan court invented it.
The law was always there, just needing to be fished out and thumped on the head of Boris Johnson and his government.
Nope. The first thing the supreme court had to rule on was whether prorogation was even justiciable - i.e within their power to rule on. Only when they had decided that difficult thing, could they then decide the easy thing - that the prorogation was obviously dodgy.
To be absolutely fair to Sunak, if he's used his "I'm off the radar invisible" time to actually deliver something meaningful and only piped up about it when it's ready, then, whadda ya know, he's actually done good.
Boris - take notes. Grown ups can actually get stuff done.
Ultra-Remainers should be wary of this deal. Because it normalizes Brexit. This is Brexit from now on. We will never rejoin, but there will be endless legal to-and-fro, as there is between Switzerland and the EU
This will cement Brexit in place
For oldsters like you and me Leon, Brexit is here to stay, and I never anticipated anything else. All today gives us is an unravelling of Johnson and Frost's Northern Ireland chaos. Hats off to Sunak and his team for that at least.
Nonetheless you will still queue with the Russians at Alicante Airport and have to wait for your passport to be stamped The Germans will be throwing their towels on the sunbeds as you are still hailing your taxi. Oh and tomatoes are still rationed at Lidl.
Passport stamps are on their way out. Around the world. All the queues will go - for everyone
As in so many fields, AI is about to render this issue irrelevant
The reality is prior to Brexit a visit to an EU or Schengen nation meant they were once already irrelevant.
And they are about to be irrelevant again
Also, with the advent of all these Digital Nomad visas a huge chunk of the Freedom of Movement angst has been removed. - again with the evolution of technology. All you need to move to Spain is a salary of about £25k a year - if self employed or working from home and so on
The bottom line for the DUP is that if they accept this deal they will have to accept a Sinn Fein FM for Northern Ireland - not just now but probably for always. Will they do that? Hmmmm. They need to find a way of accepting without accepting.
It will be very interesting to see how Johnson and Truss play this. If they accept the deal, they will essentially be saying Sunak got something they couldn't get. If they don't, they further stoke the Tory civil war.
I like Boris, still, and I think history will be much kinder to him than PB - for multiple reasons. He is one of the most significant postwar UK PMs, despite his short tenure
But as Boris would say, “Fuck Boris”. Enough. Haddaway and write your memoirs, and make your millions
It was I wot invented "Fuck Boris", actually, way back in September 2019!
The bottom line for the DUP is that if they accept this deal they will have to accept a Sinn Fein FM for Northern Ireland - not just now but probably for always. Will they do that? Hmmmm. They need to find a way of accepting without accepting.
It will be very interesting to see how Johnson and Truss play this. If they accept the deal, they will essentially be saying Sunak got something they couldn't get. If they don't, they further stoke the Tory civil war.
Well, there's this...
Of course SteveBakerHW gushing about the deal. He was a key agitator to remove BorisJohnson
We are 28p behind in the polls since. What shred of credibility he has left would be destroyed if he came out against Sunak. He has nowhere else to go other than to grin and support.
Report from the EU that Boris Johnson and Frost grated in the EU who welcome the new PM pragmatic attitude
No surprise there
The voters who made the lying clown our national leader did our country no favours, at all.
The alternative was Jeremy Corbyn!
And would that really have been worse than what we got?
It would have been several times worse. Quite aside from the constant background awfulness of a Corbyn-led government and the economic shambles from day one, can you imagine Corbyn in charge during either Covid or the war?
Before 2019 somebody asked if anyone could imagine Corbyn sending soldiers to Estonia if Russia invaded.
The immortal answer provided - not by me - was, 'No. I think the Russians would probably be able to win without our help.'
Breaking - Brexit deal is now done. Announced in an hour’s time. Press Conference 3.30 pm Uk time.
I don’t think I will ever vote Tory, but am genuinely impressed by Sunak on this.
If this is a measure of how he goes about governing more generally, I wish he was given the job five years ago!
Tories had the choice of a grown up, back then, but chose instead to make a dishonest and narcissistic child our national leader. Much of current politics is about clearing up his mess.
