So Labour or Tories are around 7 points below Reform.
Doesn’t really ring as a landslide majority incoming for Reform to me.
Perhaps I am mistaken?
The latest MRP put Reform on 324 seats, not a landslide majority, so you're right.
Farage's problem is that a Reform government would need a landslide majority to be viable given the inexperience and flakiness of any potential Reform MPs.
The current government has an enormous majority....and has had to give way and U-turn so many times. In reality a modest majority concentrates everyone's minds from day one.
Definitely there is a sweet spot. Too small and the uncontrollable loons in your ranks will prevent you from getting things done. Too big and even casual rebels will feel emboldened, knowing it often won't matter, but they then get into the habit and it starts to matter.
Mrs Thatcher carpeted Pym for suggesting that large majorities made for bad government. He was right though, it was that hubris that destroyed Thatcher's Premiership.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
Well, he thought he did know what the answer would be. He was wrong, though I still put the blame on us, not him for that, he didn't invent the sentiment.
His mistake was backing Remain instead of staying aloof.
I think it's quite clear that his mistake was not backing Leave. Everything about what he's said since the referendum suggests he would have been happy to lead Britain out of the EU, but he was persuaded otherwise.
If he'd won the referendum on a prospectus for Leave then it would have made his legacy and put a spanner in Johnson's plan to become PM.
I disagree with the notion that he would have been unable to govern after a Leave victory. Leaving the EU was an earthquake, and it would have been better for the incumbent to negotiate the choppy waters it caused, rather than add to the chaos by resigning. It's not as if Leave voters were huge fans of Theresa May, who was also a Remainer. He must have known he was lying to parliament when replying to Douglas Carswell asking him the question directly
IIRC, Mr Cameron actually said he would not resign if the vote went for Brexit. What must surely have forced his resignation was the fact that he'd ordered Civil Servants not to prepare any contingency plans.
Oft-overplayed, that point. It was silly, but the two year Art.50 process, and the fact that nothing could be even informally agreed until Art.50 was declared, makes it mostly moot.
(The main reason it was silly is that the remainer civil servants would have produced some excellent fearmongering in their contingency plans, and that would have helped him.)
I think it's fairly clear that Cameron's big mistake was the timing of his resignation. He should have gone in 2015 just before the GE then Milliband would probably have been elected and we'd have been spared the near decade long Tory total clusterfuck from 2015-24. Still in the EU, still with the much smaller pre-brexit civil service you all want, still able to get a competent trade at affordable rates, work across the EU, get through immigration in minutes, buy and sell goods without huge paperwork....
And no CoVID vaccine, Russia having conquered Ukraine, etc… etc…
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Article 50 was triggered on 29th March 2017. At that point the UK had no right to avoid falling out of the EU on 29th March 2019.
That's not true. It was determined that Article 50 is unilaterally revocable.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Which rather proves that the plebiscite was not the way to resolve this issue.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Article 50 was triggered on 29th March 2017. At that point the UK had no right to avoid falling out of the EU on 29th March 2019.
That's not true. It was determined that Article 50 is unilaterally revocable.
IIRC that was a later court decision. Nothing in Article 50 suggests that it is revocable.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
And yet you think Osborne was a good politican. Remember the only reason a referendum was offered was because Cameron thought there would be another coalition and it could be scrapped as part of the deal - then Osborne (accidently) won a small majority.
George was never in favour of holding the referendum.
As someone who voted remain, I am always interested in the belief that by putting off a vote and ignoring the issue, it would just go away.
The sane thing would have been to have a referendum *earlier*.
I still maintain we would still be in the EU if Blair/Brown had held their promised plebiscite on the Lisbon Treaty.
I agree with that. We would have said no (which is why Blair and Brown ducked out of course) and that would have forced some more variable geometry on the EU that we may well have been able to live with. Instead Blair/Brown insisted we had to be at the heart of Europe which turned out not to be where we wanted to be.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Which rather proves that the plebiscite was not the way to resolve this issue.
No. The plebiscite was fine: the issue was parliament deciding it could ignore the expressed will of the voters
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
And yet you think Osborne was a good politican. Remember the only reason a referendum was offered was because Cameron thought there would be another coalition and it could be scrapped as part of the deal - then Osborne (accidently) won a small majority.
George was never in favour of holding the referendum.
As someone who voted remain, I am always interested in the belief that by putting off a vote and ignoring the issue, it would just go away.
The sane thing would have been to have a referendum *earlier*.
I still maintain we would still be in the EU if Blair/Brown had held their promised plebiscite on the Lisbon Treaty.
I agree with that. We would have said no (which is why Blair and Brown ducked out of course) and that would have forced some more variable geometry on the EU that we may well have been able to live with. Instead Blair/Brown insisted we had to be at the heart of Europe which turned out not to be where we wanted to be.
If we had said no, is there any reason to think it wouldn't have come back, amended, just like it did for Ireland? We're bigger, sure, but New Labour would have either sold us on a diluted version, or signed up to a diluted version without a second referendum and called it a victory.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Which rather proves that the plebiscite was not the way to resolve this issue.
I disagree. Even our political class (who are not the sharpest) will surely have got the message that they need to do what they are told.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Constitutionally though that Parliament was right, in the UK Crown in Parliament is sovereign, referendums are nothing more than glorified mass opinion polls. MPs and peers can choose to implement their results or completely ignore them
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
I agree, I think the only thing I can think perhaps the Queen meant was it should be decided entirely by an election where a would-be government was campaigning directly for leave.
As HYUFD says that's essentially what it took to get it delivered, except 3 years later, but ultimately might have been better to start from the point of "well if you want Brexit vote for us to govern", rather than the "well if you want the option to vote for Brexit against what we think as a government, vote for us" we originally got.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Article 50 was triggered on 29th March 2017. At that point the UK had no right to avoid falling out of the EU on 29th March 2019.
