May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
I do think a case can be made that Cameron did the right thing by allowing an unsustainable situation to blow itself up, even if he wasn't able to master the contradictions himself. The end result could be that we all live happily ever after in an arrangement that wouldn't have seemed plausible in 2010.
Glad that you’ve finally seen the benefits of life outside the EU.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The ambiguities of English (the language) are great for shoring up this kind of self deception: the UK, a nation of nations, a country of countries, a unitary state where the largest constituent part is unable to think of itself as anything but a country while preferring to think of the smaller components as regions.
Those who saw themselves as English AND British though voted 51% Leave to 49% Remain ie almost identical to the final result and they are the median English voters.
Those who saw themselves as English not British voted 79% to 21% to Leave the EU, those who saw themselves as British not English voted 60% to 40% to Remain in the EU so both those voters were miles off the final result
King Cole, it very much remains to be seen how the UK/EU situation will develop.
Cameron's problem in that regard is that if things turn out ok in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement by backing Remain. If things turn out poorly in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement because he held the referendum.
To his credit, he did respond with democratic choice to the rising tide of scepticism. Not his fault, but the time for a referendum was Lisbon (or earlier). The duplicity of Brown and Labour prevented that, which would've allowed the electorate to indicate their displeasure at ever more integration without leaving entirely.
No, Cameron was elected to LEAD. If he believed in Remain, then he should have made a great deal more effort. If he believed Singapore-on-Thames was a daft idea he should have said so plainly. He didn’t. He was far more interested in shafting Nick Clegg and ensuring a Tory majority. Having done that he wasn’t sure what to do.
It was difficult to make the case that the EU is crap, but on balance we'd still be worse off if we left (to be fair, that's a very widespread view, and certainly a reasonable one).
By being smart, not quite shafting Nick Clegg, he'd have kept the hard right at bay and avoided the problem. Loyal Tories like Soames are now saying 'let's blow up Brexit'.
One can argue that Eden, Douglas-Home and Brown were poor PMs but none of them caused the greatest constitutional crisis for 300 years. That's apparently what Dominic Grieve thinks, and I tend to defer to people like him, but R4 cut him off after he said this and didn't let him expand his argument.
Arguably Blair is worse than Cameron in leading to Brexit it was his failure to impose transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries in 2004 which led to the rise of UKIP and hence demand for an EU referendum. Plus Blair launched the Iraq War which outweighs even Cameron's intervention in Libya in the rise in Islamic militancy it led to.
Neither though are the worst PMs we have had since WW2 let alone Lord North, I would rank Eden, Heath, Callaghan and Brown worse than Blair and Cameron
You don't seem to understand that Britain needed a significant influx of immigrant workers at the time, and therefore in the short run at least Blair did the right thing. True, he didn't consider the longer term consequences of his decision, which does fit into his pattern, Iraq and all. Iraq was stupid but you and your Tories were his biggest cheerleaders at the time.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Aside from the complacency and incompetence Cameron wanted to be PM because he thought he would be 'quite good at it' rather than for any political philosophy.
He always seemed to be longing for the pre-recession easy days of 'sharing the proceeds of growth' rather than the realities of what he had to contend with.
Mr. Divvie (2), if Scotland had left the UK by now, you'd be out of the EU and the remainder of the UK would be in. Which is quite ironic.
Who knows? I don't think many people on here or anywhere else can be too proud of their EU predictions.
At least even in that scenario we would be deciding for ourselves if we wanted to re-apply rather than having our EU status imposed on us. Still, one major prop of Project Fear I kicked away for evermore.
I think the point is the referendum was Cameron's idea, and his government would have collapsed if Scotland had voted for independence (as Salmond's did) so the referendum would not have happened.
That would suggest either a EU friendly Tory taking over from DC or an EU friendly Ed winning a GE. I think it's just as likely that a more right wing Brexity politics would have come to pass in an incredible, shrinking UK scenario; Brexit itself is evidence that all that stuff was bubbling under.
I think Ed Miliband could have won in 2015 had Scotland not been an issue. Don't underestimate how disliked the SNP are in England.
The key point though is that however 'Brexity' another leader might have been it would have been unlikely they would have called a referendum. That was Cameron's idea and it was controversial even among Conservatives - Osborne for example was opposed.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
Dislike of the SNP is entirely rational from an English POV
They have been agitating for a break up of our Union whilst at the same time trying to do all they can to maximise subsidy of Scotland and interfere in English politics. It looks very, very ungrateful
‘Like Scotland; dislike the SNP’, is, I suspect the view of the majority of English voters.
