I have just seen May's Phillip Schofield interview. Dear God.
When will this national humiliation end ?
She's not primarily in office to give interviews on TV. A lot of people probably like the fact that she isn't a smooth politician like Blair and Cameron.
Not sure there is evidence that she is liked anywhere.
It’s the fact that she is so nervous....her voice wobbles, her eyes resemble those of a cat that’s just stumbled on a Rottweiler...
It's one thing to be savaged by Brillo - that is just a politician's occupational hazard - quite another to be mauled by a silver haired toy poodle that you volunteered to sit on a sofa with....
Having a look at London, are there any two neighbouring seats (In the entire country) with more differing Lab/Tory vote %s than Croydon North and Croydon South ?
Not looked at the numbers, but Arundel and the South Downs / Brighton Pavilion must be a good shout.
Edit: Or Hove instead of Brighton Pavilion if you want genuine Lab/Con rather than Con/non-Con
Pavilion/Arundel might be the biggest Con/Non-Con split (Ox East/Henley still bigger actually !). Bristol West/North Somerset worth an honorable mention too..
Windsor and Slough must be up there too. Windsor splits 64%/22% to the Tories, Slough 62%/31% to Labour.
Brexiteers pushing the "rejoin on worse terms" line are setting another trap for themselves since the obvious solution is to revoke Article 50 to keep the same terms.
That only works if the current terms were "good". Keen Brexiteers believe they are merely dire. Whereas rejoining on "full political union plus the euro" terms would be diabolical.
I think the terms matter quite a lot actually. Cameron attempted a renegotiation and it was an utter damp squib. How many voters were lost when they realised the current terms were the best we could expect to have? If Cameron had managed something more substantial and the EU as a whole had realised they needed a restructuring that recognised and protected states only seeking to participate in trade without taking on the full federalist project, perhaps some kind of formal associate membership or similar, I don't believe Leave would have won.
If states 'only seeking to participate in trade' exist, the UK is not one of them. That's why its own contradictions doom Brexit to failure.
Maybe I'm being pedantic but you said 'states' and I think that's important. The British state has vital political interests in EU membership that go beyond the points you raised.
It's revealing that some Eurosceptics are still bemoaning the mistakes of the Remain campaign.
We're not bemoaning them William. We're trying to help those who are not blessed with our enormous wisdom to understand how to learn from the many mistakes made by the Remain campaign. Magnanimous in victory etc.
I was never an ardent Leaver, and I've certainly regretted my vote on numerous occasions (strongly correlated with seeing Liam Fox in action), but Europhiles got it wrong in 2016, and dare I say, are getting it wrong to this very day. I offer in evidence the Liberal Democrat polling scores.
Maybe I'm being pedantic but you said 'states' and I think that's important. The British state has vital political interests in EU membership that go beyond the points you raised.
In practice trading arrangements involve a certain amount of scope creep depending on just how much you're prepared to harmonize in the name of trade, but if you're going to sell it to voters who haven't bought in to the underlying identity project then the economic case needs to be very good indeed. Even among people who voted remain, how many would be prepared to harmonize the national currency, for example?
The trade clout of the EU makes it a useful forum for political cooperation too and there is a "force multiplier" argument for the influence it gives states like Britain but this wasn't the primary reason for joining the bloc nor a sufficiently convincing one to persuade voters to remain. (If there is an impetus towards integration then there's also an argument that the force multiplier becomes less effective - if the interests of an integrated core began to coalesce ever further and an unintegrated but remaining UK stayed on the periphery then its say would be greatly diminished; if the UK integrated tightly into the core then its existence as an independent entity would also be diminished, though if you see your central loyalty as to the greater whole that may be less troubling.)
PB Tories who were having a Wank over the last week re Corbyn Commie Spy stories need to learn a lesson as their case unravels quicker than the 2017 GE Granny Tax policy
PB Tories who were having a Wank over the last week re Corbyn Commie Spy stories need to learn a lesson as their case unravels quicker than the 2017 GE Granny Tax policy
Can you not post "wank" and "granny" in the same comment on here, please?
Something new, or at least that I hadn't picked up before. Most Leavers don't care about the UK:
A majority of those in England who voted for the UK to leave the European Union are willing to risk the breakup of the UK to make Brexit happen
Eighty-eight per cent of leave voters felt that a ‘yes’ vote in a second referendum on Scottish independence was an acceptable price to pay in order to "take back control." A similarly high proportion, 81%, also felt that destabilising the Northern Ireland peace process would be worthwhile to see the UK exit the European Union.
The findings are taken from the 2017 Future of England survey, published by Cardiff University and the University of Edinburgh. I can't find the source for it.
Are you Yes yet?
One thing that a dissolution of the UK has going for it democratically is that it would undeniably be a very significant consequence of the 2016 referendum - nobody could say the voters had been ignored. It would deliver on the literal mandate for 'the UK' no longer to be a member state of the EU. And more importantly for the long-term, it would deliver a constitutional settlement in which English nationalism could be reframed in a more positive, internationalist way and would be more conducive to accepting our place in the family of modern European nations.
I am a Scot who thinks both unions are good. So, No. Nevertheless whenever the English decide they don't want it anymore the gig's up for the United Kingdom.
can they please make their minds up and stop milking us.
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I was never an ardent Leaver, and I've certainly regretted my vote on numerous occasions (strongly correlated with seeing Liam Fox in action), but Europhiles got it wrong in 2016, and dare I say, are getting it wrong to this very day. I offer in evidence the Liberal Democrat polling scores.
The trade clout of the EU makes it a useful forum for political cooperation too and there is a "force multiplier" argument for the influence it gives states like Britain but this wasn't the primary reason for joining the bloc nor a sufficiently convincing one to persuade voters to remain. (If there is an impetus towards integration then there's also an argument that the force multiplier becomes less effective - if the interests of an integrated core began to coalesce ever further and an unintegrated but remaining UK stayed on the periphery then its say would be greatly diminished; if the UK integrated tightly into the core then its existence as an independent entity would also be diminished, though if you see your central loyalty as to the greater whole that may be less troubling.)
Thanks.