It did, as MPs and peers voted to extend our membership of the EU
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
That is right. The reason that May lost her majority in 2017 was largely so that the electorate could clip her wings over a hard Brexit.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Article 50 was triggered on 29th March 2017. At that point the UK had no right to avoid falling out of the EU on 29th March 2019.
That's not true. It was determined that Article 50 is unilaterally revocable.
IIRC that was a later court decision. Nothing in Article 50 suggests that it is revocable.
The argument was quite clear cut in the end though. A member state can't be ejected against its will and a member state having given notification remains a member state.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
That is right. The reason that May lost her majority in 2017 was largely so that the electorate could clip her wings over a hard Brexit.
Not the dementia tax? Tories were polling 55% mere weeks before!
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
The remainer MPs went all or nothing, and paid the price.
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
That is right. The reason that May lost her majority in 2017 was largely so that the electorate could clip her wings over a hard Brexit.
Not the dementia tax? Tories were polling 55% mere weeks before!
It's hard to ever say it is down to one thing, but I'd point to that and the campaign as the major cause, perhaps with a side of worried Bregret if she got a stonking majority.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
The remainer MPs went all or nothing, and paid the price.
Then again, so did the leaver MPs, and they won big... at the time, anyway.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
That is right. The reason that May lost her majority in 2017 was largely so that the electorate could clip her wings over a hard Brexit.
Not the dementia tax? Tories were polling 55% mere weeks before!
Sure, there were other reasons, including the unexpected Jezzagasm.
May explicitly called the 2017 GE so she could force through her version of Brexit, and the electorate gave her a thumbs down.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Which rather proves that the plebiscite was not the way to resolve this issue.
No. The plebiscite was fine: the issue was parliament deciding it could ignore the expressed will of the voters
Perhaps the fragmented nature of politics today has its roots in the referendum, and the faffing around afterwards. We cant be in the position where 52% of the country want a policy that the only feasible parties of government are not in favour of. What if a majority of the population wanted to scrap trident?
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
Well, he thought he did know what the answer would be. He was wrong, though I still put the blame on us, not him for that, he didn't invent the sentiment.
His mistake was backing Remain instead of staying aloof.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
It would all have been avoided if there was any semblance of advance thinking about what leaving the EU would actually mean in principle before any such plebiscite was carried out.
There was a political vacuum immediately post-referendum and people on all sides tried to fill the void with all sorts of different takes on it.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
Well, he thought he did know what the answer would be. He was wrong, though I still put the blame on us, not him for that, he didn't invent the sentiment.
His mistake was backing Remain instead of staying aloof.
Much like yourself?
Nah that was the other William Glenn. This one just lies and pretends he wasn’t a remainer.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
And yet you think Osborne was a good politican. Remember the only reason a referendum was offered was because Cameron thought there would be another coalition and it could be scrapped as part of the deal - then Osborne (accidently) won a small majority.
George was never in favour of holding the referendum.
As someone who voted remain, I am always interested in the belief that by putting off a vote and ignoring the issue, it would just go away.
The sane thing would have been to have a referendum *earlier*.
VoteLeave would never have accepted 52% Remain 48% Leave.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
The Referendum was to leave the EU, the method of leaving and the end destination point wasn't part of the Referendum and it was that mess that was trying to be resolved between 2016 and 2019 until Bozo arrived and just implemented something half baked without thought (as tourists are now discovering).
As has been pointed out in the past we should have had a second referendum on what the relationship with the EU should look like with 2 options...
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
That is right. The reason that May lost her majority in 2017 was largely so that the electorate could clip her wings over a hard Brexit.
Not the dementia tax? Tories were polling 55% mere weeks before!
Sure, there were other reasons, including the unexpected Jezzagasm.
May explicitly called the 2017 GE so she could force through her version of Brexit, and the electorate gave her a thumbs down.
But they knew her version of Brexit when she was poling 55% unless I'm misremembering. They were clinging on to nurse, for fear of something worse. And the dementia tax was something worse.
The other possibility is the public learned the details of the brexit deal during the campaign due to increased attention. But given people's general unwillingness to change opinion on brexit (prior to the actual event) that seems a bit thin.
Anyway, they got a harder brexit for their troubles.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
IIRC her version involved a quasi customs union. But, no, she could not have delivered anything close to single market, because she could not allow FoM to continue.
Would it have been in the EUs interest to keep us in the single market but with a partial or complete opt-out from FoM? Yes. But muh four freedums.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
there was a principled as well as an unprincipled problem about 'respecting the referendum'. This could occur via an utterly hard Brexit in which any trade relationship with the EU was entirely severed and we relied on an entirely new set of buccaneering relations, perhaps with a gunboat. Equally respecting the referendum was (as I favoured and favour) a Swiss or Norway deal where outside political EU we were still fully in the economic and trade EU. Which Starmer would do if he dared.
There was, among the principled, no course of action that commanded a real majority. There still isn't.
People love a ban, even if they think it won't work? With reports that most Australian children still have access to social media accounts, despite ban, recent YouGov data showed that Britons are particularly likely to think such a ban here would be ineffective (54%) - despite 76% supporting a ban https://nitter.poast.org/YouGov/status/2043621195694710857#m
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
There are certainly loaded questions in the Poll on Starmer!
But in neither that poll or the others could I see a question like the one Goodwin uses. Can you point me to it?
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
It’s not that simple. Single market makes other trade deals harder.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
She probably could’ve got that through Parliament, but she would have split the Tories in the process and UKIP would’ve overtaken whatever was left of the Conservative Party. As it is, of course, the Tories have been fairly split and Reform have overtaken them…
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
She probably could’ve got that through Parliament, but she would have split the Tories in the process and UKIP would’ve overtaken whatever was left of the Conservative Party. As it is, of course, the Tories have been fairly split and Reform have overtaken them…
Solving (or 'solving') the problems of today so often causes the problems of tomorrow.