I don't mind the SNP; am I the odd one out? I would rather they ran Scotland than the cynical self-serving machine politicians of Scottish Labour. And Sturgeon, and Salmond before her (before he went off the rails) are serious adult politicians that knock the pathetic shower in Westminster into the shade.
Please learn some history. Yes, that goes for Paxman too. And until you have done so, please refrain from making remarks that only showcase your ignorance of the subject.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Aside from the complacency and incompetence Cameron wanted to be PM because he thought he would be 'quite good at it' rather than for any political philosophy.
He always seemed to be longing for the pre-recession easy days of 'sharing the proceeds of growth' rather than the realities of what he had to contend with.
In many ways he was the mirror image of Blair - a politician who rose to power during a long spell in the wilderness for their respective parties, and saw the main task as simply not being the other lot.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
Clegg bears much responsibility for Brexit. His refusal to allow any discussion of our relationship with the EU during the Coalition directly resulted in the rise of UKIP, which in turn...
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
No. The Europhobes within and without the Conservative Party had been agitating for years, damaging not just the Conservative Party but the country. In the meantime, the Europhiles did little to sell the EU to the public and sat on their backsides.
Which is a shame, as there is much positive about the EU. (*)
The Europhobes were allowed to set the running: all the ills of the country were laid at the door of the EU, even when they weren't the EU's fault, or even necessarily ills. This led to a situation which was unsustainable in the medium, yet alone the long, term. That is why I supported calls for a referendum (and not a pointless one on a Lisbon Treaty that had already been signed).
Cameron just bowed to the inevitable. I voted remain (somewhat reluctantly, and surprisingly to myself), but don't regret the referendum itself. I do regret the leavers' behaviour before and since, though. They're effing clueless.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
However well-thought out its policies, the Heath government was a disaster. Nothing went right for them (and I accept, they faced terrible challenges).
Slightly more on-topic and writing from a non-Conservative perspective.
The only reasons to replace May would be if a) the Conservatives were certain to lose with her in charge and b) with A.N Other or S.O Else in charge, the party wouldn't lose.
In 1990, what did for Thatcher were polls showing the Conservatives ten points behind Neil Kinnock's Labour with her as Prime Minister and level with Michael Heseltine in charge. John Major emerged as the alternative to Heseltine when polling showed him to be doing as well if not better against Labour than Heseltine.
Throughout the 1992-97 period, there was never a point when any single Conservative was shown to be polling better than Major - the Party went down badly with him in charge but they'd have gone down even worse with Redwood or Portillo or Lilley in charge.
May's position vis-à-vis Labour isn't that bad - slightly behind in some polls, level in others and while Boris would be about the same everyone else would see the Conservatives trailing Corbyn's Labour by 5-10 points. Apart from Boris, there's no one for a Conservative backbencher in a marginal to turn as an alternative so the Conservatives soldier on behind May and will continue to do so until or unless the polls change.
Next May the Conservatives have the not inconsiderable task of defending over 5,000 Council seats - TSE witters on about gains but much more likely is or are a fistful of losses - 500? 1000? In 1995, 2000 went down in a single night and that lead to a challenge against Major - would a poor local election performance finally be the trigger to a No Confidence vote against May?
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
As Corbyn, Melenchon, Bernie Sanders, Tsipras etc already have
Cameron will always deserve credit for seizing the opportunity of coalition government, at what could have been a very difficult time for the country. His shortcoming is in not realising the longer term possibilities of the position he found himself in; taking the tempting chance to destroy the LibDems was in his short-run interest but has had devastating longer term consequences.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
As Corbyn, Melenchon, Bernie Sanders, Tsipras etc already have
King Cole, it very much remains to be seen how the UK/EU situation will develop.
Cameron's problem in that regard is that if things turn out ok in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement by backing Remain. If things turn out poorly in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement because he held the referendum.
To his credit, he did respond with democratic choice to the rising tide of scepticism. Not his fault, but the time for a referendum was Lisbon (or earlier). The duplicity of Brown and Labour prevented that, which would've allowed the electorate to indicate their displeasure at ever more integration without leaving entirely.
No, Cameron was elected to LEAD. If he believed in Remain, then he should have made a great deal more effort. If he believed Singapore-on-Thames was a daft idea he should have said so plainly. He didn’t. He was far more interested in shafting Nick Clegg and ensuring a Tory majority. Having done that he wasn’t sure what to do.
It was difficult to make the case that the EU is crap, but on balance we'd still be worse off if we left (to be fair, that's a very widespread view, and certainly a reasonable one).
