You are the one sticking your fingers in your ears. This is the wrong battle. It is not the one you need to win. The longer you concentrate on this, the less time you will have to actually win the referendum.
If you actually want to win it, that is.
What exactly is a man in the street supposed to do ? This referendum will be won or lost in the offices of the great and the good, by who is selected to lead the campaign, and how well they do it at. I am sure I will push leaflets through doors when the opportunity arises, but right now there isn't much to do except decry the biased field on which this competition is going to be held. We all know what the positive case looks like, ironically it has been put forward by Hannan a number of times, but if the wrong person or people are at the helm it wont be used, or not well.
So I was right: you've given in.
The man (and woman) in the street is supposed to vote for whichever side persuades them best. You're not even trying to persuade them.
There's loads you could do. Instead of arguing the advantages of leaving the EU, you're throwing a hissy fit that the game is tacked against you, before actually knowing that it is.
"We all know what the positive case looks like"
No, we don't, and neither do the public. If it is that clear, then you should be shouting it from the rooftops rather than this self-indulgent claptrap about the process. That will persuade no-one except the already persuaded.
Actually, I don't think its a bad tactic for now to publicise the attempts by the "In" side to make it a crooked heat. Worth planting the seed early, especially as that campaign will have far more money behind it, as well as an EU friendly state TV
Also it's strange that the "In" people on here are trying to shape Immigration as a subject "Out" should avoid "banging on about" when it has never been more salient according to IPSOS-MORI. That's what I think the "man in the street" cares about, Richard Nabavi seems to agree its the key battleground, other partisans use it as proxy for Farage hate
I like the EU because I see them as a civilizing influence particularly when we have a Tory government. It's nice to know that at least a part of our governance gives a shit about the desperate plight of the African refugees even if our government in Westminster couldn't care less.
I suspect when Comrade Corbyn introduces compulsory singing of the Red Flad at school assemblies and renames Buckingham Palace Mandela House some of the right wing EU haters will yearn for a bit of Angela Merkel's influence.
It's chaotic in both good and bad senses - compare the thread header with Jonathan's comment. I've never known a leadership election to attract such interest - people debate it at my poker game (and believe me, it's hard to get them off the subject of Arsenal and Formula 1), at bus stops, in my apolitical office. Actual membership (not just the £3ers) is up by about 40%, and the new people mostly appear to be enthusiasts rather than fanatics. I do agree it's going on too long - opening the ballot papers about now would be sensible, not in 3 weeks. And the MPs nattering about an early challenge will find themselves on their own - people have had enough of it for now.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
What is more concerning is he isn't even ASKING for much, so we can hardly be surprised if he doesn't get much. We will no doubt get the usual cheerleaders here in a minute telling us that we don't know what his strategy is, but the fact remains that the other camp is on the record at being amazed about how little they have been asked for.
Frankly that is what is usually called, taking the piss. Cameron told the public of all the stuff he wanted to ask for from the EU, and yet he isn't even asking for it at the negotiations.
Hannan isn't exactly the most reliable analyst of what Cameron is asking for.
FFS he is just reporting what other EU politicians have said. Verhofstadt offered an associate membership but Cameron didn't want it. If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and believe the best well I guess that is your choice.
Look for example all the people Cameron has hired to work on the renegotiations, europhiles to a man, this is not a PM that is going to hold a renegotiation and then form a balanced view on what has been achieved and recommend it or not for a referendum, this is a man that has decided to push for IN come what may, even if it means selling a bit on tinsel with the whole of the Whitehall machine behind him (see no purdah rules etc)
No matter what Cameron were asking for, Hannan would claim it's not enough. And third-hand reporting of off-the-record comments is really not convincing.
Off the record comments my ass. Here is Verhofstadt setting it out in his own words
Those European countries who think the full membership is not their cup of tea, can apply for the second type: “associate membership.” This gives access to the internal market with its free movement of goods, services, capital and people. You will only have to apply those rules and regulations that are necessary to create a level playing field in internal trade. Obviously, that also means you would no longer have full representation and the corresponding voting rights at EU level.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
I like the EU because I see them as a civilizing influence particularly when we have a Tory government. It's nice to know that at least a part of our governance gives a shit about the desperate plight of the African refugees even if our government in Westminster couldn't care less..
It's chaotic in both good and bad senses - compare the thread header with Jonathan's comment. I've never known a leadership election to attract such interest - people debate it at my poker game (and believe me, it's hard to get them off the subject of Arsenal and Formula 1), at bus stops, in my apolitical office. Actual membership (not just the £3ers) is up by about 40%, and the new people mostly appear to be enthusiasts rather than fanatics. I do agree it's going on too long - opening the ballot papers about now would be sensible, not in 3 weeks. And the MPs nattering about an early challenge will find themselves on their own - people have had enough of it for now.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
Sadly Nick, I treat this comment with the same sort of disdain that I treated your comments before the election. You're being far too optimistic.
For instance: "If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions." seems simply delusional.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Wrong. Why do you persist in repeating this myth Philip?
As I have posted many times before on here including with links, EFTA members are involved in every part of the proposing, drafting and amending of any and all EU rules that apply to them. The only part they do not take part in is the final vote and even then they have the right to veto the result if they think it is against there national interest. These are facts. And your continual feigned ignorance of them does you no credit at all.
I still don't get this. Farage resigning then unresigning was ridiculous and just emphasised how badly UKIP need him to be gone so they can move ahead. Ed Eating a bacon sandwich or falling off a stage should, in any reasonable person's eyes, have been complete non news items with absolutely no baring on his suitability or otherwise to be PM.
I am glad Ed lost but the idea that someone of even slight intelligence should have been swayed in their view of him by how he ate a sandwich is fatuous and idiotic... which is about the level of most political campaigns these days. :-(
I think Ed looking like a fool was salient merely because the public thought he was a fool. Similar to the famous videos of Kinnock falling over at the beach or George W Bush being filmed trying to walk through a locked door.
All three of those men had negative connotations already in many peoples minds and the imagery playing into those views, rather than causing them.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
The talk by people like Verhofstadt and Delors, and the coyness of Cameron makes me hope there is a sophisticated game of expectations-setting going on. We now know from the General Election that the Tories were seriously going for a majority, knowing it was in their grasp, even while they were briefing about a hung parliament. If Cameron came back with something even half-way to associate membership, it would be a great result, and In would get a huge win. Meanwhile if he only gets some fiddling around benefits, a few formal pronouncements on symbolic matters and promises to carry on attempting things that are already in the works, that it should rightly be called a joke.
The credibility of a lot of people is on the line here. If Cameron comes back with major opt-outs, or big reforms like QMV reform/a red card system, the harsher eurosceptics will look silly if they pretend nothing has changed. Meanwhile, if Cameron comes back with stuff that is just symbolic or mainly a matter of changing domestic law, then the Cameron loyalists will look stupid if they try to pretend there's been real reform. And the media and journalists will look very foolish if they cover it in a "he said, she said" format, rather than actually getting into the detail of what has been changed versus what has been wanted from various groups over the years (CAP, Fisheries, immigration limits, voting reform, budget caps, etc).
We all know that this forum will be the place where the spinning will be off the charts. It is very easy to see who is credible with their reactions: those of us who are willing to say what would be good enough to vote in before the renegotiation is announced. For me, it's the following:
- Voting reform to stop the Eurozone bloc vote ruling the UK: either a red card system, a double QMV system, or restoring primacy of UK law - Limits on EU immigration: either a migration cap or a ban on non-workers & criminals - Access to non-EU markets: either the completion of US & Canada trade deals, or the ability for us to do it ourselves if the EU keeps dragging its feet - Commitment of all of the above in a legally binding document or treaty: we can't have another repeat of when Blair was promised CAP reform that never happened
I would like more, but that, or something close to it, is my minimum. As you can see, I'm neither an extreme anti-European who will never be happy, nor am I an ultraloyalist that will be happy with a few mild changes.
Who else is willing to spell out what they would be happy with?
Those European countries who think the full membership is not their cup of tea, can apply for the second type: “associate membership.” This gives access to the internal market with its free movement of goods, services, capital and people. You will only have to apply those rules and regulations that are necessary to create a level playing field in internal trade. Obviously, that also means you would no longer have full representation and the corresponding voting rights at EU level.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Nonsense. We would only implement the EU rules when we are exporting to the EU, we would not have to implement them for the domestic market, or any non-EU market we export to. In the EU our businesses are hobbled by having to implement EU regulations even for our domestic market and for all our export markets whether they want them or not. If we export to Japan for example we have to follow the Japanese regulations AND the EU regulations. Do we stop exporting to Japan because we have no say over their product regulations, of course we don't.