But that is a calculation any politician would take if you offered it to them.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
She probably could’ve got that through Parliament, but she would have split the Tories in the process and UKIP would’ve overtaken whatever was left of the Conservative Party. As it is, of course, the Tories have been fairly split and Reform have overtaken them…
That's the problem - the lack of a referendum was the only thing that kept the 2 sides of the Tory party together - now we've left the EU the split and demise is inevitable..
I really most try and work out when in 2019 I said Bozo would be the last Tory PM (now I know events resulted in that not being the case) but he will be the last Tory PM to win an election.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
She probably could’ve got that through Parliament, but she would have split the Tories in the process and UKIP would’ve overtaken whatever was left of the Conservative Party. As it is, of course, the Tories have been fairly split and Reform have overtaken them…
Yes, when the Tory party is dead with a stake though its cold heart, "Brexit" will be on the tombstone.
People love a ban, even if they think it won't work? With reports that most Australian children still have access to social media accounts, despite ban, recent YouGov data showed that Britons are particularly likely to think such a ban here would be ineffective (54%) - despite 76% supporting a ban https://nitter.poast.org/YouGov/status/2043621195694710857#m
Social media is downright evil and incredibly dangerous to younger people.
That doesn't however mean that a ban would work - but you have to make the effort.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
She probably could’ve got that through Parliament, but she would have split the Tories in the process and UKIP would’ve overtaken whatever was left of the Conservative Party. As it is, of course, the Tories have been fairly split and Reform have overtaken them…
Yes, when the Tory party is dead with a stake though its cold heart, "Brexit" will be on the tombstone.
It won't be dead, it'll be the Reform Conservative Party.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
She probably could’ve got that through Parliament, but she would have split the Tories in the process and UKIP would’ve overtaken whatever was left of the Conservative Party. As it is, of course, the Tories have been fairly split and Reform have overtaken them…
Yes, when the Tory party is dead with a stake though its cold heart, "Brexit" will be on the tombstone.
It won't be dead, it'll be the Reform Conservative Party.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Which rather proves that the plebiscite was not the way to resolve this issue.
No. The plebiscite was fine: the issue was parliament deciding it could ignore the expressed will of the voters
Weren't there two different parliaments: 2015-2017, and then 2017-2019?
And there was the particular issue that Mrs May lost her majority in 2017. And then opposition MPs saw political capital in making her life difficult.
It took Boris Johnson taking over (and winning a proper majority) to actually get a party into power with enough MPs to actually get Brexit completed.
It is a very interesting piece. Whitmer is notable for working with Trump to get investment in her state. A very different approach to Newsom or Walz.
I do slightly wonder if this is a long game to make her acceptable to independents and old school Republicans. A sort of "tone down the rhetoric and get things done" bipartisanship.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
Which rather proves that the plebiscite was not the way to resolve this issue.
No. The plebiscite was fine: the issue was parliament deciding it could ignore the expressed will of the voters
Weren't there two different parliaments: 2015-2017, and then 2017-2019?
And there was the particular issue that Mrs May lost her majority in 2017. And then opposition MPs saw political capital in making her life difficult.
It took Boris Johnson taking over (and winning a proper majority) to actually get a party into power with enough MPs to actually get Brexit completed.
And in the end Labour voted for it. If they’d done that in the first place, Johnson might never have become PM.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen waited less than a day after Hungary voted Viktor Orbán out of office to call for the EU to get more power over national governments to force through foreign policy decisions.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
Well, he thought he did know what the answer would be. He was wrong, though I still put the blame on us, not him for that, he didn't invent the sentiment.
His mistake was backing Remain instead of staying aloof.
I think it's quite clear that his mistake was not backing Leave. Everything about what he's said since the referendum suggests he would have been happy to lead Britain out of the EU, but he was persuaded otherwise.
If he'd won the referendum on a prospectus for Leave then it would have made his legacy and put a spanner in Johnson's plan to become PM.
I disagree with the notion that he would have been unable to govern after a Leave victory. Leaving the EU was an earthquake, and it would have been better for the incumbent to negotiate the choppy waters it caused, rather than add to the chaos by resigning. It's not as if Leave voters were huge fans of Theresa May, who was also a Remainer. He must have known he was lying to parliament when replying to Douglas Carswell asking him the question directly
IIRC, Mr Cameron actually said he would not resign if the vote went for Brexit. What must surely have forced his resignation was the fact that he'd ordered Civil Servants not to prepare any contingency plans.
Oft-overplayed, that point. It was silly, but the two year Art.50 process, and the fact that nothing could be even informally agreed until Art.50 was declared, makes it mostly moot.
(The main reason it was silly is that the remainer civil servants would have produced some excellent fearmongering in their contingency plans, and that would have helped him.)
Having been at one time a (scientific) civil servant myself, albeit a very lowly one, I cling to the hope that there is still the remnant of impartiality with those ranks.
My experience of the civil service is that people didn't want to risk being seen as political at all, because they wanted to keep their job when the party in charge changed.
Accusations of an obstructive or politicised civil service are just so much arse-covering by incompetent politicians.
Re Brexit, I've never been more convinced that we made the right choice. And I have often had major doubts
We are free. The EU is a fucking nightmare. Starmer will try and salami slice us back in but I don't think it will work
We will remain free. And, one day, one fine and distant day, a government will come along and seize the many opportunities open to a big, resourceful, endlessly inventive English speaking island on the edge of the EU, but not of it
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
It’s not that simple. Single market makes other trade deals harder.
