Politics Thread (encompassing Brexit) - 21 June 2017 onwards

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, bovril said:

Pie in the sky. Those divisions were always there. If anything at least Brexit has allowed us to see them. 

 

I work in a city during the week and go back to the shire at the weekend. People are so far apart it's unbelievable. Both sides completely mistrust and honestly seem to despise the other. 

 

 

Not only were those divisions already there and Brexit allowed a clearer view, events around the world have exposed similar division and polarisation in a multitude of places that have global influence. Some of that division is even being fostered by various actors for what they believe to be their own benefit.

 

Not a good thing in the long run.

[Buce]

29 minutes ago, bovril said:

Sorry, but you can't complain that leavers are stereotyped as knuckle dragging racists (which I agree is unfair) but then find videos on social media to support your own stereotyping. It's hypocritical. We all need to get over it. 

The whole thing is a mess. The two camps are getting further and further apart. Remain think leave voters are all little-England, xenophobic, football fan, Mail-reading tossers in the provinces and leave think remain voters are elitist, quinoa-eating, Guardian reading cry-baby snowflakes. Both sides seem more interested in punishing the other than actually making any progress.

Meanwhile there is the very real chance that the country could break up and the crazies come back in Northern Ireland. We have people using terminology like "enemies of the people" and "quislings" as if it's 1920s Russia, police bracing themselves for an increase in hate crime and the government stockpiling food. And for what? "Taking back control"? What a fvck up. Completely pissed off about the whole thing. 

5

 

I hate to be pedantic but 'Quisling' wasn't coined as a term until 1940, so wouldn't have been used in 1920s Russia.

 

I'll get mi coat.

[bovril]

2 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

I hate to be pedantic but 'Quisling' wasn't coined as a term until 1940, so wouldn't have been used in 1920s Russia.

 

I'll get mi coat.

well **** you for ruining my rant  

(and thanks for the correction)

Edited 21 October 2018 by bovril

[Guest MattP]

Quisling is a lovely word, most with a Q are but this one sounds especially great.

[Buce]

16 minutes ago, MattP said:

Quisling is a lovely word, most with a Q are but this one sounds especially great.

 

An interesting etymology, too. 

[Webbo]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

Pie in the sky. Those divisions were always there. If anything at least Brexit has allowed us to see them. 

 

I work in a city during the week and go back to the shires at the weekend. People are so far apart it's unbelievable. Both sides completely mistrust and honestly seem to despise the other. It doesn't even seem to be about the EU anymore, just about punishing those whom people believe have wronged them. 

 

I definitely agree with the last sentence.

[lifted*fox]

[Wymsey]

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/pm-drinking-in-last-chance-saloon-mps-say-11531337

[lifted*fox]

5 minutes ago, Wymeswold fox said:

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/pm-drinking-in-last-chance-saloon-mps-say-11531337

 

Quote

But Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said "now is the time to play for the team", adding: "We are at the end stage of the negotiation.

"It is understandable that there are jitters on all sides of this debate.

"We need to hold our nerve. The end is in sight in terms of a good deal, the prize we want."

 

lol, just because you keep saying it doesn't mean it's true. what ****ing planet is this guy on? 

 

the EU: 'not happening m8, your plan is shit'

 

raab: 'but the prize is just within our reach!'

 

fvcking pathetic. 

[davieG]

4 minutes ago, lifted*fox said:

 

 

lol, just because you keep saying it doesn't mean it's true. what ****ing planet is this guy on? 

 

the EU: 'not happening m8, your plan is shit'

 

raab: 'but the prize is just within our reach!'

 

fvcking pathetic. 

Whether he’s being realistic or not have you not heard of brinkmanship with regards to negotiating.

 

Maybe the EU are the pathetic ones, who knows? No one but those very close to the negotiators.

 

One thing you can say about the whole brexit situation there’s a whole lot of pie in the sky speculating about what will or won’t happen.

 

 

[lifted*fox]

I think it's quite clear that our government are the delusional ones who've been going back to the EU with the same requests for the last two years whilst they've repeatedly told us we can't pick and choose what we get as a non-member.

 

It's very simple - EU member you get the EU benefits. Non-EU member, you don't; and you can't have a bit of free trade and no movement, etc. which is exactly the brick wall that dickheads like Raab have been banging their head against from the off. 

 

There's a bit of pie in the sky but this ain't it. It's clear as day to see. 

 

Edited 21 October 2018 by lifted*fox

[Strokes]

6 minutes ago, lifted*fox said:

I think it's quite clear that our government are the delusional ones who've been going back to the EU with the same requests for the last two years whilst they've repeatedly told us we can't pick and choose what we get as a non-member.