You are the one sticking your fingers in your ears. This is the wrong battle. It is not the one you need to win. The longer you concentrate on this, the less time you will have to actually win the referendum.
If you actually want to win it, that is.
What exactly is a man in the street supposed to do ? This referendum will be won or lost in the offices of the great and the good, by who is selected to lead the campaign, and how well they do it at. I am sure I will push leaflets through doors when the opportunity arises, but right now there isn't much to do except decry the biased field on which this competition is going to be held. We all know what the positive case looks like, ironically it has been put forward by Hannan a number of times, but if the wrong person or people are at the helm it wont be used, or not well.
So I was right: you've given in.
The man (and woman) in the street is supposed to vote for whichever side persuades them best. You're not even trying to persuade them.
There's loads you could do. Instead of arguing the advantages of leaving the EU, you're throwing a hissy fit that the game is tacked against you, before actually knowing that it is.
"We all know what the positive case looks like"
No, we don't, and neither do the public. If it is that clear, then you should be shouting it from the rooftops rather than this self-indulgent claptrap about the process. That will persuade no-one except the already persuaded.
Actually, I don't think its a bad tactic for now to publicise the attempts by the "In" side to make it a crooked heat. Worth planting the seed early, especially as that campaign will have far more money behind it, as well as an EU friendly state TV
(snip)
It's the wrong battle. Only the already persuaded will care. The battle that matters is the referendum, and these complaints - which the public will expect are the sort of tactics the inners would be using if they had power - do nothing to win the referendum.
You'd be better off talking about the referendum's arguments instead.
The only good thing about this for the outers is that the iners are onlt marginally less organised.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Wrong. Why do you persist in repeating this myth Philip?
As I have posted many times before on here including with links, EFTA members are involved in every part of the proposing, drafting and amending of any and all EU rules that apply to them. The only part they do not take part in is the final vote and even then they have the right to veto the result if they think it is against there national interest. These are facts. And your continual feigned ignorance of them does you no credit at all.
I insist on repeating what I believe. You believe that leaving the EU to join EFTA is a good thing, great campaign for that.
Cameron isn't seeking to leave the EU - he has said all along he is trying to reform it. The fact that someone is willing to hold open the exit door doesn't mean that he isn't trying to reform it or being weak as Indigo is implying. "Associate membership" isn't reforming the EU, it is EU-exit so its not what Cameron was ever going for.
It's chaotic in both good and bad senses - compare the thread header with Jonathan's comment. I've never known a leadership election to attract such interest - people debate it at my poker game (and believe me, it's hard to get them off the subject of Arsenal and Formula 1), at bus stops, in my apolitical office. Actual membership (not just the £3ers) is up by about 40%, and the new people mostly appear to be enthusiasts rather than fanatics. I do agree it's going on too long - opening the ballot papers about now would be sensible, not in 3 weeks. And the MPs nattering about an early challenge will find themselves on their own - people have had enough of it for now.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
Sadly Nick, I treat this comment with the same sort of disdain that I treated your comments before the election. You're being far too optimistic.
For instance: "If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions." seems simply delusional.
Sad but true. Nick is often wildly optimistic about the state of his party. Rarely sees any plots, ignores massive faults in its Leaders and is then surprised at the outcome. Must be love that makes him blind. Just has no concept of the car crash underway.
It's chaotic in both good and bad senses - compare the thread header with Jonathan's comment. I've never known a leadership election to attract such interest - people debate it at my poker game (and believe me, it's hard to get them off the subject of Arsenal and Formula 1), at bus stops, in my apolitical office. Actual membership (not just the £3ers) is up by about 40%, and the new people mostly appear to be enthusiasts rather than fanatics. I do agree it's going on too long - opening the ballot papers about now would be sensible, not in 3 weeks. And the MPs nattering about an early challenge will find themselves on their own - people have had enough of it for now.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
Nick, I have to say I think the only 'projected wish-fulfilment' is the idea that Corbyn will be anything other than an unmitigated disaster. He carries more baggage than a pre-Beeching porter meeting the Royal Train, much of which is already in the public domain and none of which he has dealt with effectively. He has no experience of political leadership, none of wielding executive responsibilities, and his supporters have shown by their rhetoric, which he has made no effort to restrain or so far as I know even criticise, that they are divisive, fanatical and abusive. If even 20% of them stay, then it is eminently possible purges will happen whether Corbyn wants them or not.
Electing Corbyn to move the party on from the Blair years is the political equivalent of taking a lethal dose of strychnine to cure a stiff knee. If you doubt that, look at the reaction of every swing voter and a large chunk of avowed Labour supporters on these threads.
Those European countries who think the full membership is not their cup of tea, can apply for the second type: “associate membership.” This gives access to the internal market with its free movement of goods, services, capital and people. You will only have to apply those rules and regulations that are necessary to create a level playing field in internal trade. Obviously, that also means you would no longer have full representation and the corresponding voting rights at EU level.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Nonsense. We would only implement the EU rules when we are exporting to the EU, we would not have to implement them for the domestic market, or any non-EU market we export to. In the EU our businesses are hobbled by having to implement EU regulations even for our domestic market and for all our export markets whether they want them or not. If we export to Japan for example we have to follow the Japanese regulations AND the EU regulations. Do we stop exporting to Japan because we have no say over their product regulations, of course we don't.
Yes that is the case if we exit the EU of course it is. Cameron was elected on a pledge to try and stay in a reformed EU, not simply exit it so an offer of exit is simply off topic and irrelevant to that goal.
I still don't get this. Farage resigning then unresigning was ridiculous and just emphasised how badly UKIP need him to be gone so they can move ahead. Ed Eating a bacon sandwich or falling off a stage should, in any reasonable person's eyes, have been complete non news items with absolutely no baring on his suitability or otherwise to be PM.
I am glad Ed lost but the idea that someone of even slight intelligence should have been swayed in their view of him by how he ate a sandwich is fatuous and idiotic... which is about the level of most political campaigns these days. :-(
I think Ed looking like a fool was salient merely because the public thought he was a fool. Similar to the famous videos of Kinnock falling over at the beach or George W Bush being filmed trying to walk through a locked door.
All three of those men had negative connotations already in many peoples minds and the imagery playing into those views, rather than causing them.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
If they had been sensible instead of being idiotic-as-usual, they would have restricted voting to party members with a cut-off date of before the general election.
If this had just been an Andy/Liz/Yvette election
There would have been no candidate worth voting for.
What are the main reasons in your view for the terrible choice of candidates. My view is it stems from the malign influence of Brown on rivals from his generation.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Wrong. Why do you persist in repeating this myth Philip?
As I have posted many times before on here including with links, EFTA members are involved in every part of the proposing, drafting and amending of any and all EU rules that apply to them. The only part they do not take part in is the final vote and even then they have the right to veto the result if they think it is against there national interest. These are facts. And your continual feigned ignorance of them does you no credit at all.
I insist on repeating what I believe. You believe that leaving the EU to join EFTA is a good thing, great campaign for that.
Cameron isn't seeking to leave the EU - he has said all along he is trying to reform it. The fact that someone is willing to hold open the exit door doesn't mean that he isn't trying to reform it or being weak as Indigo is implying. "Associate membership" isn't reforming the EU, it is EU-exit so its not what Cameron was ever going for.
You might well believe it, it isn't true. The facts are as stated by Mr Tyndall.
Cameron is not going to reform it, it does not want to be reformed. There will be no treaty. Ergo he will come back with nothing that cannot be done with domestic law and trying an win a referendum on that basis.
Once the result is known will internecine warfare break out? If 20% of MPs nominate someone else, Corbyn could be challenged within days of winning. If that happens it really will descend into total farce.
But the selectorate will be the same as those who put Corbyn in. Rebelling after the election is too late.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
I still don't get this. Farage resigning then unresigning was ridiculous and just emphasised how badly UKIP need him to be gone so they can move ahead. Ed Eating a bacon sandwich or falling off a stage should, in any reasonable person's eyes, have been complete non news items with absolutely no baring on his suitability or otherwise to be PM.