Have any of them honestly been worth it? Evidence is extremely weak
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
She probably could’ve got that through Parliament, but she would have split the Tories in the process and UKIP would’ve overtaken whatever was left of the Conservative Party. As it is, of course, the Tories have been fairly split and Reform have overtaken them…
That's the problem - the lack of a referendum was the only thing that kept the 2 sides of the Tory party together - now we've left the EU the split and demise is inevitable..
I really most try and work out when in 2019 I said Bozo would be the last Tory PM (now I know events resulted in that not being the case) but he will be the last Tory PM to win an election.
I’m pretty sure I said here many times when we were at “Johnson will be PM for 10 years” (many of these people constantly tell me about my terrible 2019 prediction but oddly forget that one) that Johnson’s strategy would inevitably fail as he’d brought together two groups of people that had nothing in common except wanting Brexit out of the news.
2019 was over-analysed to death by Matthew Goodwin and others as some permanent realignment when it was obvious even then it wasn’t.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
It’s not that simple. Single market makes other trade deals harder.
Have any of them honestly been worth it? Evidence is extremely weak
Perhaps not but the idea of them was strong. And don’t forget freedom of movement. The EU is big on it all being a package.
People love a ban, even if they think it won't work? With reports that most Australian children still have access to social media accounts, despite ban, recent YouGov data showed that Britons are particularly likely to think such a ban here would be ineffective (54%) - despite 76% supporting a ban https://nitter.poast.org/YouGov/status/2043621195694710857#m
Social media is downright evil and incredibly dangerous to younger people.
That doesn't however mean that a ban would work - but you have to make the effort.
I don't know that I agree. If you think X is a problem then of course you have to think of ways to address that problem. If you think Y might be effective at addressing X then it may be worth trying, but if you don't think it will, then trying Y anyway is just a distraction from pursuing things that might.
Indeed, I'd say attempting something you don't think will work is downright harmful.
That said - and it may be an end-point artifact of the LOESS smooth - but there's a curious pattern on the opinion poll graph on Wikipedia. Reform, Tories, Labour and Lib Dems are all declining, while the Greens are the only party on the British big five to see their poll score go up.
The changes since the start of the year are: RFM -3.5 CON -1 LAB -0.5 LDM -1 GRN +3
So there's also about 3pp gone missing, which is presumably a mix of Plaid, SNP and the even further right.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Good post Stu.
In my view this is exactly what Labour is slowly doing, they’re throwing away the bad bits nobody cares about seeing go.
The true believers will cry but I think the majority of the country is well over it by now.
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
There are certainly loaded questions in the Poll on Starmer!
But in neither that poll or the others could I see a question like the one Goodwin uses. Can you point me to it?
From the Divided Britain poll;
We'd like to start by asking you some questions about Britain today Please read each statement carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree I no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years I believe politics is broken and no one knows how to fix Britain Drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is good for Britain's energy bills and security The regular pro-Palestine marches in our cities should be banned
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
It’s not that simple. Single market makes other trade deals harder.
Have any of them honestly been worth it? Evidence is extremely weak
Perhaps not but the idea of them was strong. And don’t forget freedom of movement. The EU is big on it all being a package.
In all honesty I think the immigration we had via FOM was objectively a lot better than what we have now.
But I get the idea isn’t popular. But that doesn’t mean we can’t move closer and closer to the single market.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
There are certainly loaded questions in the Poll on Starmer!
But in neither that poll or the others could I see a question like the one Goodwin uses. Can you point me to it?
From the Divided Britain poll;
We'd like to start by asking you some questions about Britain today Please read each statement carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree I no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years I believe politics is broken and no one knows how to fix Britain Drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is good for Britain's energy bills and security The regular pro-Palestine marches in our cities should be banned
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
And yet you think Osborne was a good politican. Remember the only reason a referendum was offered was because Cameron thought there would be another coalition and it could be scrapped as part of the deal - then Osborne (accidently) won a small majority.
George was never in favour of holding the referendum.
As someone who voted remain, I am always interested in the belief that by putting off a vote and ignoring the issue, it would just go away.
The sane thing would have been to have a referendum *earlier*.
I still maintain we would still be in the EU if Blair/Brown had held their promised plebiscite on the Lisbon Treaty.
I agree with that. We would have said no (which is why Blair and Brown ducked out of course) and that would have forced some more variable geometry on the EU that we may well have been able to live with. Instead Blair/Brown insisted we had to be at the heart of Europe which turned out not to be where we wanted to be.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
The Referendum was to leave the EU, the method of leaving and the end destination point wasn't part of the Referendum and it was that mess that was trying to be resolved between 2016 and 2019 until Bozo arrived and just implemented something half baked without thought (as tourists are now discovering).
As has been pointed out in the past we should have had a second referendum on what the relationship with the EU should look like with 2 options...
If the referendum had been called by a government that wanted to leave, then it would be reasonable to expect that government to have an agreed idea of broadly the Brexit they wanted to implement, whether that was Norway for now, as far out as possible, or somewhere in between.
That was why it was a mistake to call a referendum for a change that the PM opposed. It didn't make sense.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
On topic this is one rare moment when I agree with Skyr. How can anyone sane go along with Donald’s latest demented idea when he’s still on about seizing Greenland. Ridic
It is actually a very sensible idea, non-violent and aimed at speeding negotiations to re-open the Strait.
Starmer won't do it because it would upset China, aka the gaffer.
All the resistance (all of it) is because people hate and despise Trump, and don't trust him.
That's it.
If it were Biden or Obama doing it, which is perfectly possible under an alternative scenario, we wouldn't hear half as much criticism.
Neither Biden nor Obama got themselves into a situation where they were so completely clueless as Trump is with Iran. Trump is flailing because he has no idea how to get out of the mess he created. Why would anyone want to get mixed up in that? That Trump insults you at the same time doesn't encourage any sense of owing him a favour.
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
There are certainly loaded questions in the Poll on Starmer!