Had Hunt not Johnson won the Tory leadership in Summer 2019 I expect the December 2019 general election would still have been a hung parliament as he would not have won the redwall seats Boris did to get Brexit done and win a Conservative majority.
Corbyn would likely still be Leader of the Opposition therefore, not Starmer
Yes, I think the choice of a grown-up Tory - Hunt, or Stewart perhaps, or one or two others - was something of an illusion. It would have led to nothing more than a continuation of the stalemate that May had suffered, followed by Corbyn as PM, supported by the SNP. There wasn't a good way out of the post-2017 impasse, and I struggle to see a viable less-bad one than Boris. Not to my taste, but anything but Corbyn...
Happily, we're through that period now. We have a choice of parties led by dull managerialists, and has been noted upthread ,the possibility of a boring relationship with Europe based on not being part of the EU but needing a good working relationship with it. Hopefully we can get back to arguing whether government should spend 38% or 42% of GDP as if it were a furious and irreconcilable difference between good and evil. Politics is always better when it is about which means to an agreed end, rather than about divergent issues of identity. Just ask Ulster.
As we’ve seen over the past handful of years, the EU does actually benefit from not being a monopoly, and having the UK and Switzerland on it’s border challenging.
On both the vaccine rollout and Ukraine, in particular, the UK showed the way for the EU, that I’m not sure they’d have followed without an independent UK.
Comments
However, I'm quite optimistic. It looks like the strong price signal from very high prices helped to lead to a very rapid response and an increase in supply and distribution capacity that was ahead of expectations. If someone wanted to look into the detail then they might find that it's a good case study of how the price mechanism works in a market economy.
Ended, the Brexit wars has, begun, the rejoin wars now are.
It could definitely be used for untraceable sabotage as it could lift 500g at least and fly anywhere within a reasonable radius automatically (ie all radios off). Too heavy for bothering with now, but I still have it on the shelf.
It is no wonder governments are bit paranoid about this kind of thing.
DJI are introducing various broadcast signals into their consumer craft (Remote ID etc) thanks to legislation and also sell equipment for tracking them (Aeroscope), but the average hobbyist could get round all of that easily, never mind the military (who may of course have smuggled equipment in to Belarus).
1. It will reset our relationship with the EU
2. It will show that constructive dialogue works when confrontation does not
3. It will make further deals more likely
4. It will totally humiliate grifting charlatans like Johnson and Frost
I suspect that it will also do Sunak's personal polling a great deal of good and could well help the Tories, if the ERG rebellion is restricted to the uber-loons. From a partisan Labour perspective, that is less welcome - but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
Maybe the Government forgot, what with all that DUP cat wrangling.
The other element to this is that it puts a US trade deal back on the table.
Quite aside from the constant background awfulness of a Corbyn-led government and the economic shambles from day one, can you imagine Corbyn in charge during either Covid or the war?
Yesterdays man, moaning at a cloud.
https://twitter.com/Azovsouth/status/1630159414706462720
Although TBF anything is several notches up from Hardy and Hardy do Europe and Northern Ireland (neither Johnson nor Frost are slim enough to be Stan Laurel).
Though the next election is lost, it is good to see things changing with a hopefully
constructive relationship with the EU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement
If this is a measure of how he goes about governing more generally, I wish he was given the job five years ago!
On your logic it is OK for me to come and steal your car. You can't take me to court, because it's lawful. And you can't prove it is unlawful till you take me to court. Which you can't, because ...
The country had a fantastic roof in 2001/02 that the Iron Chancellor had pledged to maintain. That's part of why I voted Labour for the only and first time in my life in 2001. Had the crisis struck in 01/02 then the Treasury would have been prepared and had the wherewithal to cope.
What's worse about Gordon Brown is that he took a fixed roof and broke it. He took the roof off in 2002 and never replace it as he'd abolished winter/boom and bust.
Pure hubris.