I am glad Ed lost but the idea that someone of even slight intelligence should have been swayed in their view of him by how he ate a sandwich is fatuous and idiotic... which is about the level of most political campaigns these days. :-(
I think Ed looking like a fool was salient merely because the public thought he was a fool. Similar to the famous videos of Kinnock falling over at the beach or George W Bush being filmed trying to walk through a locked door.
All three of those men had negative connotations already in many peoples minds and the imagery playing into those views, rather than causing them.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
I think that's right. Look at Boris.
Great example. Boris gets tramped hanging in a line and he laughs it off and so do the public. Had that happened to Ed [or Kinnock or Bush etc] he'd have been excoriated for the exact same thing.
Those European countries who think the full membership is not their cup of tea, can apply for the second type: “associate membership.” This gives access to the internal market with its free movement of goods, services, capital and people. You will only have to apply those rules and regulations that are necessary to create a level playing field in internal trade. Obviously, that also means you would no longer have full representation and the corresponding voting rights at EU level.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Nonsense. We would only implement the EU rules when we are exporting to the EU, we would not have to implement them for the domestic market, or any non-EU market we export to. In the EU our businesses are hobbled by having to implement EU regulations even for our domestic market and for all our export markets whether they want them or not. If we export to Japan for example we have to follow the Japanese regulations AND the EU regulations. Do we stop exporting to Japan because we have no say over their product regulations, of course we don't.
Yes that is the case if we exit the EU of course it is. Cameron was elected on a pledge to try and stay in a reformed EU, not simply exit it so an offer of exit is simply off topic and irrelevant to that goal.
Which bit of "there will be no treaty" didn't you hear, with no treaty there is no reform. It's smoke and mirrors bullshit. With no treaty everything is at the mercy of the interpretation of the ECJ whose very remit is federalist.
Its futile debating you, in every case you would believe Cameron if he told you white was black.
Once the result is known will internecine warfare break out? If 20% of MPs nominate someone else, Corbyn could be challenged within days of winning. If that happens it really will descend into total farce.
But the selectorate will be the same as those who put Corbyn in. Rebelling after the election is too late.
Better to wait 12 months, when many of the £3 brigade will have forgotten all about it.
Regarding the EU referendum, what is unclear is what does Osborne need to happen to ensure he takes over from Cameron? A stitch up that obtains a "stay" vote but has the majority of Conservative members voting to leave will have an effect on Osborne's chances. Osborne needs to align himself with a majority of Conservative members. At the moment they are eurosceptic.
I still don't get this. Farage resigning then unresigning was ridiculous and just emphasised how badly UKIP need him to be gone so they can move ahead. Ed Eating a bacon sandwich or falling off a stage should, in any reasonable person's eyes, have been complete non news items with absolutely no baring on his suitability or otherwise to be PM.
I am glad Ed lost but the idea that someone of even slight intelligence should have been swayed in their view of him by how he ate a sandwich is fatuous and idiotic... which is about the level of most political campaigns these days. :-(
I think Ed looking like a fool was salient merely because the public thought he was a fool. Similar to the famous videos of Kinnock falling over at the beach or George W Bush being filmed trying to walk through a locked door.
All three of those men had negative connotations already in many peoples minds and the imagery playing into those views, rather than causing them.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
I think that's right. Look at Boris.
Great example. Boris gets tramped hanging in a line and he laughs it off and so do the public. Had that happened to Ed [or Kinnock or Bush etc] he'd have been excoriated for the exact same thing.
There are a few MPs who the public and media will allow to get away with things that they would lambast other politicians for. Boris is one. Ken was another. Both have rather colourful private lives that would have ruined many other politicians.
As an aside, if I was a young lad wanting to be a politician, I would study people like them carefully to see how and why this has happened, and how I could use it in my career.
Fortunately I am not a young lad, and when I was I had other interests aside from politics.
I still don't get this. Farage resigning then unresigning was ridiculous and just emphasised how badly UKIP need him to be gone so they can move ahead. Ed Eating a bacon sandwich or falling off a stage should, in any reasonable person's eyes, have been complete non news items with absolutely no baring on his suitability or otherwise to be PM.
I am glad Ed lost but the idea that someone of even slight intelligence should have been swayed in their view of him by how he ate a sandwich is fatuous and idiotic... which is about the level of most political campaigns these days. :-(
I think Ed looking like a fool was salient merely because the public thought he was a fool. Similar to the famous videos of Kinnock falling over at the beach or George W Bush being filmed trying to walk through a locked door.
All three of those men had negative connotations already in many peoples minds and the imagery playing into those views, rather than causing them.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
I think that's right. Look at Boris.
Great example. Boris gets tramped hanging in a line and he laughs it off and so do the public. Had that happened to Ed [or Kinnock or Bush etc] he'd have been excoriated for the exact same thing.
Can you really see any of the latter three 'laughing it off'?
It's chaotic in both good and bad senses - compare the thread header with Jonathan's comment. I've never known a leadership election to attract such interest - people debate it at my poker game (and believe me, it's hard to get them off the subject of Arsenal and Formula 1), at bus stops, in my apolitical office. Actual membership (not just the £3ers) is up by about 40%, and the new people mostly appear to be enthusiasts rather than fanatics. I do agree it's going on too long - opening the ballot papers about now would be sensible, not in 3 weeks. And the MPs nattering about an early challenge will find themselves on their own - people have had enough of it for now.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
I'll be interested to see what happens, Nick, particularly in the longer term.
What impact do you think a Corbyn lead party would have on the different challenges Labour faces - Scotland, Tory South, UKIP in the North,and recovering Lib Dem, and hanging on to a decent share in Wales?
Once the result is known will internecine warfare break out? If 20% of MPs nominate someone else, Corbyn could be challenged within days of winning. If that happens it really will descend into total farce.
But the selectorate will be the same as those who put Corbyn in. Rebelling after the election is too late.
Better to wait 12 months, when many of the £3 brigade will have forgotten all about it.
12 months during which Corbyn solidifies control of the party machinery with more local democracy over MPs? Too late. There is also the union money funding 2/3 of Labour. Corbyn is for most of them "their man". Acting to remove Corbyn runs up against the union donations that can be turned off rendering the Labour party bankrupt.
The usual snide anti-LD posting from the usual suspect notwithstanding, an interesting debate.
For me, the problem turns on the point of the £3 supporter - IF you basically say, "Pay £3 and you can have a vote for the Party leader" that's fair enough - I think it's a mistake but if the line is inclusivity (of however much inclusivity £3 buys you these days) that's up to Labour.
To say, however, "pay £3 but you have to say you like Labour and are really a supporter and then you can have a vote" is just asking for trouble.
I presume that when the Conservatives have had open primaries to choose candidates, "open" means any member of the public eligible to vote in that seat can come along and choose the Conservative candidate so you don't have to be a Conservative member or supporter but you do have to live and be able to vote in that constituency so again fair enough.
If you open the process, there's a risk - if you try to run a half-open process, you invite bureaucracy and abuse to pay you a visit. The line from Labour should either have been - members only or anyone who pays the £3 can have a vote.
As is so often the case, it's either all or nothing - to try to come up with a half-baked procedural nonsense out of fear that the process may be subverted by those not well disposed toward the party is absurd. In any case, it's not the £3 supporters that got Corbyn on the ballot - it was nominations from the PLP. Had Corbyn not received sufficient nominations, he wouldn't be on the ballot and we'd probably be complaining about how boring the Labour leadership election has become.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
I think that's right. Look at Boris.
Agreed. The then political editor of the Mail (later the Standard) told me in 2005 that in 1997 they spiked a number of critical/derisive pieces about Tony as readers simply didn't want to see them. By 2005, they couldn't get enough of them. Newspapers like to go with the flow and reinforce it to appear to be in the lead.
I'd suggest the UKIP leadership bun-fight was akin to a couple squabbling in the frozen food aisle, Labour's is a whole C5 documentary series - complete with swearng, hoodies and tattoos.
Heading home from France and dreading tomorrow's ferry; judging by the forecast it's going to be a pukefest, and I don't need much to get me going - I was sick on a pedalo once (seriously).
snip
Here's one very confident prediction: 600,000 people will not participate in the next Labour leadership election. Labour will lose members, less trade unionists will take part, the sanctimonious £3ers will have moved on to the next right-on project and the Entryists' job will be done.
And when you think it can't get any worse .....One Direction splits
2015 has been properly shit. Arguably worse than the "annus horribilis" of 1992.
Depends on your viewpoint.