But in neither that poll or the others could I see a question like the one Goodwin uses. Can you point me to it?
From the Divided Britain poll;
We'd like to start by asking you some questions about Britain today Please read each statement carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree I no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years I believe politics is broken and no one knows how to fix Britain Drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is good for Britain's energy bills and security The regular pro-Palestine marches in our cities should be banned
Thanks, found it now.
Odd that the same poll has "I embrace diversity and think it makes Britain a better place to live" gets 51% agreement, with a further 27% neutral, with only 8% strongly disagree.
There must be a lot of people in there that think Britain has changed for the better!
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
The Referendum was to leave the EU, the method of leaving and the end destination point wasn't part of the Referendum and it was that mess that was trying to be resolved between 2016 and 2019 until Bozo arrived and just implemented something half baked without thought (as tourists are now discovering).
As has been pointed out in the past we should have had a second referendum on what the relationship with the EU should look like with 2 options...
If the referendum had been called by a government that wanted to leave, then it would be reasonable to expect that government to have an agreed idea of broadly the Brexit they wanted to implement, whether that was Norway for now, as far out as possible, or somewhere in between.
That was why it was a mistake to call a referendum for a change that the PM opposed. It didn't make sense.
Well, yes, at the time of the referendum, I wrote that a failure to agree on what it was that we wanted was going to cause all sorts of problems later.
Despite that, I vote Leave, and don't regret my choice.
But you are surely right that everything would have been a hell of a lot simpler if the government of the day had a plan, the referendum passed, and then it was empowered to implement that plan.
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
There are certainly loaded questions in the Poll on Starmer!
But in neither that poll or the others could I see a question like the one Goodwin uses. Can you point me to it?
From the Divided Britain poll;
We'd like to start by asking you some questions about Britain today Please read each statement carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree I no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years I believe politics is broken and no one knows how to fix Britain Drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is good for Britain's energy bills and security The regular pro-Palestine marches in our cities should be banned
The funny bit about question 1 is that I saw HYUFD's original comment on a central line train between Oxford Circus and Shepherds Bush.
And I did mean to answer it with No because London has always been a global city (as say Liverpool also is) so it's not surprising that I've seen every shade of person this evening - because I saw every shade of person in London 40 years ago..
So question 1 is No, Question 2 is Yes but that's because no-one sane goes into politics 3 - pass, drilling is good but it won't impact energy bills and security. 4 - nope, it's funny watching our Government and Police tie itself in knots over something unimportant to day to day life.
People love a ban, even if they think it won't work? With reports that most Australian children still have access to social media accounts, despite ban, recent YouGov data showed that Britons are particularly likely to think such a ban here would be ineffective (54%) - despite 76% supporting a ban https://nitter.poast.org/YouGov/status/2043621195694710857#m
Social media is downright evil and incredibly dangerous to younger people.
That doesn't however mean that a ban would work - but you have to make the effort.
I don't know that I agree. If you think X is a problem then of course you have to think of ways to address that problem. If you think Y might be effective at addressing X then it may be worth trying, but if you don't think it will, then trying Y anyway is just a distraction from pursuing things that might.
Indeed, I'd say attempting something you don't think will work is downright harmful.
One of the problems with banning children from social media is that it frees social media companies of any responsibility to make social media safe for children. They can fairly say that it's a non-issue because they implement the agreed and reasonable methods for preventing children from using social media.
And social media is pretty harmful for adults too, so working out how to make it safe for kids would benefit the rest of the population.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
Well yes
But I'm trying to school the Centrist Dorks, they're not the smartest
To get us significantly back in, you need to win a referendum. It then becomes the irresistible will of the people, and overrules all else. We saw that in Brexit, when, despite 90% of the British establishment conspiring to scupper the vote and revoke it, nonetheless it prevailed. Because in the end we are a democracy, and the idea of ignoring the expressed will of the people,,the demos, was too appalling (and dangerous) despite several PBers and millions of others (eg Keir Starmer) advocating this insane position. I fully believe we would have seen blood on the streets if the Second Voters had got their way. A narrow escape
Sadiq Khan gets this. He knows you morallly need to win a referendum to Rejoin, and he also knows no government will ever call one (let alone win one),. Hence his advice to Starmer to make Rejoin a manifesto promise that the government can then enact, totally avoiding a plebiscite
It is the measure of the Rejoiners desperation. Not gonna happen
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
There are certainly loaded questions in the Poll on Starmer!
But in neither that poll or the others could I see a question like the one Goodwin uses. Can you point me to it?
From the Divided Britain poll;
We'd like to start by asking you some questions about Britain today Please read each statement carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree I no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years I believe politics is broken and no one knows how to fix Britain Drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is good for Britain's energy bills and security The regular pro-Palestine marches in our cities should be banned
Thanks, found it now.
Odd that the same poll has "I embrace diversity and think it makes Britain a better place to live" gets 51% agreement, with a further 27% neutral, with only 8% strongly disagree.
There must be a lot of people in there that think Britain has changed for the better!
The suggestive power of "do you agree?"
A fairly easy thing to fix- just have half the group asked a question like "Despite the scale of immigration in recent years, I still recognise my country."
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
You can salami slice the Single Market, because a lot of it is just common sense - if we want to export to the EU we need to meet their standards so as a minimum our standards need to reflect theirs. Now we could have higher standards than the EU but that just adds costs.
Similarly we now have a lot of paperwork which is purely there to make things awkward, finding ways to remove that would exports and imports to and from the EU easier and so cheaper..
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
Concerning the EU you must never cherry pick your metaphors
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
Concerning the EU you must never cherry pick your metaphors
Hey, we paid an exit bill to leave a Golf Club. So the EU managed to make us mix one
People love a ban, even if they think it won't work? With reports that most Australian children still have access to social media accounts, despite ban, recent YouGov data showed that Britons are particularly likely to think such a ban here would be ineffective (54%) - despite 76% supporting a ban https://nitter.poast.org/YouGov/status/2043621195694710857#m
Social media is downright evil and incredibly dangerous to younger people.