 

It's very simple - EU member you get the EU benefits. Non-EU member, you don't; and you can't have a bit of free trade and no movement, etc. which is exactly the brick wall that dickheads like Raab have been banging their head against from the off. 

 

There's a bit of pie in the sky but this ain't it. It's clear as day to see. 

 

You can get exceptions and you can pick and choose. There are examples of such, it’s just a question of whether we carry enough weight and whether the will is there to do it.

The EU is negotiating too you know, they aren’t going to tell us we can achieve what they don’t want us to achieve, are they?

Edited 21 October 2018 by Strokes

[purpleronnie]

Britain fell for a neoliberal con trick – even the IMF says so

 

Columnists usually proffer answers, but today I want to ask a question, a big one. What price is paid when a promise is broken? Because for much of my life, and probably yours, the political class has made this pledge: that the best way to run an economy is to hack back the public realm as far as possible and let the private sector run free. That way, services operate better, businesses get the resources they need, and our national finances are healthier.

It’s why your tax credits keep dropping, and your mum has to wait half a year to see a hospital consultant – because David Cameron slashed public spending, to stop it “crowding out” private money. It’s why water bills are so high and train services can never be counted on – because both industries have been privatised.

From the debacle of universal credit to the forced conversion of state schools into corporate-run academies, the ideology of the small state – defined by no less a body than the International Monetary Fund as neoliberalism – is all pervasive. It decides how much money you have left at the end of the week and what kind of future your children will enjoy, and it explains why your elderly relatives can’t get a decent carer.

I don’t wish to write about the everyday failings of neoliberalism – that piece would be filed before you could say “east coast mainline”. Instead, I want to address the most stubborn belief of all: that running a small state is the soundest financial arrangement for governments and voters alike. Because 40 years on from the Thatcher revolution, more and more evidence is coming in to the contrary.

 

 

Download the Microsoft News app for your Android or iPhone device and get news & live updates on the go.

 

Let’s start with the IMF itself. Last week it published a report that barely got a mention from the BBC or in Westminster, yet helps reframe the entire debate over austerity. The fund totted up both the public debt and the publicly owned assets of 31 countries, from the US to Australia, Finland to France, and found that the UK had among the weakest public finances of the lot. With less than £3 trillion of assets against £5tn in pensions and other liabilities, the UK is more than £2tn in the red. Of all the other countries examined by researchers, including the Gambia and Kenya, only Portugal’s finances look worse over the long run. So much for fixing the roof.

© Getty ‘British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City.’

Almost as startling are the IMF’s reasons for why Britain is in such a state: one way or another they all come back to neoliberalism. Thatcher loosed finance from its shackles and used our North Sea oil money to pay for swingeing tax cuts. The result is an overfinancialised economy and a government that is £1tn worse off since the banking crash. Norway has similar North Sea wealth and a far smaller population, but also a sovereign wealth fund. Its net worth has soared over the past decade.

The other big reason for the UK’s financial precarity is its privatisation programme, described by the IMF as no less than a “fiscal illusion”. British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, “increase revenues and lower deficits but also reduce the government’s asset holdings”.

Related: UK public finances worse than Gambia, Uganda and Kenya

© Getty/Shutterstock

Throughout the austerity decade, ministers and economists have pushed for spending cuts by pointing to the size of the government’s annual overdraft, or budget deficit. Yet there are two sides to a balance sheet, as all accountants know and this IMF work recognises. The same goes for our public realm: if Labour’s John McDonnell gets into No 11 and renationalises the railways, that would cost tens of billions – but it would also leave the country with assets worth tens of billions that provided a regular income.

Instead, what this IMF research shows is that the Westminster classes have been asset-stripping Britain for decades – and storing up financial trouble for future generations.

Privatisation and austerity have not only weakened the country’s financial position – they have also handed unearned wealth to a select few. Just look at a new report from the University of Greenwich finding that water companies could have funded all their day-to-day running and their long-term investments out of the bills paid by customers. Instead of which, managers have lumbered the firms with £51bn of debt to pay for shareholders’ dividends. Those borrowed billions, and the millions in interest, will be paid by you and me in our water bills. We might as well stuff the cash directly into the pockets of shareholders.

Related: Universal credit 'driving women into sex work'

Instead of competitively run utilities, record investment by the private sector and sounder public finances, we have natural monopolies handed over to the wealthy, banks that can dump their liabilities on the public when things get tough, and an outsourcing industry that feasts upon the carcass of the public sector. As if all this weren’t enough, neoliberal voices complain that we need to cut taxes and red tape, and further starve our public services.