Labour smashed at the GE and destroyed in Scotland An athlete won gold v a drug cheat We won the Ashes.. just a few highpoints.
add this Labour leadership election.
Don't forget Farage's resignation, unresignation and the party purge of the unfaithful.
That was pure comedy.
Yes, but UKIP's was mercifully brief. Labour's election is the longest and most inept back-to-the-future scenario since the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1789-1815 ended with the Bourbons back on the throne and messing up in spectacular fashion as before.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
It took six months for John Smeaton to be awardrd the QGM after his intervention in the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack. During which, it is worth reminding people, he allegedly uttered these brilliant words before kicking a terrorist in the testicles:
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Wrong. Why do you persist in repeating this myth Philip?
As I have posted many times before on here including with links, EFTA members are involved in every part of the proposing, drafting and amending of any and all EU rules that apply to them. The only part they do not take part in is the final vote and even then they have the right to veto the result if they think it is against there national interest. These are facts. And your continual feigned ignorance of them does you no credit at all.
I insist on repeating what I believe. You believe that leaving the EU to join EFTA is a good thing, great campaign for that.
Cameron isn't seeking to leave the EU - he has said all along he is trying to reform it. The fact that someone is willing to hold open the exit door doesn't mean that he isn't trying to reform it or being weak as Indigo is implying. "Associate membership" isn't reforming the EU, it is EU-exit so its not what Cameron was ever going for.
You might well believe it, it isn't true. The facts are as stated by Mr Tyndall.
Cameron is not going to reform it, it does not want to be reformed. There will be no treaty. Ergo he will come back with nothing that cannot be done with domestic law and trying an win a referendum on that basis.
Ah now you have a Tardis fantastic. Tell me since you know the future, what are the next set of lotto numbers?
You are categorically wrong that full treaty change is the only way to make any reforms. There are a number of ways to make real reforms upto and including a Treaty. One way is to sign an agreement that comes into force and is then incorporated in the next Treaty - that has happened many times before when nations have had issues. When the Danes had concerns about the Maastricht Treaty the Edinburgh Agreement was made. That agreement is still being honoured 23 years later and one part of that agreement actually was incorporated then for all nations in the subsequent Amsterdam Treaty.
We can get our own version of Edinburgh Agreement and part of that could then be incorporated in a future Treaty. That is more than "just domestic law" even if not a full and immediate treaty change.
If they had been sensible instead of being idiotic-as-usual, they would have restricted voting to party members with a cut-off date of before the general election.
If this had just been an Andy/Liz/Yvette election
There would have been no candidate worth voting for.
What are the main reasons in your view for the terrible choice of candidates. My view is it stems from the malign influence of Brown on rivals from his generation.
Not sure. I left the Labour party immediately on Iraq invasion. Voted LD for a decade.
The party I rejoined was full of Blairites and bereft views that were common before Iraq. It had been taken over by people who thought spin could win an election from the centre.
MPs were generally all in that mould. Bland,media trained, focus group aware, and hard to get a straight answer out of.
2 of the leadership candidates are exactly representative of that mould.
Then we have Kendall who has joined the wrong party and Jezza who represents a group of about 20 MPs max who are Labour in the traditional sense.
It is a massive mess TBH maybe its those of us who took our bats home because of Iraq to blame as they are the ones who could have by now be offering a radical alternative to the Thatcherite concensus.
Just a bonus. Hilarious. And frightening for all sane Scots that so many of their countrymen believe it. Even if Swinney himself knows it is completely untrue.
From the National piece
"This is far too important an industry to be playing politics with.
Murdo Fraser and the Tories exclaiming with glee that the SNP’s pre-referendum calculations were “wildly wrong” is pretty outrageous considering this is an industry that employs 440,000 people in the UK.
It is about the Tories once again painting Scotland as too wee and too poor to be independent. Of course that looks true when the figures are stacked against us."
Glorious :-)
SNP playing politics with oil revenues and made up forecasts? Perish the thought !
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
What an incredible story. The heroic action of the US marines is the kind I'd daydream of if I were that situation, but in reality almost certainly wouldn't have the guts or the ability to do a thing
We can get our own version of Edinburgh Agreement and part of that could then be incorporated in a future Treaty. That is more than "just domestic law" even if not a full and immediate treaty change.
Ah, those unbreakable EU agreements, so that would be like the Stability and Growth Pact then ? or the Dublin Convention currently being trampled all over by France.
All these agreements are subject to challenge and being struck down by the ECJ.
Just a bonus. Hilarious. And frightening for all sane Scots that so many of their countrymen believe it. Even if Swinney himself knows it is completely untrue.
From the National piece
"This is far too important an industry to be playing politics with.
Murdo Fraser and the Tories exclaiming with glee that the SNP’s pre-referendum calculations were “wildly wrong” is pretty outrageous considering this is an industry that employs 440,000 people in the UK.
It is about the Tories once again painting Scotland as too wee and too poor to be independent. Of course that looks true when the figures are stacked against us."
Glorious :-)
SNP playing politics with oil revenues and made up forecasts? Perish the thought !
So he basically said 'Of course that looks true when the facts are stacked against us' !!
We can get our own version of Edinburgh Agreement and part of that could then be incorporated in a future Treaty. That is more than "just domestic law" even if not a full and immediate treaty change.
Ah, those unbreakable EU agreements, so that would be like the Stability and Growth Pact then ? or the Dublin Convention currently being trampled all over by France.
All these agreements are subject to challenge and being struck down by the ECJ.
Of course they are, as is every law and even Treaty is open to interpretation by a court that wants to interpret it in its own way. There is nothing short of exit that removes the ECJ as a potential issue.
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
You'd think they'd be wearing a suit or something while receiving a country's highest honor!
Mike is of course right: whatever the outcome, the damage to Labour of this farce is going to be an immense. Whilst I sympathise with Jonathan finding solace in a comparison with the LibDems, and to a lesser extent with Nick P trying to convince himself that the undoubted national interest in this comedy show is somehow a good sign for Labour, the truth is that they have made themselves a laughing-stock. They are even managing to make the Ed Miliband years look like a golden age.
Nor will it end when the result is announced. There is no good way out of this mess for Labour for at least a period of years. The idea of Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, becoming Labour's candidate for the office of Prime Minister is the stuff of political satire, not reality. Or at least it should be.
Whether he is selected or not, the party will be in chaos for years.
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Black is still black even if Cameron tells you it's white.
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Black is still black even if Cameron tells you it's white.
And black is still black even if you imagine the ECJ may at some indeterminate time in the future say it is white.
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Black is still black even if Cameron tells you it's white.
And black is still black even if you imagine the ECJ may at some indeterminate time in the future say it is white.
So your argument is we should trust Cast Iron, No-ifs-no-buts Dave, and we should trust the ECJ not to act in accordance with it's federalist remit ? Good luck selling that one.
Strategically the problem is going to be that winning the referendum next year, and introducing some ineffective window dressing on the back of it will mean immigration will continue to sky rocket, which might be a bit of an electoral liability, what with it being the top concern of over half the public. Not sure I can see how Dave is going to defend 400k immigrants a year in the 2020 election.
Mike is of course right: whatever the outcome, the damage to Labour of this farce is going to be an immense. Whilst I sympathise with Jonathan finding solace in a comparison with the LibDems, and to a lesser extent with Nick P trying to convince himself that the undoubted national interest in this comedy show is somehow a good sign for Labour, the truth is that they have made themselves a laughing-stock. They are even managing to make the Ed Miliband years look like a golden age.
Nor will it end when the result is announced. There is no good way out of this mess for Labour for at least a period of years. The idea of Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, becoming Labour's candidate for the office of Prime Minister is the stuff of political satire, not reality. Or at least it should be.
Whether he is selected or not, the party will be in chaos for years.
The potential silver lining in this for Labour is if somehow either Burnham or Cooper manage to win against the odds and then learning the lessons of this time reform the voting system to a plain and simple "one member one vote" system.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
You'd think they'd be wearing a suit or something while receiving a country's highest honor!
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Black is still black even if Cameron tells you it's white.
And black is still black even if you imagine the ECJ may at some indeterminate time in the future say it is white.
So your argument is we should trust Cast Iron, No-ifs-no-buts Dave, and we should trust the ECJ not to act in accordance with it's federalist remit ? Good luck selling that one.