That doesn't however mean that a ban would work - but you have to make the effort.
I don't know that I agree. If you think X is a problem then of course you have to think of ways to address that problem. If you think Y might be effective at addressing X then it may be worth trying, but if you don't think it will, then trying Y anyway is just a distraction from pursuing things that might.
Indeed, I'd say attempting something you don't think will work is downright harmful.
One of the problems with banning children from social media is that it frees social media companies of any responsibility to make social media safe for children. They can fairly say that it's a non-issue because they implement the agreed and reasonable methods for preventing children from using social media.
And social media is pretty harmful for adults too, so working out how to make it safe for kids would benefit the rest of the population.
I have my own issues, but I'm thankful to be spared what seems to be a lot of stress and anxiety from use of social media.
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
Which ward are you in? I'm trying to decide how to cast my anti-Reform votes and haven't a clue who is best placed. In Hylands and Harrow Lodge it won't be Labour. RA or Tory (with fingers crossed behind my back and a brandy chaser)?
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
You can salami slice the Single Market, because a lot of it is just common sense - if we want to export to the EU we need to meet their standards so as a minimum our standards need to reflect theirs. Now we could have higher standards than the EU but that just adds costs.
Similarly we now have a lot of paperwork which is purely there to make things awkward, finding ways to remove that would exports and imports to and from the EU easier and so cheaper..
The CU is fairly easy as well, I suspect. Few people are that agitated by trade deals. Besides- we've run the experiment, and it's really not obvious that nimble, swashbuckling Britain is doing better trade-deal-wise than lumbering, sclerotic Europe.
The harder sticking point is going to be Freedom of Movement of People, and I'm not pretending to know how that would play out now. But do the thing that might be helpful, then repeat...
And a final thought, until next time. It's quite cute the way that victors of any conflict assume that theirs is the victory that will last and resound down the ages, long after their death which probably won't happen anyway. Most victories aren't like that.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
there was a principled as well as an unprincipled problem about 'respecting the referendum'. This could occur via an utterly hard Brexit in which any trade relationship with the EU was entirely severed and we relied on an entirely new set of buccaneering relations, perhaps with a gunboat. Equally respecting the referendum was (as I favoured and favour) a Swiss or Norway deal where outside political EU we were still fully in the economic and trade EU. Which Starmer would do if he dared.
There was, among the principled, no course of action that commanded a real majority. There still isn't.
Of course May’s biggest error was post the referendum she had a total ability to decide what Brexit meant.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
That 12 months in they hadn't agreed what the approach would be, leading to futher arguments and resignations, was when I started turning against it - it was clear at that point that the pessimists had been right about how it would be handled.
I think we will probably end up with basically that at some point. Out but single market type arrangement. May could have easily delivered that.
But she couldn't. Not as leader of the Conservative Party.
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
Wishcasting. You can salami slice all you like, but then another government full of rightwing vigour can come and undo it all with one vote, and this will happen, indeed they can vote us much further away
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
No reversal required. The CU and SM are huge cliff-edges. You can't salami slice a cliff-edge, with apologies for the mixed metaphor.
Well yes
But I'm trying to school the Centrist Dorks, they're not the smartest
To get us significantly back in, you need to win a referendum. It then becomes the irresistible will of the people, and overrules all else. We saw that in Brexit, when, despite 90% of the British establishment conspiring to scupper the vote and revoke it, nonetheless it prevailed. Because in the end we are a democracy, and the idea of ignoring the expressed will of the people,,the demos, was too appalling (and dangerous) despite several PBers and millions of others (eg Keir Starmer) advocating this insane position. I fully believe we would have seen blood on the streets if the Second Voters had got their way. A narrow escape
Sadiq Khan gets this. He knows you morallly need to win a referendum to Rejoin, and he also knows no government will ever call one (let alone win one),. Hence his advice to Starmer to make Rejoin a manifesto promise that the government can then enact, totally avoiding a plebiscite
It is the measure of the Rejoiners desperation. Not gonna happen
I don't think Rejoin is going to happen. But I think you're wrong.
It's worth remembering that Cameron only promised a referendum as a tool of party management - he never intended to actually hold the referendum, nor to actually leave the EU.
If public opinion turns against Brexit sufficiently strongly, and backbenchers in a party kick up enough of a fuss, then it's entirely possible that a PM ends up with a commitment to hold a referendum on rejoining that they never particularly wanted.
While I have no confidence in the ability of people currently advocating for EU membership to win such a referendum, there are all sorts of things that might happen in a referendum campaign, and all sorts of other questions that might get wrapped up in it.
You remind me of pro-Europeans in the late-90s who in their arrogance and naiveté could not conceive of the debate going against them. And look where they are now.
Queen Elizabeth II ‘dismayed’ by Brexit referendum, book claims
David Cameron should not have called the vote on leaving the EU, the late monarch is said to have told Barack Obama
Queen Elizabeth was “dismayed” about David Cameron’s handling of Brexit and confided in Barack Obama about her concerns over calling a referendum, according to a book.
The late Queen, who as monarch could not take a public stance on the issue, is said to have made her views known to the US president over lunch during his visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016.
The claims are made in a book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by the American journalist Susan Page.
Obama, who was interviewed for the book about the Queen’s relationship with America, said she did not believe that as big a decision as the UK leaving the European Union “should have been decided by plebiscite”.
Page said the lunch, which took place two months after Cameron called the referendum, was a “very rare royal critique of a prime minister, in public or private”.
Describing the conversation, Obama said: “She said, effectively, ‘It’s hard to understand why a prime minister, who presumably understands politics, would put a public referendum forward that he didn’t know what the answer would be of such importance.’”