This is a genuine scandal, but it requires us to recognise what neoliberalism promised and what it has failed to deliver. Some of the loudest critics of the ideology have completely misidentified it. Academics will daub the term “neoliberal” on any passing phenomenon. Fitbits are apparently neoliberal, as is Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream and Kanye West. Pundits will say that neoliberalism is about markets and choice – tell that to any commuter wedged on a Southern rail train. And centrist politicians claim that the great failing of neoliberalism is its carelessness about identity and place, which is akin to complaining that the boy on a moped who snatched your smartphone is going too fast.

Let us get it straight. Neoliberalism has ripped you off and robbed you blind. The evidence of that is mounting up – in your bills, in your services and in the finances of your country.

 

 

Right wingers line up.

[Webbo]

26 minutes ago, purpleronnie said:

Britain fell for a neoliberal con trick – even the IMF says so

 

Columnists usually proffer answers, but today I want to ask a question, a big one. What price is paid when a promise is broken? Because for much of my life, and probably yours, the political class has made this pledge: that the best way to run an economy is to hack back the public realm as far as possible and let the private sector run free. That way, services operate better, businesses get the resources they need, and our national finances are healthier.

It’s why your tax credits keep dropping, and your mum has to wait half a year to see a hospital consultant – because David Cameron slashed public spending, to stop it “crowding out” private money. It’s why water bills are so high and train services can never be counted on – because both industries have been privatised.

From the debacle of universal credit to the forced conversion of state schools into corporate-run academies, the ideology of the small state – defined by no less a body than the International Monetary Fund as neoliberalism – is all pervasive. It decides how much money you have left at the end of the week and what kind of future your children will enjoy, and it explains why your elderly relatives can’t get a decent carer.

I don’t wish to write about the everyday failings of neoliberalism – that piece would be filed before you could say “east coast mainline”. Instead, I want to address the most stubborn belief of all: that running a small state is the soundest financial arrangement for governments and voters alike. Because 40 years on from the Thatcher revolution, more and more evidence is coming in to the contrary.

 

 

Download the Microsoft News app for your Android or iPhone device and get news & live updates on the go.

 

Let’s start with the IMF itself. Last week it published a report that barely got a mention from the BBC or in Westminster, yet helps reframe the entire debate over austerity. The fund totted up both the public debt and the publicly owned assets of 31 countries, from the US to Australia, Finland to France, and found that the UK had among the weakest public finances of the lot. With less than £3 trillion of assets against £5tn in pensions and other liabilities, the UK is more than £2tn in the red. Of all the other countries examined by researchers, including the Gambia and Kenya, only Portugal’s finances look worse over the long run. So much for fixing the roof.

© Getty ‘British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City.’

Almost as startling are the IMF’s reasons for why Britain is in such a state: one way or another they all come back to neoliberalism. Thatcher loosed finance from its shackles and used our North Sea oil money to pay for swingeing tax cuts. The result is an overfinancialised economy and a government that is £1tn worse off since the banking crash. Norway has similar North Sea wealth and a far smaller population, but also a sovereign wealth fund. Its net worth has soared over the past decade.

The other big reason for the UK’s financial precarity is its privatisation programme, described by the IMF as no less than a “fiscal illusion”. British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, “increase revenues and lower deficits but also reduce the government’s asset holdings”.

Related: UK public finances worse than Gambia, Uganda and Kenya

© Getty/Shutterstock

Throughout the austerity decade, ministers and economists have pushed for spending cuts by pointing to the size of the government’s annual overdraft, or budget deficit. Yet there are two sides to a balance sheet, as all accountants know and this IMF work recognises. The same goes for our public realm: if Labour’s John McDonnell gets into No 11 and renationalises the railways, that would cost tens of billions – but it would also leave the country with assets worth tens of billions that provided a regular income.

Instead, what this IMF research shows is that the Westminster classes have been asset-stripping Britain for decades – and storing up financial trouble for future generations.

Privatisation and austerity have not only weakened the country’s financial position – they have also handed unearned wealth to a select few. Just look at a new report from the University of Greenwich finding that water companies could have funded all their day-to-day running and their long-term investments out of the bills paid by customers. Instead of which, managers have lumbered the firms with £51bn of debt to pay for shareholders’ dividends. Those borrowed billions, and the millions in interest, will be paid by you and me in our water bills. We might as well stuff the cash directly into the pockets of shareholders.