By being smart, not quite shafting Nick Clegg, he'd have kept the hard right at bay and avoided the problem. Loyal Tories like Soames are now saying 'let's blow up Brexit'.
One can argue that Eden, Douglas-Home and Brown were poor PMs but none of them caused the greatest constitutional crisis for 300 years. That's apparently what Dominic Grieve thinks, and I tend to defer to people like him, but R4 cut him off after he said this and didn't let him expand his argument.
You don't seem to understand that Britain needed a significant influx of immigrant workers at the time, and therefore in the short run at least Blair did the right thing. True, he didn't consider the longer term consequences of his decision, which does fit into his pattern, Iraq and all. Iraq was stupid but you and your Tories were his biggest cheerleaders at the time.
Did we? I don't remember the economy suffering prior to mass immigration, and a cursory glance at GDP growth since the '50s doesn't indicate that A8 accession made any difference to trend growth.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
Clegg bears much responsibility for Brexit. His refusal to allow any discussion of our relationship with the EU during the Coalition directly resulted in the rise of UKIP, which in turn...
Clegg begat Cameron. He advocated a referendum on EU membership in the belief that the public would resoundingly vote Remain.
King Cole, it very much remains to be seen how the UK/EU situation will develop.
Cameron's problem in that regard is that if things turn out ok in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement by backing Remain. If things turn out poorly in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement because he held the referendum.
To his credit, he did respond with democratic choice to the rising tide of scepticism. Not his fault, but the time for a referendum was Lisbon (or earlier). The duplicity of Brown and Labour prevented that, which would've allowed the electorate to indicate their displeasure at ever more integration without leaving entirely.
No, Cameron was elected to LEAD. If he believed in Remain, then he should do.
It was difficult to make the case that the EU is crap, but on balance we'd still be worse off if we left (to be fair, that's a very widespread view, and certainly a reasonable one).
By being smart, not quite shafting Nick Clegg, he'd have kept the hard right at bay and avoided the problem. Loyal Tories like Soames are now saying 'let's blow up Brexit'.
One can argue that Eden, Douglas-Home and Brown were poor PMs but none of them caused the greatest constitutional crisis for 300 years. That's apparently what Dominic Grieve thinks, and I tend to defer to people like him, but R4 cut him off after he said this and didn't let him expand his argument.
Arguably Blair is worse than Cameron in leading to Brexit it was his failure to impose transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries in 2004 which led to the rise of UKIP and hence demand for an EU referendum. Plus Blair launched the Iraq War which outweighs even Cameron's intervention in Libya in the rise in Islamic militancy it led to.
Neither though are the worst PMs we have had since WW2 let alone Lord North, I would rank Eden, Heath, Callaghan and Brown worse than Blair and Cameron
You don't seem to understand that Britain needed a significant influx of immigrant workers at the time, and therefore in the short run at least Blair did the right thing. True, he didn't consider the longer term consequences of his decision, which does fit into his pattern, Iraq and all. Iraq was stupid but you and your Tories were his biggest cheerleaders at the time.
No it did not and no he did not. We ended up taking in far more low skilled workers than jobs were being created in those areas, reducing the wages of the working class. Job growth was focused in high skilled areas and if we needed immigrants it was in those sectors.
Cameron will always deserve credit for seizing the opportunity of coalition government, at what could have been a very difficult time for the country. His shortcoming is in not realising the longer term possibilities of the position he found himself in; taking the tempting chance to destroy the LibDems was in his short-run interest but has had devastating longer term consequences.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
As Corbyn, Melenchon, Bernie Sanders, Tsipras etc already have
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Slightly more on-topic and writing from a non-Conservative perspective.
The only reasons to replace May would be if a) the Conservatives were certain to lose with her in charge and b) with A.N Other or S.O Else in charge, the party wouldn't lose.
In 1990, what did for Thatcher were polls showing the Conservatives ten points behind Neil Kinnock's Labour with her as Prime Minister and level with Michael Heseltine in charge. John Major emerged as the alternative to Heseltine when polling showed him to be doing as well if not better against Labour than Heseltine.
Throughout the 1992-97 period, there was never a point when any single Conservative was shown to be polling better than Major - the Party went down badly with him in charge but they'd have gone down even worse with Redwood or Portillo or Lilley in charge.
May's position vis-à-vis Labour isn't that bad - slightly behind in some polls, level in others and while Boris would be about the same everyone else would see the Conservatives trailing Corbyn's Labour by 5-10 points. Apart from Boris, there's no one for a Conservative backbencher in a marginal to turn as an alternative so the Conservatives soldier on behind May and will continue to do so until or unless the polls change.