Strategically the problem is going to be that winning the referendum next year, and introducing some ineffective window dressing on the back of it will mean immigration will continue to sky rocket, which might be a bit of an electoral liability, what with it being the top concern of over half the public. Not sure I can see how Dave is going to defend 400k immigrants a year in the 2020 election.
I'm saying we should judge any agreement made at face value. Though the EU-exit associate membership Cameron rightly rejected that you seem outraged at still requires open doors migration with the EU.
As for 2020, Dave will be gone. I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen.
The potential silver lining in this for Labour is if somehow either Burnham or Cooper manage to win against the odds and then learning the lessons of this time reform the voting system to a plain and simple "one member one vote" system.
That would help a bit, but things have got to the stage that, whatever the result, a large chunk of the party are going to think it was illegitimate. Even if that weren't the case, the whole thing has been so divisive that it will take years to mend the party.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
You'd think they'd be wearing a suit or something while receiving a country's highest honor!
Do you normally take your suit on holiday?
A fair point, but there are places you can hire these things. I'm sure the French government could have sorted something out for them.
The potential silver lining in this for Labour is if somehow either Burnham or Cooper manage to win against the odds and then learning the lessons of this time reform the voting system to a plain and simple "one member one vote" system.
That would help a bit, but things have got to the stage that, whatever the result, a large chunk of the party are going to think it was illegitimate. Even if that weren't the case, the whole thing has been so divisive that it will take years to mend the party.
Doesn't a new voting system have to be voted through the party conference? Which will be decked out with all the new left wing supporters?
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
You'd think they'd be wearing a suit or something while receiving a country's highest honor!
Do you normally take your suit on holiday?
I think the comment was somewhat tongue in cheek.
NBC – “Wearing polo shirts and khaki trousers, the Americans arrived at the Élysée Palace in two black SUVs flying U.S. flags along with American Ambassador Jane Hartley.”
I’d say the boys arrived in style and whatever they were wearing, made their country proud.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
You'd think they'd be wearing a suit or something while receiving a country's highest honor!
Do you normally take your suit on holiday?
Personally, I think I'd have gone out and hired one in these circumstances. But given what they did to get the Légion d'honneur, they could go in a mankini.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
You'd think they'd be wearing a suit or something while receiving a country's highest honor!
Do you normally take your suit on holiday?
Personally, I think I'd have gone out and hired one in these circumstances. But given what they did to get the Légion d'honneur, they could go in a mankini.
Yeah, not berating them, just think the bods in charge should have sorted them out with something (or perhaps they did and refused!)
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Black is still black even if Cameron tells you it's white.
And black is still black even if you imagine the ECJ may at some indeterminate time in the future say it is white.
So your argument is we should trust Cast Iron, No-ifs-no-buts Dave, and we should trust the ECJ not to act in accordance with it's federalist remit ? Good luck selling that one.
Strategically the problem is going to be that winning the referendum next year, and introducing some ineffective window dressing on the back of it will mean immigration will continue to sky rocket, which might be a bit of an electoral liability, what with it being the top concern of over half the public. Not sure I can see how Dave is going to defend 400k immigrants a year in the 2020 election.
I'm saying we should judge any agreement made at face value. Though the EU-exit associate membership Cameron rightly rejected that you seem outraged at still requires open doors migration with the EU.
As for 2020, Dave will be gone. I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen.
" I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen."
TBH, even discounting for Mr Palmer's inbuilt bias towards Labour - I too just read his posts here and think Meh, You'll Say Anything To Be On The Winning Side.
Going from Blairite via EdM via Vote For Yvette to Corbyn just snapped my credulity.
No matter how one dresses it up with diplomatic language and nicety - it doesn't wash or stack up as credible.
It's chaotic in both good and bad senses - compare the thread header with Jonathan's comment. I've never known a leadership election to attract such interest - people debate it at my poker game (and believe me, it's hard to get them off the subject of Arsenal and Formula 1), at bus stops, in my apolitical office. Actual membership (not just the £3ers) is up by about 40%, and the new people mostly appear to be enthusiasts rather than fanatics. I do agree it's going on too long - opening the ballot papers about now would be sensible, not in 3 weeks. And the MPs nattering about an early challenge will find themselves on their own - people have had enough of it for now.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
Sadly Nick, I treat this comment with the same sort of disdain that I treated your comments before the election. You're being far too optimistic.
For instance: "If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions." seems simply delusional.
I suspect Watson will bring his skills as Noncefinder General to the purge. Seems right up his street.
Part of the problem they face is they have no idea of what the aims of the Labour Party are - and so it is impossible to judge if anyone can truly be said to support them!
They are very clear.
They believe in motherhood.
And apple pie.
There is no money. They can't afford the apple pie.
If there's no money they can't afford motherhood either.
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Black is still black even if Cameron tells you it's white.
And black is still black even if you imagine the ECJ may at some indeterminate time in the future say it is white.
So your argument is we should trust Cast Iron, No-ifs-no-buts Dave, and we should trust the ECJ not to act in accordance with it's federalist remit ? Good luck selling that one.
Strategically the problem is going to be that winning the referendum next year, and introducing some ineffective window dressing on the back of it will mean immigration will continue to sky rocket, which might be a bit of an electoral liability, what with it being the top concern of over half the public. Not sure I can see how Dave is going to defend 400k immigrants a year in the 2020 election.
I'm saying we should judge any agreement made at face value. Though the EU-exit associate membership Cameron rightly rejected that you seem outraged at still requires open doors migration with the EU.
As for 2020, Dave will be gone. I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen.
" I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen."
Jeremy Corbyn said it last week
Touché. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I meant a serious and Conservative politician.
I think Boris has said it in the past too, though he's less vocal on that subject now that he wants to win a leadership race.
It's chaotic in both good and bad senses - compare the thread header with Jonathan's comment. I've never known a leadership election to attract such interest - people debate it at my poker game (and believe me, it's hard to get them off the subject of Arsenal and Formula 1), at bus stops, in my apolitical office. Actual membership (not just the £3ers) is up by about 40%, and the new people mostly appear to be enthusiasts rather than fanatics. I do agree it's going on too long - opening the ballot papers about now would be sensible, not in 3 weeks. And the MPs nattering about an early challenge will find themselves on their own - people have had enough of it for now.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
Some of it is good, some of it is rubbish, some of it is empire-building. None of it addresses causes rather than symptoms.
The concept of "sharing out refugees" between EU nations is clearly a canard. As soon as they get EU passports, they will leave Romania and Portugal and head straight for Germany, Sweden or the UK.
Gotta give props to the Froggies - no messing about. Saved passengers from a terrorist and medalled in less than a week.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
It took six months for John Smeaton to be awardrd the QGM after his intervention in the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack. During which, it is worth reminding people, he allegedly uttered these brilliant words before kicking a terrorist in the testicles:
I still don't get this. Farage resigning then unresigning was ridiculous and just emphasised how badly UKIP need him to be gone so they can move ahead. Ed Eating a bacon sandwich or falling off a stage should, in any reasonable person's eyes, have been complete non news items with absolutely no baring on his suitability or otherwise to be PM.
I am glad Ed lost but the idea that someone of even slight intelligence should have been swayed in their view of him by how he ate a sandwich is fatuous and idiotic... which is about the level of most political campaigns these days. :-(
I think Ed looking like a fool was salient merely because the public thought he was a fool. Similar to the famous videos of Kinnock falling over at the beach or George W Bush being filmed trying to walk through a locked door.
All three of those men had negative connotations already in many peoples minds and the imagery playing into those views, rather than causing them.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
I think that's right. Look at Boris.
Great example. Boris gets tramped hanging in a line and he laughs it off and so do the public. Had that happened to Ed [or Kinnock or Bush etc] he'd have been excoriated for the exact same thing.
There are a few MPs who the public and media will allow to get away with things that they would lambast other politicians for. Boris is one. Ken was another. Both have rather colourful private lives that would have ruined many other politicians.
As an aside, if I was a young lad wanting to be a politician, I would study people like them carefully to see how and why this has happened, and how I could use it in my career.
Fortunately I am not a young lad, and when I was I had other interests aside from politics.
If they had been sensible instead of being idiotic-as-usual, they would have restricted voting to party members with a cut-off date of before the general election.
If this had just been an Andy/Liz/Yvette election
There would have been no candidate worth voting for.
What are the main reasons in your view for the terrible choice of candidates. My view is it stems from the malign influence of Brown on rivals from his generation.