With all due respect to our former Queen, a plebiscite is the only way to resolve such issues. She was wrong on this.
It isn't. Not even in this case, as the plebiscite did not resolve the issue, we did not Leave the EU the day after the referendum, indeed MPs and peers consistently voted down all terms for leaving the EU and we were still in the EU 3 years after the 2016 referendum result.
Only the Conservative majority at the 2019 general election delivered Brexit, not the referendum
Yes, but that is because the Remainer Parliament from 2015 to 2019 was an utter disgrace that made Trump look like a democrat. Thankfully all of the main offenders lost their seats.
There was an election in 2017, so there were 2 Remsiner Parliaments 2016-17 and 2017 to 2019..
The problem was that in 2017, Labour politicians like Sir Keir pledged to respect the referendum result "as a matter of principle" during the campaign, then blocked every attempt to get it done afterwards
there was a principled as well as an unprincipled problem about 'respecting the referendum'. This could occur via an utterly hard Brexit in which any trade relationship with the EU was entirely severed and we relied on an entirely new set of buccaneering relations, perhaps with a gunboat. Equally respecting the referendum was (as I favoured and favour) a Swiss or Norway deal where outside political EU we were still fully in the economic and trade EU. Which Starmer would do if he dared.
There was, among the principled, no course of action that commanded a real majority. There still isn't.
There is now. It's called rejoin.
Indeed. All you gotta do is put this Rejoin in a manifesto, win on that manifesto, then call the referendum (risking your entire career if you are PM), then win that referendum, THEN hope and pray that the ten years of subsequent turbulent negotiations with the EU (adding constant uncertainty to the economy) do not end with Malta, Ireland, Spain, France or Bulgaria exercising a veto, making it all pointless, as we are rejected
Comments
What other questions asked? Were they also as leading?
It all rather whiffs more than Grimsby when the fleet is in.
As HYUFD says that's essentially what it took to get it delivered, except 3 years later, but ultimately might have been better to start from the point of "well if you want Brexit vote for us to govern", rather than the "well if you want the option to vote for Brexit against what we think as a government, vote for us" we originally got.
https://www.jlpartners.co.uk/polling-results
But yeah, the questions are a bit pushy, which is such an old trick that it got sent up in Yes, Prime Minister.
(Though not as fishy as the bar chart in the latest Rossergram. Based on recent surveys of residents, they claim that Reform are just ahead of Labour in this bit of Romford, with a combined bar for Residents and Greens higher than the Conservatives. Lots about Rosser, Khan and Starmer, hardly anything about the candidates.)
May explicitly called the 2017 GE so she could force through her version of Brexit, and the electorate gave her a thumbs down.
If she’d decided it meant single market to match the closeness of the result nobody would have argued. Instead she went for hard Brexit even though she herself said she didn’t want one.
There was a political vacuum immediately post-referendum and people on all sides tried to fill the void with all sorts of different takes on it.
As has been pointed out in the past we should have had a second referendum on what the relationship with the EU should look like with 2 options...
The other possibility is the public learned the details of the brexit deal during the campaign due to increased attention. But given people's general unwillingness to change opinion on brexit (prior to the actual event) that seems a bit thin.
Anyway, they got a harder brexit for their troubles.
Would it have been in the EUs interest to keep us in the single market but with a partial or complete opt-out from FoM? Yes. But muh four freedums.
There was, among the principled, no course of action that commanded a real majority. There still isn't.
With reports that most Australian children still have access to social media accounts, despite ban, recent YouGov data showed that Britons are particularly likely to think such a ban here would be ineffective (54%) - despite 76% supporting a ban
https://nitter.poast.org/YouGov/status/2043621195694710857#m
But in neither that poll or the others could I see a question like the one Goodwin uses. Can you point me to it?
But that is a calculation any politician would take if you offered it to them.
Elaine Godfrey
@elainejgodfrey
In 2020, Biden wanted to pick Whitmer as his VP, a former senior Whitmer staffer told me. But the moment called for Kamala Harris.
Asked to confirm, a former Biden-Harris adviser said that assessment carries “some weight.”
https://x.com/elainejgodfrey/status/2043688642967712086
I really most try and work out when in 2019 I said Bozo would be the last Tory PM (now I know events resulted in that not being the case) but he will be the last Tory PM to win an election.
That doesn't however mean that a ban would work - but you have to make the effort.
And there was the particular issue that Mrs May lost her majority in 2017. And then opposition MPs saw political capital in making her life difficult.
It took Boris Johnson taking over (and winning a proper majority) to actually get a party into power with enough MPs to actually get Brexit completed.
I do slightly wonder if this is a long game to make her acceptable to independents and old school Republicans. A sort of "tone down the rhetoric and get things done" bipartisanship.
https://bsky.app/profile/theatlantic.com/post/3mjfolz7xdc2a
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen waited less than a day after Hungary voted Viktor Orbán out of office to call for the EU to get more power over national governments to force through foreign policy decisions.
Accusations of an obstructive or politicised civil service are just so much arse-covering by incompetent politicians.
Israel
https://x.com/habibi_uk/status/2043715521787367457?s=61
We are free. The EU is a fucking nightmare. Starmer will try and salami slice us back in but I don't think it will work
We will remain free. And, one day, one fine and distant day, a government will come along and seize the many opportunities open to a big, resourceful, endlessly inventive English speaking island on the edge of the EU, but not of it
May's plan was several steps further away from the EU than that and she was defenestrated for that, on the grounds that it was insufficiently Eurosceptic. There is no way that Conservative MPs would have backed her signing up for anything like the single market. Had she tried, she would have been out on her ear faster than Jacob Rees-Mogg can say "vassal state". Had she tried to get it through Parliament with opposition votes, even more so.