Next May the Conservatives have the not inconsiderable task of defending over 5,000 Council seats - TSE witters on about gains but much more likely is or are a fistful of losses - 500? 1000? In 1995, 2000 went down in a single night and that lead to a challenge against Major - would a poor local election performance finally be the trigger to a No Confidence vote against May?
There will be heavy Tory losses next year even if they tie Labour as they did this year as the seats were last fought in 2015 when the Tories led Labour by 7%
King Cole, it very much remains to be seen how the UK/EU situation will develop.
Cameron's problem in that regard is that if things turn out ok in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement by backing Remain. If things turn out poorly in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement because he held the referendum.
To his credit, he did respond with democratic choice to the rising tide of scepticism. Not his fault, but the time for a referendum was Lisbon (or earlier). The duplicity of Brown and Labour prevented that, which would've allowed the electorate to indicate their displeasure at ever more integration without leaving entirely.
No, Cameron was elected to LEAD. If he believed in Remain, then he should have made a great deal more effort. If he believed Singapore-on-Thames was a daft idea he should have said so plainly. He didn’t. He was far more interested in shafting Nick Clegg and ensuring a Tory majority. Having done that he wasn’t sure what to do.
It was difficult to make the case that the EU is crap, but on balance we'd still be worse off if we left (to be fair, that's a very widespread view, and certainly a reasonable one).
By being smart, not quite shafting Nick Clegg, he'd have kept the hard right at bay and avoided the problem. Loyal Tories like Soames are now saying 'let's blow up Brexit'.
One can argue that Eden, Douglas-Home and Brown were poor PMs but none of them caused the greatest constitutional crisis for 300 years. That's apparently what Dominic Grieve thinks, and I tend to defer to people like him, but R4 cut him off after he said this and didn't let him expand his argument.
You don't seem to understand that Britain needed a significant influx of immigrant workers at the time, and therefore in the short run at least Blair did the right thing. True, he didn't consider the longer term consequences of his decision, which does fit into his pattern, Iraq and all. Iraq was stupid but you and your Tories were his biggest cheerleaders at the time.
Did we? I don't remember the economy suffering prior to mass immigration, and a cursory glance at GDP growth since the '50s doesn't indicate that A8 accession made any difference to trend growth.
Take a look at the figures for household incomes. Real household incomes for the poorest 50% declined slowly but steadily, from 2003 to 2013. Household income for the richest 50% rose up till 2009, before dropping sharply to their 2003 level in 2013. Ten years of mass immigration, during which nobody got better off.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
As Corbyn, Melenchon, Bernie Sanders, Tsipras etc already have
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
Not quite, though you probably have to go back to 1974 when Wilson beat Heath for the last time a majority of the working class beat a majority of the middle class before the EU referendum
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
There will be heavy Tory losses next year even if they tie Labour as they did this year as the seats were last fought in 2015 when the Tories led Labour by 7%
The 2019 and 2021 rounds of local elections will be very tough for the Conservatives as they will be starting from very high bases of seats and vote shares.
In terms of managing expectations, what do you expect "heavy losses" to be ? 500? 1000? From a base of 5,500 seats, losing 500 wouldn't be too severe in all honesty and even 1,000 seats could be written off but what constitutes a "poor" performance?
Next May the Conservatives have the not inconsiderable task of defending over 5,000 Council seats - TSE witters on about gains but much more likely is or are a fistful of losses - 500? 1000? In 1995, 2000 went down in a single night and that lead to a challenge against Major - would a poor local election performance finally be the trigger to a No Confidence vote against May?
Errr I said I'm expecting substantial net losses for the blue meanies next May.
Don't take my comments out of context.
I made one comment where I just pointed out May 2015 saw UKIP poll 13% in the locals and I don't think they have the ability/infrastructure to put up a full slate in May 2019, so where the bulk of 13% goes will be interesting.
Could a plurality/majority of that 13% go to the Tories, it is possible, but unlikely.
My predictions for the 2018 locals were pretty good, Con to make net gains outside of London, and net losses in London.
I was also the first PBer to tip Labour not to take Barnet, when Labour were the 1/8 favourites.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
Read the analyses of his efforts. He wasn't really trying for any; free movement wasn't a priority issue for him at the time.
There will be heavy Tory losses next year even if they tie Labour as they did this year as the seats were last fought in 2015 when the Tories led Labour by 7%
The 2019 and 2021 rounds of local elections will be very tough for the Conservatives as they will be starting from very high bases of seats and vote shares.