Not sure. I left the Labour party immediately on Iraq invasion. Voted LD for a decade.
The party I rejoined was full of Blairites and bereft views that were common before Iraq. It had been taken over by people who thought spin could win an election from the centre.
MPs were generally all in that mould. Bland,media trained, focus group aware, and hard to get a straight answer out of.
2 of the leadership candidates are exactly representative of that mould.
Then we have Kendall who has joined the wrong party and Jezza who represents a group of about 20 MPs max who are Labour in the traditional sense.
It is a massive mess TBH maybe its those of us who took our bats home because of Iraq to blame as they are the ones who could have by now be offering a radical alternative to the Thatcherite concensus.
If they had been sensible instead of being idiotic-as-usual, they would have restricted voting to party members with a cut-off date of before the general election.
If this had just been an Andy/Liz/Yvette election
There would have been no candidate worth voting for.
What are the main reasons in your view for the terrible choice of candidates. My view is it stems from the malign influence of Brown on rivals from his generation.
Absolutely agreed. The TB-GB war wiped out a whole generation of Labour talent.
I like the EU because I see them as a civilizing influence particularly when we have a Tory government. It's nice to know that at least a part of our governance gives a shit about the desperate plight of the African refugees even if our government in Westminster couldn't care less.
A Roger classic!
All the main ingredients are there . . . the sneer at the Tories, the contempt for democracy when the result doesn't suit Roger, and finally the bit of virtue signalling at the end.
One issue that really hasn't had the attention that I think it deserves is, what part of anyone's perception of a democratic process is being able to buy a vote (just a vote). Obviously Ed's but who else?
You are our follicular challenged Liberal OGH and I claim your vintage sandals for a charity auction in aid of the "John O" Spontaneous Railway Travel Scheme.
We can get our own version of Edinburgh Agreement and part of that could then be incorporated in a future Treaty. That is more than "just domestic law" even if not a full and immediate treaty change.
Ah, those unbreakable EU agreements, so that would be like the Stability and Growth Pact then ? or the Dublin Convention currently being trampled all over by France.
All these agreements are subject to challenge and being struck down by the ECJ.
Of course they are, as is every law and even Treaty is open to interpretation by a court that wants to interpret it in its own way. There is nothing short of exit that removes the ECJ as a potential issue.
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Not a chance. That is what the EU is relying on. Once the referendum is over the EU and ECJ will do exactly what they have done in the past and carry on exactly as they planned. And there will be lots of Eurofanatic voices doing exactly what they are doing now and saying that we had the referendum and the people knew what they were voting for.
The party I rejoined was full of Blairites and bereft views that were common before Iraq. It had been taken over by people who thought spin could win an election from the centre.
The thing is, spin did indeed win three elections from the centre.
Labour is now being taking over by nutters who think they can win an election from the far left. And sanguine as Mr Palmer claims to be about the cloud of zen surrounding Jeremy, those around him are going to sound like rabid loons...
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Black is still black even if Cameron tells you it's white.
And black is still black even if you imagine the ECJ may at some indeterminate time in the future say it is white.
So your argument is we should trust Cast Iron, No-ifs-no-buts Dave, and we should trust the ECJ not to act in accordance with it's federalist remit ? Good luck selling that one.
Strategically the problem is going to be that winning the referendum next year, and introducing some ineffective window dressing on the back of it will mean immigration will continue to sky rocket, which might be a bit of an electoral liability, what with it being the top concern of over half the public. Not sure I can see how Dave is going to defend 400k immigrants a year in the 2020 election.
I'm saying we should judge any agreement made at face value. Though the EU-exit associate membership Cameron rightly rejected that you seem outraged at still requires open doors migration with the EU.
As for 2020, Dave will be gone. I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen.
" I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen."
Jeremy Corbyn said it last week
Touché. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I meant a serious and Conservative politician.
I think Boris has said it in the past too, though he's less vocal on that subject now that he wants to win a leadership race.
Stopped clock. A broken clock isn't necessarily right twice a day
One issue that really hasn't had the attention that I think it deserves is, what part of anyone's perception of a democratic process is being able to buy a vote (just a vote). Obviously Ed's but who else?
John Erle-Drax, Conservative MP for the 'pocket borough' of Wareham in the 1860s. Hearken unto his famous election address, not in any way cheapened by a sense of humour or irony, in 1874 after voting had been made secret for the first time:
"I understand that some evil-disposed person has been circulating a report that I wish my tenants, and other persons dependent upon me, to vote according to their conscience. This is a dastardly lie, calculated to injure me. I have no wish of the sort. I wish, and intend, that these people should vote for me."
For some reason, this impassioned appeal was not successful and the Liberal challenger took the seat. (EDIT - although I now see it wasn't until 1880 that he actually lost the seat. Ruins the punchline. Still a classic though.)
Those European countries who think the full membership is not their cup of tea, can apply for the second type: “associate membership.” ..l.
In other words EFTA membership, whereby we have to implement the rules of the EU but get no say in writing them.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Nonsense. We would only implement the EU rules when we are exporting to the EU, we would not have to implement them for the domestic market, or any non-EU market we export to. In the EU our businesses are hobbled by having to implement EU regulations even for our domestic market and for all our export markets whether they want them or not. If we export to Japan for example we have to follow the Japanese regulations AND the EU regulations. Do we stop exporting to Japan because we have no say over their product regulations, of course we don't.
Yes that is the case if we exit the EU of course it is. Cameron was elected on a pledge to try and stay in a reformed EU, not simply exit it so an offer of exit is simply off topic and irrelevant to that goal.
Which bit of "there will be no treaty" didn't you hear, with no treaty there is no reform. It's smoke and mirrors bullshit. With no treaty everything is at the mercy of the interpretation of the ECJ whose very remit is federalist.
Its futile debating you, in every case you would believe Cameron if he told you white was black. And you are a pot calling a kettle black. We leave the EU ? There will be no difference to staying in. None that any normal person can see to their daily lives. So go ahead leave - see if I care. The only possibility is a downside - there are no upsides. Leaving and agreeing some deal which leaves us in the single market will make no practical difference at all. And were we to leave, any future EU 'free trade agreement' would mean joining the single market and free movement of EU labour. The downsides are all to to with uncertainty, fake guarantees that it will be 'better', a pretence that overseas investors would carry on as normal if we did for some reason refuse all EU ties, that the whole exercise would not give them cold feet anyway. We leave, we join the EEA, no change. So what? The 'what' is all down to your thick stupid Corbyn-like bigotry.
“Could I just add to that, that I think the public inquiry under the Public Inquiries Act is the best course of action to take, because normally one would have said that the appropriate Select Committee in Parliament would undertake this inquiry, but I think the issues go far wider than parliamentary procedure, they go to the heart of what’s going on in the Home Office and the way the government makes decisions, so I strongly support that and I will be writing to the Home Secretary accordingly.”
Mike is of course right: whatever the outcome, the damage to Labour of this farce is going to be an immense. Whilst I sympathise with Jonathan finding solace in a comparison with the LibDems, and to a lesser extent with Nick P trying to convince himself that the undoubted national interest in this comedy show is somehow a good sign for Labour, the truth is that they have made themselves a laughing-stock. They are even managing to make the Ed Miliband years look like a golden age.
Nor will it end when the result is announced. There is no good way out of this mess for Labour for at least a period of years. The idea of Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, becoming Labour's candidate for the office of Prime Minister is the stuff of political satire, not reality. Or at least it should be.
Whether he is selected or not, the party will be in chaos for years.
The potential silver lining in this for Labour is if somehow either Burnham or Cooper manage to win against the odds and then learning the lessons of this time reform the voting system to a plain and simple "one member one vote" system.
And against which, if Corbyn wins, that system is almost certain to be retained both for the philosophical reasons it was introduced and because of the hard politics that it'll be more likely to keep Corbyn in place, give his activist supporters more power and deliver a successor out of the same mould.
One issue that really hasn't had the attention that I think it deserves is, what part of anyone's perception of a democratic process is being able to buy a vote (just a vote). Obviously Ed's but who else?
John Erle-Drax, Conservative MP for the 'pocket borough' of Wareham in the 1860s. Hearken unto his famous election address, not in any way cheapened by a sense of humour or irony, in 1874 after voting had been made secret for the first time:
"I understand that some evil-disposed person has been circulating a report that I wish my tenants, and other persons dependent upon me, to vote according to their conscience. This is a dastardly lie, calculated to injure me. I have no wish of the sort. I wish, and intend, that these people should vote for me."