Related: Universal credit 'driving women into sex work'

Instead of competitively run utilities, record investment by the private sector and sounder public finances, we have natural monopolies handed over to the wealthy, banks that can dump their liabilities on the public when things get tough, and an outsourcing industry that feasts upon the carcass of the public sector. As if all this weren’t enough, neoliberal voices complain that we need to cut taxes and red tape, and further starve our public services.

This is a genuine scandal, but it requires us to recognise what neoliberalism promised and what it has failed to deliver. Some of the loudest critics of the ideology have completely misidentified it. Academics will daub the term “neoliberal” on any passing phenomenon. Fitbits are apparently neoliberal, as is Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream and Kanye West. Pundits will say that neoliberalism is about markets and choice – tell that to any commuter wedged on a Southern rail train. And centrist politicians claim that the great failing of neoliberalism is its carelessness about identity and place, which is akin to complaining that the boy on a moped who snatched your smartphone is going too fast.

Let us get it straight. Neoliberalism has ripped you off and robbed you blind. The evidence of that is mounting up – in your bills, in your services and in the finances of your country.

 

 

Right wingers line up.

The Nationalised industries were under funded for years, not just by the tories either. The latest delays on the railways were caused by a test train bringing down some cables, why wouldn't that happen if the trains were nationalised?

 

As someone who can remember the nationalised industries I can assure you they were crap, Overmanned, under invested in with a like it or lump it service. 

 

The taxes that subsidised these nationalised industries were a lot higher than they are now. If your water bill is a bit higher (for a lot higher standard of service) and your taxes are lower are you really worse off?

[The Guvnor]

18 hours ago, lifted*fox said:

I think it's quite clear that our government are the delusional ones who've been going back to the EU with the same requests for the last two years whilst they've repeatedly told us we can't pick and choose what we get as a non-member.

 

It's very simple - EU member you get the EU benefits. Non-EU member, you don't; and you can't have a bit of free trade and no movement, etc. which is exactly the brick wall that dickheads like Raab have been banging their head against from the off. 

 

There's a bit of pie in the sky but this ain't it. It's clear as day to see. 

 

With all due respect, these negotiations are unique. We are /were the third biggest contributor towards the EU budget, that's an awful lot of money to lose for future projects. Cherry picking works both ways and a 'No deal' Brexit would also cause a whole World of shit for the EU. 

[The Doctor]

On 19/10/2018 at 14:52, Izzy Muzzett said:

Nick Clegg joins Facebook as their VP for Global Affairs & Comms 

Just as they're getting it in the neck for lying about engagement habits and driving towards this autoplay video guff where written word would do fine... Well, Cleggs found his calling as the sacrificial lamb that gets to stand there with no power and take all the blame then.

[Guest MattP]

Something to prove all my posts aren't one sided.

The People’s Vote march changed my mind on Brexit

https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/10/22/the-peoples-vote-march-changed-my-mind-on-brexit/
 

Quote

 

That’s it. I am convinced. I went on the People’s Vote march on Saturday. I saw the 670,000 or so who marched through London. I’m now sure. We need a People’s Vote. Not a rubbish people’s vote like we had in 2016, in which 17.4million people, myself included, were cruelly tricked into ticking the wrong box on the ballot paper. No, a properly informed referendum. And by properly informed I mean a referendum in which we vote to stay in the EU. No other result could ever be considered to be properly informed anyway.

A big reason I was won over was the placards. As we assembled in London’s Mayfair, a working-class Leave voting stronghold, of course, I was blown away by the level of banner bantz. Say what you like about avid Remainers, but they know how to pun. ‘Don’t EU want me baby’, one placard read, accompanied by a picture of Rick Astley. One simply read: ‘Lettuce Romaine.’ Fantastic. It is these kinds of placards that will win over disenchanted Leave voters, who are known for their love of middle-class, salad-based humour.

 

One placard, carried by a young child, simply said ‘Thanks Grandad!’. What a great way to stick it to those elderly, soon-to-be-dead Leave voters in one’s own family. Another read ‘Bears for Brexit’, and was carried by a group of very burly men with beards. I assume they were woodsmen of some kind.

 

Then consider the political heavyweights who are behind the movement. Sadiq Khan addressed the demo, saying that the ‘lies and deceptions’ of Brexit were ‘being exposed’. Too right. We all know how often we were lied to about what Brexit would involve. Say what you like about Alastair Campbell, but you cannot say he or any of the other People’s Vote leaders have brought about appalling catastrophe through misleading the public. Later Khan said, ‘What can be more British than trusting the judgement of the British people!?’. Exactly. Just don’t mention the judgement of the British people from that crap vote two years ago. That judgement didn’t count.