In terms of managing expectations, what do you expect "heavy losses" to be ? 500? 1000? From a base of 5,500 seats, losing 500 wouldn't be too severe in all honesty and even 1,000 seats could be written off but what constitutes a "poor" performance?
Interestingly, I suspect a revived Labour party might actually help the Tories in some areas.
In Poole wards, for example, the electoral calculus best estimates show huge increases in Labour votes that would split the (traditionally Liberal) opposition.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
As Corbyn, Melenchon, Bernie Sanders, Tsipras etc already have
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It is a stretch.
First time in a generation would be more accurate.
It was perhaps the first time that both the Conservative money class and the Labour intellectual class were simultaneously defeated.
You could go back to 1974 to see Cambridge and Hampstead on the same losing side as Chelsea and Westminster but all would have been Conservative at that time.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
As Corbyn, Melenchon, Bernie Sanders, Tsipras etc already have
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It doesn’t even make sense as a point because the kind of liberalism Goodwin describes didn’t really exist prior to Blair. Perhaps 1997 is his year zero?
In any case the Home Counties voted for Brexit.
I also note that he uses the horrible American word “gotten”.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because that was government policy. He had fought for it all his political life. Whether you, I or Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it right or wrong in hindsight is not the point.
Cameron took us out again by mistake. That is why he is the worst prime minister since Lord North, and even he had the excuse of colonials taking potshots. Cameron did not want or intend Brexit, and nor was it forced upon him by external events. He was asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
Clegg bears much responsibility for Brexit. His refusal to allow any discussion of our relationship with the EU during the Coalition directly resulted in the rise of UKIP, which in turn...
Clegg begat Cameron. He advocated a referendum on EU membership in the belief that the public would resoundingly vote Remain.
... leading to another 40 years of EverCloserUnion.
To the extreme EUphiles such as Clegg the Referendum had attractions.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
So 48% middle class elite, 52% marginalised working class? Maybe a slight exaggeration.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Next May the Conservatives have the not inconsiderable task of defending over 5,000 Council seats - TSE witters on about gains but much more likely is or are a fistful of losses - 500? 1000? In 1995, 2000 went down in a single night and that lead to a challenge against Major - would a poor local election performance finally be the trigger to a No Confidence vote against May?
Errr I said I'm expecting substantial net losses for the blue meanies next May.
Don't take my comments out of context.
I made one comment where I just pointed out May 2015 saw UKIP poll 13% in the locals and I don't think they have the ability/infrastructure to put up a full slate in May 2019, so where the bulk of 13% goes will be interesting.
Could a plurality/majority of that 13% go to the Tories, it is possible, but unlikely.
My predictions for the 2018 locals were pretty good, Con to make net gains outside of London, and net losses in London.
I was also the first PBer to tip Labour not to take Barnet, when Labour were the 1/8 favourites.
I'll put a claim in on being the first PBer to suggest that the Conservatives might gain West Hendon ward.
Interestingly, I suspect a revived Labour party might actually help the Tories in some areas.
In Poole wards, for example, the electoral calculus best estimates show huge increases in Labour votes that would split the (traditionally Liberal) opposition.
If that's how the anti-Conservative vote works, yes, there will be some places where that works to the advantage of the Conservatives. If, however, there's simply a concentration of the anti-Conservative vote around the party perceived locally to be the most likely to beat the Tories, that would spell trouble.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
So 48% middle class elite, 52% marginalised working class? Maybe a slight exaggeration.
That's a misreading of what I just said. Obviously the two groups weren't all one thing or all the other.
Next May the Conservatives have the not inconsiderable task of defending over 5,000 Council seats - TSE witters on about gains but much more likely is or are a fistful of losses - 500? 1000? In 1995, 2000 went down in a single night and that lead to a challenge against Major - would a poor local election performance finally be the trigger to a No Confidence vote against May?
Errr I said I'm expecting substantial net losses for the blue meanies next May.
Don't take my comments out of context.
I made one comment where I just pointed out May 2015 saw UKIP poll 13% in the locals and I don't think they have the ability/infrastructure to put up a full slate in May 2019, so where the bulk of 13% goes will be interesting.
Could a plurality/majority of that 13% go to the Tories, it is possible, but unlikely.
My predictions for the 2018 locals were pretty good, Con to make net gains outside of London, and net losses in London.
I was also the first PBer to tip Labour not to take Barnet, when Labour were the 1/8 favourites.
I'll put a claim in on being the first PBer to suggest that the Conservatives might gain West Hendon ward.