For some reason, this impassioned appeal was not successful and the Liberal challenger took the seat.
A politician who said what he meant, no mealy mouthed political correctness for him. I wonder what happened to his tenants and workers.
If they had been sensible instead of being idiotic-as-usual, they would have restricted voting to party members with a cut-off date of before the general election.
If this had just been an Andy/Liz/Yvette election
There would have been no candidate worth voting for.
What are the main reasons in your view for the terrible choice of candidates. My view is it stems from the malign influence of Brown on rivals from his generation.
Absolutely agreed. The TB-GB war wiped out a whole generation of Labour talent.
Strangely, they stand a good chance of electing one of the men most guilty for that disastrous infighting as deputy leader.
Are Labour deliberately trying to destroy themselves?
And you are a pot calling a kettle black. We leave the EU ? There will be no difference to staying in. None that any normal person can see to their daily lives. So go ahead leave - see if I care. The only possibility is a downside - there are no upsides. Leaving and agreeing some deal which leaves us in the single market will make no practical difference at all. And were we to leave, any future EU 'free trade agreement' would mean joining the single market and free movement of EU labour. The downsides are all to to with uncertainty, fake guarantees that it will be 'better', a pretence that overseas investors would carry on as normal if we did for some reason refuse all EU ties, that the whole exercise would not give them cold feet anyway. We leave, we join the EEA, no change. So what? The 'what' is all down to your thick stupid Corbyn-like bigotry.
Wrong again on every important point. You would think with your record of never having knowingly been right about anything to do with the EU that you would give up and crawl away but you still keep posting this garbage.
“Could I just add to that, that I think the public inquiry under the Public Inquiries Act is the best course of action to take, because normally one would have said that the appropriate Select Committee in Parliament would undertake this inquiry, but I think the issues go far wider than parliamentary procedure, they go to the heart of what’s going on in the Home Office and the way the government makes decisions, so I strongly support that and I will be writing to the Home Secretary accordingly.”
I just don't know what Labour are thinking of, if they elect such a man as their leader. Are they thinking?
I just don't know what Labour are thinking of, if they elect such a man as their leader. Are they thinking?
Indeed - and what are the unions thinking? It's not just rent-a-mob three quidders who are voting for Corbyn, it's affiliates recruited by the unions as well ordinary Labour members. They are, to coin a phrase, all in it together.
Can someone help me here - did Comrade Corbyn vote against the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985?
I'm unfamiliar with this subject as a whole.
Anglo-Irish Agreement 1985.
Speaking in the House of Commons Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, spoke to oppose the treaty saying that it ran counter to the goal of a United Ireland:[28]
JC: “ Does the hon. Gentleman accept that some of us oppose the agreement for reasons other than those that he has given? We believe that the agreement strengthens rather than weakens the border between the six and the 26 counties, and those of us who wish to see a United Ireland oppose the agreement for that reason.”
He then went on to express concerns that the agreement threatened Irish neutrality and risked forcing the Republic of Ireland to accept the British presence in Northern Ireland. The former cabinet minister Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone, then leader of the Greater London Council, also opposed the agreement because they believed Britain should withdraw from Northern Ireland.
If they had been sensible instead of being idiotic-as-usual, they would have restricted voting to party members with a cut-off date of before the general election.
If this had just been an Andy/Liz/Yvette election
There would have been no candidate worth voting for.
What are the main reasons in your view for the terrible choice of candidates. My view is it stems from the malign influence of Brown on rivals from his generation.
Absolutely agreed. The TB-GB war wiped out a whole generation of Labour talent.
Strangely, they stand a good chance of electing one of the men most guilty for that disastrous infighting as deputy leader.
Are Labour deliberately trying to destroy themselves?
The only reasonable answer to that question is Yes.
Comments
Also it's strange that the "In" people on here are trying to shape Immigration as a subject "Out" should avoid "banging on about" when it has never been more salient according to IPSOS-MORI. That's what I think the "man in the street" cares about, Richard Nabavi seems to agree its the key battleground, other partisans use it as proxy for Farage hate
I suspect when Comrade Corbyn introduces compulsory singing of the Red Flad at school assemblies and renames Buckingham Palace Mandela House some of the right wing EU haters will yearn for a bit of Angela Merkel's influence.
Some of the other comments are projected wish-fulfilment. A mass purge of members either way isn't going to happen. If Corbyn loses by a tiny margin there will be a lot of grumbling about the vetting, but otherwise members will shrug it off. If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions. Apart from a few hotheads the PLP will largely simply wait and see - if things seem to go well for the party, mostly they'll say fine, this is better than we thought; if they seem to go badly then a challenge will inevitably follow next year. The tricky thing will be if they go sort of OK - e.g. we win London and make a bit of progress in Scotland but don't do well in the locals.
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
For instance: "If Corbyn wins, he'll surprise the wider public by mildness and inclusiveness in his early decisions." seems simply delusional.
As I have posted many times before on here including with links, EFTA members are involved in every part of the proposing, drafting and amending of any and all EU rules that apply to them. The only part they do not take part in is the final vote and even then they have the right to veto the result if they think it is against there national interest. These are facts. And your continual feigned ignorance of them does you no credit at all.
http://www.libdemvoice.org/when-sal-brinton-pioneered-considerate-behaviour-contracts-for-builders-47235.html
All three of those men had negative connotations already in many peoples minds and the imagery playing into those views, rather than causing them.
Someone like Teflon Tony pre-Iraq could have done the exact same thing as any of them, dusted himself off and laughed it off and the public would have laughed with him rather than at him. Because that's what they were minded to do.
The credibility of a lot of people is on the line here. If Cameron comes back with major opt-outs, or big reforms like QMV reform/a red card system, the harsher eurosceptics will look silly if they pretend nothing has changed. Meanwhile, if Cameron comes back with stuff that is just symbolic or mainly a matter of changing domestic law, then the Cameron loyalists will look stupid if they try to pretend there's been real reform. And the media and journalists will look very foolish if they cover it in a "he said, she said" format, rather than actually getting into the detail of what has been changed versus what has been wanted from various groups over the years (CAP, Fisheries, immigration limits, voting reform, budget caps, etc).
We all know that this forum will be the place where the spinning will be off the charts. It is very easy to see who is credible with their reactions: those of us who are willing to say what would be good enough to vote in before the renegotiation is announced. For me, it's the following:
- Voting reform to stop the Eurozone bloc vote ruling the UK: either a red card system, a double QMV system, or restoring primacy of UK law
- Limits on EU immigration: either a migration cap or a ban on non-workers & criminals
- Access to non-EU markets: either the completion of US & Canada trade deals, or the ability for us to do it ourselves if the EU keeps dragging its feet
- Commitment of all of the above in a legally binding document or treaty: we can't have another repeat of when Blair was promised CAP reform that never happened
I would like more, but that, or something close to it, is my minimum. As you can see, I'm neither an extreme anti-European who will never be happy, nor am I an ultraloyalist that will be happy with a few mild changes.
Who else is willing to spell out what they would be happy with?
Why on earth would Cameron be wanting that?
Nonsense. We would only implement the EU rules when we are exporting to the EU, we would not have to implement them for the domestic market, or any non-EU market we export to. In the EU our businesses are hobbled by having to implement EU regulations even for our domestic market and for all our export markets whether they want them or not. If we export to Japan for example we have to follow the Japanese regulations AND the EU regulations. Do we stop exporting to Japan because we have no say over their product regulations, of course we don't.
You'd be better off talking about the referendum's arguments instead.
The only good thing about this for the outers is that the iners are onlt marginally less organised.
Cameron isn't seeking to leave the EU - he has said all along he is trying to reform it. The fact that someone is willing to hold open the exit door doesn't mean that he isn't trying to reform it or being weak as Indigo is implying. "Associate membership" isn't reforming the EU, it is EU-exit so its not what Cameron was ever going for.
Electing Corbyn to move the party on from the Blair years is the political equivalent of taking a lethal dose of strychnine to cure a stiff knee. If you doubt that, look at the reaction of every swing voter and a large chunk of avowed Labour supporters on these threads.
Yes that is the case if we exit the EU of course it is. Cameron was elected on a pledge to try and stay in a reformed EU, not simply exit it so an offer of exit is simply off topic and irrelevant to that goal.
Cameron is not going to reform it, it does not want to be reformed. There will be no treaty. Ergo he will come back with nothing that cannot be done with domestic law and trying an win a referendum on that basis.