 

Yes, some key questions remain unanswered. The marchers I spoke to seemed conflicted about what should be on the ballot paper in any ‘People’s Vote’. Campbell argued in a TV interview that the choice should be between Theresa May’s deal and Remain, meaning that Hard Brexit would be taken completely off the table. He always has our best interests at heart.

 

Others I spoke to recognised that this would be a significant betrayal of the original vote. No one could really answer the question of why anyone would take the second vote seriously if we ignored the first. But we can work out the details later. Maybe we should have a People’s Vote on what the People’s Vote should be about.

Cynics will say these avid Remainers, the kind of people who daub their faces with the EU flag, are still a minority. They will say that 670,000 is actually a pretty low number, considering the march was held in London, a city of 8.8million people, the majority of whom voted Remain. They will say that bussing a load of Remain voters into London was an easy way of avoiding having the march in any Leave-voting town. They will also say that 670,000 is someway shy of 17.4million.

 

But this is nitpicking. After all, I saw at least 200,000 young people on that march. All we need to do is allow them to vote 87 times each and we will have a majority. That is what I call democracy.

 

So let them sneer. Let them write pisstaking columns about how middle-class it was. But as David Lammy tweeted on the day, this was truly the ‘will of the people’. And even if we don’t get a vote, the important thing was that we were there. We put on our EU flags and we were counted. And when we are all bargaining for bags of oatmeal in the post-Brexit apocalyptic wastelands, maybe that will be all that matters.

 

 

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

Something to prove all my posts aren't one sided.

The People’s Vote march changed my mind on Brexit

https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/10/22/the-peoples-vote-march-changed-my-mind-on-brexit/
 

 

If the Left can't meme, the Right sure as hell can't satire.

[urban.spaceman]

On 21/10/2018 at 10:25, MattP said:

 

The editing on that is brilliant. 

 

“What do you want?”

 

”For all the rich to be destroyed”

 

cut to: Delia Smith

[urban.spaceman]

22 hours ago, lifted*fox said:

Didn’t she end up marrying a multimillionaire?

 

[ealingfox]

 

Edited 22 October 2018 by ealingfox

[lifted*fox]

8 minutes ago, ealingfox said:

 

what a shame that none of these people quite understand that they're biting the hand that feeds them. 

 

your own government screwed you, forgot about you and lied to you and you're cracking on about empires and the queen, looking back at a history through rose-tinted glasses that doesn't exist.

 

good 'ol blighty of old.

 

sad that these people will probably suffer the most from a no-deal brexit and that rubber-faced **** Farage knows it and he's still up there tickling their balls for a photo op. 

[Alf Bentley]

I'm beginning to wonder if I voted the wrong way at the 2017 election.....

 

 

[Guest MattP]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

If the Left can't meme, the Right sure as hell can't satire.

Spiked is a ran by Brendan O'Neill these days - a Brexiteer but also staunchly anti-monarchy and has his roots in Marxism.

 

Certainly not on "the right"

 

[Alf Bentley]

I try to keep Guardian links to a minimum, as too many just preach to the converted - and irritate opponents. 

This is a good one, though, and a different perspective - from an Irish Times columnist re. Brexit not being a Unionist cause: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/19/brexiters-theresa-may-northern-ireland 

 

"Brexit has always had a large dose of phoney populism – it is an elite project for extreme globalisation wrapped up as a popular revolt against globalisation. But it also has an equally large dose of phoney unionism – it is an English national rebellion wrapped in the union flag".

"In the recently released Future of England study, just 25% of leave voters and 29% of people who voted Conservative in 2017 agreed with the proposition: “Revenue raised from taxpayers in England should also be distributed to Northern Ireland to help Northern Irish public services.” (Tellingly, the only people still willing to subsidise Northern Ireland are the remainers.)

"And when asked whether “the unravelling of the peace process in Northern Ireland” is a “price worth paying” for Brexit that allows them to “take back control”, fully 83% of leave voters and 73% of Conservative voters agree that it is. This is not, surely, mere mindless cruelty – it expresses a deep belief that Northern Ireland is not “us”, that what happens “over there” is not our responsibility.

"If the Brexiteers are really looking for a last ditch in which to fight for the purity of their cause, it should be somewhere they actually care about. They mentally ditched Northern Ireland a long time ago."

 

Same bloke, speculating on how things could develop in the UK and Ireland as Brexit proceeds. Pure speculation and an apparently extreme scenario, but not as unbelievable as we'd like to think.... 

 https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-here-s-how-post-brexit-ireland-could-turn-out-1.3667967