If only there were any council elections in London before 2022.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Since the vote, manufacturing has grown at its fastest pace and more regularly that it has since 1997. The weaker pound is helping exports. Ending freedom of movement will help with access to public services and lead to further wage growth and more employer investment in skills and R&D.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
There will be heavy Tory losses next year even if they tie Labour as they did this year as the seats were last fought in 2015 when the Tories led Labour by 7%
The 2019 and 2021 rounds of local elections will be very tough for the Conservatives as they will be starting from very high bases of seats and vote shares.
In terms of managing expectations, what do you expect "heavy losses" to be ? 500? 1000? From a base of 5,500 seats, losing 500 wouldn't be too severe in all honesty and even 1,000 seats could be written off but what constitutes a "poor" performance?
If the Tories lose 400 seats as they did in 2012 that would be an OK result
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
So 48% middle class elite, 52% marginalised working class? Maybe a slight exaggeration.
That's a misreading of what I just said. Obviously the two groups weren't all one thing or all the other.
But his quote is the first time in British history, which means since 1707 I guess.
Also, wasn't Goodwin on the other day about how wide and deep the Leave vote was? All classes, BME voters etc etc.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
Since the vote, manufacturing has grown at its fastest pace and more regularly that it has since 1997. The weaker pound is helping exports. Ending freedom of movement will help with access to public services and lead to further wage growth and more employer investment in skills and R&D.
What isn't to like?
Okay, everyone likes a good devaluation - it helped in 1992 and while the cost of imports will go up it's a net benefit and certainly to manufacturers and exporters.
"Ending freedom of movement will help with access to public services" - will it? The people needing public services the most are elderly British people who are bankrupting Conservative-run shire Councils by living and wanting care.
"lead to further wage growth" - well, yes, reducing the labour supply will boost the wages of those in work but don't those get past on to the consumer in terms of rising prices triggering inflation?
"more employer investment in skills and R&D" - well if it becomes more expensive to hire workers because there are fewer of them it will make sense for companies to look at automaton and reviewing business processes to cut labour costs; It would be nice to see workers getting re-skilled and hopefully up-skilled but that won't help with retention as there will be a huge market for skilled workers.
May's ability to stall while the clock runs down to car-crash Brexit is not something to celebrate
Indeed not. But look on the bright side, she may yet beat her predecessor to the title of worst PM of the post war era.
I'm quite impressed that you've already forgotten the six years Cameron spent as PM after the tenure of the worst PM of the post war era and second worst of all time.
David Cameron crashed us out of the EU by mistake. By mistake! He almost broke up the United Kingdom. Cameron is, as Paxo had it, the worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
Give it 30 years for a view. All you’re talking is your politics, not objective history. This rushing to judgement and sweeping statement stuff is deeply tedious.
To take an example from 30ish years ago, only now are we giving the Heath administration some objective analysis (I have a book of essays which purports to be a reassessment published perhaps 15 years ago - interesting but too early. Reading it now gives distance and some of it seems fairer).
Edit- The Heath Government 1970 - 1974 edited by Ball and Selsdon, published 1996. Recommended.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there legg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
At least something to reflect the fact that we did not get the transition controls we were entitled to in 2004 because of Blair
King Cole, it very much remains to be seen how the UK/EU situation will develop.
Cameron's problem in that regard is that if things turn out ok in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement by backing Remain. If things turn out poorly in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement because he held the referendum.
To his credit, he did respond with democratic choice to the rising tide of scepticism. Not his fault, but the time for a referendum was Lisbon (or earlier). The duplicity of Brown and Labour prevented that, which would've allowed the electorate to indicate their displeasure at ever more integration without leaving entirely.
No, Cameron was elected to LEAD. If he believed in Remain, then he should have made a great deal more effort. If he believed Singapore-on-Thames was a daft idea he should have said so plainly. He didn’t. He was far more interested in shafting Nick Clegg and ensuring a Tory majority. Having done that he wasn’t sure what to do.
It was difficult to make the case that the EU is crap, but on balance we'd still be worse off if we left (to be fair, that's a very widespread view, and certainly a reasonable one).
By being smart, not quite shafting Nick Clegg, he'd have kept the hard right at bay and avoided the problem. Loyal Tories like Soames are now saying 'let's blow up Brexit'.
One can argue that Eden, Douglas-Home and Brown were poor PMs but none of them caused the greatest constitutional crisis for 300 years. That's apparently what Dominic Grieve thinks, and I tend to defer to people like him, but R4 cut him off after he said this and didn't let him expand his argument.