There were at least two explosive devices locked deep in the Brexit mechanism, which would foil politicians with more cunning than we really want politicians to have.
First was that any Brexit deal had to be acceptable to a majority of MPs overall, and a majority of Conservative MPs- who by that point had been driven a bit loco by the process. Majority overall ruled out a hard Brexit, majority of Conservatives ruled out anything other than a hard Brexit.
Second was that Leave covered a range of ambitions- deregulating business, global trade deals, control of borders, spending money on other things. The only way to give everyone in the 52% what they wanted was to take control of all of those things, which meant a massive distancing.
Given those constraints, a few things follow.
First, painful as it is to say, the only way out of the maze was to give Boris and his fellow travellers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The 2019 election result was the only mechanism that unlocked the Paliament and Party locks simultaneously. Shame it gave so much power to people so unsuited to exercise it.
Second, we had to end up where we ended up, for now. Nothing else was stable. That it has consequences that a lot of people don't like is neither here nor there.
Third, the resulting Brexit is very vulnerable to salami-slicing. Pretty much any bit of unpicking Brexit is likely to be net popular. We've seen some examples already, there are more in the pipeline. It's like I say to kids when they are stuck on a maths problem- if you can't see all the way to the answer, look for the thing you can do which might be helpful, do that and repeat. (It's quite good as life advice in general.)
2019 was over-analysed to death by Matthew Goodwin and others as some permanent realignment when it was obvious even then it wasn’t.
Indeed, I'd say attempting something you don't think will work is downright harmful.
The changes since the start of the year are:
RFM -3.5
CON -1
LAB -0.5
LDM -1
GRN +3
So there's also about 3pp gone missing, which is presumably a mix of Plaid, SNP and the even further right.
In my view this is exactly what Labour is slowly doing, they’re throwing away the bad bits nobody cares about seeing go.
The true believers will cry but I think the majority of the country is well over it by now.
We'd like to start by asking you some questions about Britain today Please read each statement carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree
I no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years
I believe politics is broken and no one knows how to fix Britain
Drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is good for Britain's energy bills and security
The regular pro-Palestine marches in our cities should be banned
But I get the idea isn’t popular. But that doesn’t mean we can’t move closer and closer to the single market.
To get us back in, you need to win a Rejoin referendum. No British government will ever risk it
I feel sorry for the PB Centrist Dads, they lost the biggest vote of their lives and it can never be undone
Which is odd, given how often time seems to fly by.
That was why it was a mistake to call a referendum for a change that the PM opposed. It didn't make sense.
Odd that the same poll has "I embrace diversity and think it makes Britain a better place to live" gets 51% agreement, with a further 27% neutral, with only 8% strongly disagree.
There must be a lot of people in there that think Britain has changed for the better!
Despite that, I vote Leave, and don't regret my choice.
But you are surely right that everything would have been a hell of a lot simpler if the government of the day had a plan, the referendum passed, and then it was empowered to implement that plan.
And I did mean to answer it with No because London has always been a global city (as say Liverpool also is) so it's not surprising that I've seen every shade of person this evening - because I saw every shade of person in London 40 years ago..
So question 1 is No,
Question 2 is Yes but that's because no-one sane goes into politics
3 - pass, drilling is good but it won't impact energy bills and security.
4 - nope, it's funny watching our Government and Police tie itself in knots over something unimportant to day to day life.
And social media is pretty harmful for adults too, so working out how to make it safe for kids would benefit the rest of the population.
But I'm trying to school the Centrist Dorks, they're not the smartest
To get us significantly back in, you need to win a referendum. It then becomes the irresistible will of the people, and overrules all else. We saw that in Brexit, when, despite 90% of the British establishment conspiring to scupper the vote and revoke it, nonetheless it prevailed. Because in the end we are a democracy, and the idea of ignoring the expressed will of the people,,the demos, was too appalling (and dangerous) despite several PBers and millions of others (eg Keir Starmer) advocating this insane position. I fully believe we would have seen blood on the streets if the Second Voters had got their way. A narrow escape
Sadiq Khan gets this. He knows you morallly need to win a referendum to Rejoin, and he also knows no government will ever call one (let alone win one),. Hence his advice to Starmer to make Rejoin a manifesto promise that the government can then enact, totally avoiding a plebiscite
It is the measure of the Rejoiners desperation. Not gonna happen
A fairly easy thing to fix- just have half the group asked a question like "Despite the scale of immigration in recent years, I still recognise my country."
If, that is, you want to fix the issue.
Similarly we now have a lot of paperwork which is purely there to make things awkward, finding ways to remove that would exports and imports to and from the EU easier and so cheaper..
The harder sticking point is going to be Freedom of Movement of People, and I'm not pretending to know how that would play out now. But do the thing that might be helpful, then repeat...
And a final thought, until next time. It's quite cute the way that victors of any conflict assume that theirs is the victory that will last and resound down the ages, long after their death which probably won't happen anyway. Most victories aren't like that.
It's called rejoin.
It's worth remembering that Cameron only promised a referendum as a tool of party management - he never intended to actually hold the referendum, nor to actually leave the EU.
If public opinion turns against Brexit sufficiently strongly, and backbenchers in a party kick up enough of a fuss, then it's entirely possible that a PM ends up with a commitment to hold a referendum on rejoining that they never particularly wanted.
While I have no confidence in the ability of people currently advocating for EU membership to win such a referendum, there are all sorts of things that might happen in a referendum campaign, and all sorts of other questions that might get wrapped up in it.
You remind me of pro-Europeans in the late-90s who in their arrogance and naiveté could not conceive of the debate going against them. And look where they are now.
Trump has dementia and chooses to do everything.
I know which I prefer.
It was a disaster. Is a disaster. Will be undone in your lifetime.
Best of British luck
The key is to always equivocate, that way I, I mean, they, can never be totally wrong.