This will cement Brexit in place
I imagine most Remainers will be, too
My point is that there is a hardcore on BOTH sides - as you note - who will not be reconciled to a normalized but also compromised Brexit
I see this evolution as the final and belated end of Brexit the Teething Years. The EU has run out of reasons to punish the UK for merely Brexiting (and maybe motivation),the UK has run out of desire to Stuff the EU to the Max. The Ukraine War has probably focused minds on all sides
From a partisan viewpoint, the comments from Junker that NI will be the “Price of Brexit” and the trusted trader scheme that was agreed to in principle but not in practice, show the EU in a very poor light, acting in bad faith in a way that disturbed the delicate NI situation more than it needed to be.
The NI situation should have been delegated to a committee of the UK, RoI, and NI parties, to agree a settlement, well outside of the UK-EU negotiations back in 2017 and 2018.
Corbyn would likely still be Leader of the Opposition therefore, not Starmer
Nonetheless you will still queue with the Russians at Alicante Airport and have to wait for your passport to be stamped.The Germans will be throwing their towels on the sunbeds as you are still hailing your taxi. Oh and tomatoes are still rationed at Lidl.
Which is why they closed Stormont down for years.
If Brown really did cause the GFC and financial markets malfunction was responsible for public spending you'd say the main problem was the GFC not public spending. So by accident you'd be right in that case.
As in so many fields, AI is about to render this issue irrelevant
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/travels-get-little-simpler-duller/
PB Tory b*ll*cks is in overdrive today.
70% of voters did NOT vote for Team Corbyn.
If Brown had continued to hold spending after the 2001 election, rather than acting like he was @Dura_Ace on shore leave looking for the brothel, then the UK would have been one of the best-placed countries in the world to come out of the 2009 recession in good order. But that’s not what happened, and the UK went *into* the sharp recession with a deficit, which was obviously going to balloon to the unsustainable levels we see now.
I accept that roughly 25% of the electorate will always vote Tory and roughly 25% of the electorate will always vote Labour, and therefore we will always get either a Tory-led or Labour-led government, and either the Tory leader or Labour leader will always be PM.
When one of the candidates is as bad as Corbyn, I'm not prepared to wash my hands of the decision and leave it to others.
I confess it does make me warm to Sunak, a little. He looks smooth and professional. Smiling and yet firm
I doubt if it will move the polls a jot. But if he can pull it off: well done Rishi
Happily, we're through that period now. We have a choice of parties led by dull managerialists, and has been noted upthread ,the possibility of a boring relationship with Europe based on not being part of the EU but needing a good working relationship with it. Hopefully we can get back to arguing whether government should spend 38% or 42% of GDP as if it were a furious and irreconcilable difference between good and evil.
Politics is always better when it is about which means to an agreed end, rather than about divergent issues of identity. Just ask Ulster.
It's not about misguided government policies so much as it is empire building by the DfE and OFSTED. To undo the damage, we would need to eliminate those.
I fear the odds of a Labour government firing large numbers of civil servants merely because they are a useless deadweight on the system is the same as the odds of Stuart Dickson speaking in praise of England.
But as Boris would say, “Fuck Boris”. Enough. Haddaway and write your memoirs, and make your millions
Same in India with Modi's lot.
Boris - take notes. Grown ups can actually get stuff done.
Also, with the advent of all these Digital Nomad visas a huge chunk of the Freedom of Movement angst has been removed. - again with the evolution of technology. All you need to move to Spain is a salary of about £25k a year - if self employed or working from home and so on
Ditto Portugal, Greece, Malta, etc
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-rise-of-the-workation/
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/2479045#Comment_2479045
Of course SteveBakerHW gushing about the deal. He was a key agitator to remove BorisJohnson
We are 28p behind in the polls since.
What shred of credibility he has left would be destroyed if he came out against Sunak. He has nowhere else to go other than to grin and support.
https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1629829867725266944
The immortal answer provided - not by me - was, 'No. I think the Russians would probably be able to win without our help.'
Many a true word...
On both the vaccine rollout and Ukraine, in particular, the UK showed the way for the EU, that I’m not sure they’d have followed without an independent UK.