Arguably Blair is worse than Cameron in leading to Brexit it was his failure to impose transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries in 2004 which led to the rise of UKIP and hence demand for an EU referendum. Plus Blair launched the Iraq War which outweighs even Cameron's intervention in Libya in the rise in Islamic militancy it led to.
Neither though are the worst PMs we have had since WW2 let alone Lord North, I would rank Eden, Heath, Callaghan and Brown worse than Blair and Cameron
The issue wasn’t transition controls it’s a welfare system which you can immediately (ab)use on arrival.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
An Associate membership, for those outside the Euro.
The lack of creative thinking by the EU killed Cameron's credibility, when they could have worked towards a looser yet still firm grip on the UK - and only risk a couple of other countries picking up the same arguments.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
This is supremely incoherent from Matthew Goodwin:
"The nature of this national identity was the first in-built advantage for Leave. ‘Englishness,’ or feeling very strongly attached to the nation, became a key tributary of the Leave vote. Whereas 64 percent of people who felt ‘English not British’ saw Britain’s membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing,’ among those who felt ‘British not English’ this crashed to 28 percent. The more English people felt the more likely that they would support Brexit.
"It was, therefore, no surprise when in later years most people simply never developed an affective attachment to the idea of European integration. The British had perhaps always been suspicious of power hierarchies that felt remote and lacking in democratic accountability. But they had also been wary of identities that claimed to supersede the nation."
The rise of the SNP, Front National, UKIP and Brexit, Lega Nord, Trumpism and 'America First', the Swedish Democrats, Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia etc is all a symptom of rising nationalism across the West and a rejection of the insecurities of globalisation and multinational organisations for the certainly of local cultural identity
Without doubt. And, I think that it's quite possible that populist left wing parties could also end up expressing similar views to populist right wing parties.
As Corbyn, Melenchon, Bernie Sanders, Tsipras etc already have
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It is a stretch.
First time in a generation would be more accurate.
It was perhaps the first time that both the Conservative money class and the Labour intellectual class were simultaneously defeated.
You could go back to 1974 to see Cambridge and Hampstead on the same losing side as Chelsea and Westminster but all would have been Conservative at that time.
In that way, it may be unique.
It's very unusual to see working class/lower middle class voters rejecting patrician Conservatives and Labour intellectuals simultaneously.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
Sooner or later your astonishing ignorance of the concerns the working class had about lack of immigration controls will hit home
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
Sooner or later your astonishing ignorance of the concerns the working class had about lack of immigration controls will hit home
King Cole, it very much remains to be seen how the UK/EU situation will develop.
Cameron's problem in that regard is that if things turn out ok in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement by backing Remain. If things turn out poorly in the end, he looks like he has poor judgement because he held the referendum.
To his credit, he did respond with democratic choice to the rising tide of scepticism. Not his fault, but the time for a referendum was Lisbon (or earlier). The duplicity of Brown and Labour prevented that, which would've allowed the electorate to indicate their displeasure at ever more integration without leaving entirely.
No, Cameron was elected to LEAD. If he believed in Remain, then he should have made a great deal more effort. If he believed Singapore-on-Thames was a daft idea he should have said so plainly. He didn’t. He was far more interested in shafting Nick Clegg and ensuring a Tory majority. Having done that he wasn’t sure what to do.
It was difficult to make the case that the EU is crap, but on balance we'd still be worse off if we left (to be fair, that's a very widespread view, and certainly a reasonable one).
By being smart, not quite shafting Nick Clegg, he'd have kept the hard right at bay and avoided the problem. Loyal Tories like Soames are now saying 'let's blow up Brexit'.
One can argue that Eden, Douglas-Home and Brown were poor PMs but none of them caused the greatest constitutional crisis for 300 years. That's apparently what Dominic Grieve thinks, and I tend to defer to people like him, but R4 cut him off after he said this and didn't let him expand his argument.
Arguably Blair is worse than Cameron in leading to Brexit it was his failure to impose transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries in 2004 which led to the rise of UKIP and hence demand for an EU referendum. Plus Blair launched the Iraq War which outweighs even Cameron's intervention in Libya in the rise in Islamic militancy it led to.
Neither though are the worst PMs we have had since WW2 let alone Lord North, I would rank Eden, Heath, Callaghan and Brown worse than Blair and Cameron
The issue wasn’t transition controls it’s a welfare system which you can immediately (ab)use on arrival.
No it is transition controls too as it was lack of them which reduced wages for lower skilled workers while also adding to pressure on public services and housing
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
Sooner or later your astonishing ignorance of the concerns the working class had about lack of immigration controls will hit home
That should have been June 2016.....