Here they'd be waiting for a committee to discuss it in several months time, wailing about the human rights of the terrorist and the police wondering if they ought to nick the heroes for assault and false imprisonment.
Which bit of "there will be no treaty" didn't you hear, with no treaty there is no reform. It's smoke and mirrors bullshit. With no treaty everything is at the mercy of the interpretation of the ECJ whose very remit is federalist.
Its futile debating you, in every case you would believe Cameron if he told you white was black.
As an aside, if I was a young lad wanting to be a politician, I would study people like them carefully to see how and why this has happened, and how I could use it in my career.
Fortunately I am not a young lad, and when I was I had other interests aside from politics.
Maybe, just maybe, Bush.
What impact do you think a Corbyn lead party would have on the different challenges Labour faces - Scotland, Tory South, UKIP in the North,and recovering Lib Dem, and hanging on to a decent share in Wales?
There is also the union money funding 2/3 of Labour. Corbyn is for most of them "their man". Acting to remove Corbyn runs up against the union donations that can be turned off rendering the Labour party bankrupt.
The usual snide anti-LD posting from the usual suspect notwithstanding, an interesting debate.
For me, the problem turns on the point of the £3 supporter - IF you basically say, "Pay £3 and you can have a vote for the Party leader" that's fair enough - I think it's a mistake but if the line is inclusivity (of however much inclusivity £3 buys you these days) that's up to Labour.
To say, however, "pay £3 but you have to say you like Labour and are really a supporter and then you can have a vote" is just asking for trouble.
I presume that when the Conservatives have had open primaries to choose candidates, "open" means any member of the public eligible to vote in that seat can come along and choose the Conservative candidate so you don't have to be a Conservative member or supporter but you do have to live and be able to vote in that constituency so again fair enough.
If you open the process, there's a risk - if you try to run a half-open process, you invite bureaucracy and abuse to pay you a visit. The line from Labour should either have been - members only or anyone who pays the £3 can have a vote.
As is so often the case, it's either all or nothing - to try to come up with a half-baked procedural nonsense out of fear that the process may be subverted by those not well disposed toward the party is absurd. In any case, it's not the £3 supporters that got Corbyn on the ballot - it was nominations from the PLP. Had Corbyn not received sufficient nominations, he wouldn't be on the ballot and we'd probably be complaining about how boring the Labour leadership election has become.
"fuckin' mon, then"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smeaton_(born_1976)
Seems a reasonable timespan.
You are categorically wrong that full treaty change is the only way to make any reforms. There are a number of ways to make real reforms upto and including a Treaty. One way is to sign an agreement that comes into force and is then incorporated in the next Treaty - that has happened many times before when nations have had issues. When the Danes had concerns about the Maastricht Treaty the Edinburgh Agreement was made. That agreement is still being honoured 23 years later and one part of that agreement actually was incorporated then for all nations in the subsequent Amsterdam Treaty.
We can get our own version of Edinburgh Agreement and part of that could then be incorporated in a future Treaty. That is more than "just domestic law" even if not a full and immediate treaty change.
The party I rejoined was full of Blairites and bereft views that were common before Iraq. It had been taken over by people who thought spin could win an election from the centre.
MPs were generally all in that mould. Bland,media trained, focus group aware, and hard to get a straight answer out of.
2 of the leadership candidates are exactly representative of that mould.
Then we have Kendall who has joined the wrong party and Jezza who represents a group of about 20 MPs max who are Labour in the traditional sense.
It is a massive mess TBH maybe its those of us who took our bats home because of Iraq to blame as they are the ones who could have by now be offering a radical alternative to the Thatcherite concensus.
Act in haste, repent at leisure. An idiom Andy Burnham is only now beginning to comprehend.
"This is far too important an industry to be playing politics with.
Murdo Fraser and the Tories exclaiming with glee that the SNP’s pre-referendum calculations were “wildly wrong” is pretty outrageous considering this is an industry that employs 440,000 people in the UK.
It is about the Tories once again painting Scotland as too wee and too poor to be independent. Of course that looks true when the figures are stacked against us."
Glorious :-)
SNP playing politics with oil revenues and made up forecasts? Perish the thought !
All these agreements are subject to challenge and being struck down by the ECJ.
But unless your Tardis shows that the ECJ will reverse any agreement unless or until it does, the agreement stands. Furthermore if the ECJ does reverse the agreement then we could always then have another referendum.
Nor will it end when the result is announced. There is no good way out of this mess for Labour for at least a period of years. The idea of Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, becoming Labour's candidate for the office of Prime Minister is the stuff of political satire, not reality. Or at least it should be.
Whether he is selected or not, the party will be in chaos for years.
Strategically the problem is going to be that winning the referendum next year, and introducing some ineffective window dressing on the back of it will mean immigration will continue to sky rocket, which might be a bit of an electoral liability, what with it being the top concern of over half the public. Not sure I can see how Dave is going to defend 400k immigrants a year in the 2020 election.
As for 2020, Dave will be gone. I'd love a politician to say the truth - migration is a good thing and we should be proud of the fact people choose to live in our country. But that really is a pipe dream that is never going to happen.
NBC – “Wearing polo shirts and khaki trousers, the Americans arrived at the Élysée Palace in two black SUVs flying U.S. flags along with American Ambassador Jane Hartley.”
I’d say the boys arrived in style and whatever they were wearing, made their country proud.
Jeremy Corbyn said it last week
Going from Blairite via EdM via Vote For Yvette to Corbyn just snapped my credulity.
No matter how one dresses it up with diplomatic language and nicety - it doesn't wash or stack up as credible.
I think Boris has said it in the past too, though he's less vocal on that subject now that he wants to win a leadership race.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/a-call-for-collective-courage/
Some of it is good, some of it is rubbish, some of it is empire-building. None of it addresses causes rather than symptoms.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/columnists/13620997.How_to_lose_friends_and_alienate_people__the_damaged_credibility_of_the_Labour_party/
https://twitter.com/PlatoSays/status/635062618265251840
I'm disappointed.
I prefer a more simple and direct, 'Stitch that!'
All the main ingredients are there . . . the sneer at the Tories, the contempt for democracy when the result doesn't suit Roger, and finally the bit of virtue signalling at the end.
Brilliant!
You are our follicular challenged Liberal OGH and I claim your vintage sandals for a charity auction in aid of the "John O" Spontaneous Railway Travel Scheme.
Labour is now being taking over by nutters who think they can win an election from the far left. And sanguine as Mr Palmer claims to be about the cloud of zen surrounding Jeremy, those around him are going to sound like rabid loons...
Its futile debating you, in every case you would believe Cameron if he told you white was black.
And you are a pot calling a kettle black.
We leave the EU ? There will be no difference to staying in. None that any normal person can see to their daily lives.
So go ahead leave - see if I care.
The only possibility is a downside - there are no upsides. Leaving and agreeing some deal which leaves us in the single market will make no practical difference at all. And were we to leave, any future EU 'free trade agreement' would mean joining the single market and free movement of EU labour.
The downsides are all to to with uncertainty, fake guarantees that it will be 'better', a pretence that overseas investors would carry on as normal if we did for some reason refuse all EU ties, that the whole exercise would not give them cold feet anyway.
We leave, we join the EEA, no change. So what?
The 'what' is all down to your thick stupid Corbyn-like bigotry.
Jews in the Tory Party!
In response to Raed Salah lawyer...
A politician who said what he meant, no mealy mouthed political correctness for him.
I wonder what happened to his tenants and workers.
Are Labour deliberately trying to destroy themselves?
I'm unfamiliar with this subject as a whole.
Speaking in the House of Commons Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, spoke to oppose the treaty saying that it ran counter to the goal of a United Ireland:[28]
JC: “ Does the hon. Gentleman accept that some of us oppose the agreement for reasons other than those that he has given? We believe that the agreement strengthens rather than weakens the border between the six and the 26 counties, and those of us who wish to see a United Ireland oppose the agreement for that reason.”
He then went on to express concerns that the agreement threatened Irish neutrality and risked forcing the Republic of Ireland to accept the British presence in Northern Ireland. The former cabinet minister Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone, then leader of the Greater London Council, also opposed the agreement because they believed Britain should withdraw from Northern Ireland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Irish_Agreement
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/nov/27/anglo-irish-agreement
Must have been one of the few times he voted with Iain Paisley!