Yes, the upper middle class Remain vote was astonishingly complacent pre June 2016 and has been absolutely furious ever since at the plebs revolt
There will be heavy Tory losses next year even if they tie Labour as they did this year as the seats were last fought in 2015 when the Tories led Labour by 7%
The 2019 and 2021 rounds of local elections will be very tough for the Conservatives as they will be starting from very high bases of seats and vote shares.
In terms of managing expectations, what do you expect "heavy losses" to be ? 500? 1000? From a base of 5,500 seats, losing 500 wouldn't be too severe in all honesty and even 1,000 seats could be written off but what constitutes a "poor" performance?
If the Tories lose 400 seats as they did in 2012 that would be an OK result
It would be better than okay and would suggest the Conservatives were ahead on the NEV.
There will be heavy Tory losses next year even if they tie Labour as they did this year as the seats were last fought in 2015 when the Tories led Labour by 7%
The 2019 and 2021 rounds of local elections will be very tough for the Conservatives as they will be starting from very high bases of seats and vote shares.
In terms of managing expectations, what do you expect "heavy losses" to be ? 500? 1000? From a base of 5,500 seats, losing 500 wouldn't be too severe in all honesty and even 1,000 seats could be written off but what constitutes a "poor" performance?
If the Tories lose 400 seats as they did in 2012 that would be an OK result
It would be better than okay and would suggest the Conservatives were ahead on the NEV.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
Sooner or later your astonishing ignorance of the concerns the working class had about lack of immigration controls will hit home
That should have been June 2016.....
Yes, the upper middle class Remain vote was astonishingly complacent pre June 2016 and has been absolutely furious ever since at the plebs revolt
No wonder the Better In campaign could not come up with any decent reasons for staying it. It is a middle class protection racket would not have gone down well.
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
An Associate membership, for those outside the Euro.
The lack of creative thinking by the EU killed Cameron's credibility, when they could have worked towards a looser yet still firm grip on the UK - and only risk a couple of other countries picking up the same arguments.
The EU isn't capable of flexibility. It can't even agree a way forward on structural reform of the Euro, let alone magic up the means to completely reform the way the organisation works when the request is suddenly sprung on it by one of the members. Besides, the deviation from common norms granted the UK and Denmark at Maastricht has always grated, so there was no willingness from the bureaucracy at least to aid with further divergence, and after the European Constitution and Treaty of Lisbon episodes everybody else was terrified of reopening the treaties. There was no way forward.
I agree that, theoretically, a bargain could've been struck, creating some outer circle with additional divergences but fewer rights that the UK (along with the EFTA states and other potential refusniks like the Swedes) could have been parked in, and this would have had mutual benefits for all concerned. But the EU wasn't capable of offering anything meaningful because it's almost frozen to the spot and can no longer move forwards, backwards or sideways, save within the straight jacket of its existing rules and structures.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
Sooner or later your astonishing ignorance of the concerns the working class had about lack of immigration controls will hit home
That should have been June 2016.....
Yes, the upper middle class Remain vote was astonishingly complacent pre June 2016 and has been absolutely furious ever since at the plebs revolt
No wonder the Better In campaign could not come up with any decent reasons for staying it. It is a middle class protection racket would not have gone down well.
Yes vote Remain for cheaper nannies would not have played well in Stoke
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
An Associate membership, for those outside the Euro.
The lack of creative thinking by the EU killed Cameron's credibility, when they could have worked towards a looser yet still firm grip on the UK - and only risk a couple of other countries picking up the same arguments.
The EU isn't capable of flexibility. It can't even agree a way forward on structural reform of the Euro, let alone magic up the means to completely reform the way the organisation works when the request is suddenly sprung on it by one of the members. Besides, the deviation from common norms granted the UK and Denmark at Maastricht has always grated, so there was no willingness from the bureaucracy at least to aid with further divergence, and after the European Constitution and Treaty of Lisbon episodes everybody else was terrified of reopening the treaties. There was no way forward.
I agree that, theoretically, a bargain could've been struck, creating some outer circle with additional divergences but fewer rights that the UK (along with the EFTA states and other potential refusniks like the Swedes) could have been parked in, and this would have had mutual benefits for all concerned. But the EU wasn't capable of offering anything meaningful because it's almost frozen to the spot and can no longer move forwards, backwards or sideways, save within the straight jacket of its existing rules and structures.
Which is why, despite short-term economic pain, made worse by unnecessarily awful negotiations, it is best for the UK to leave while it can, in my view.
I also note that he uses the horrible American word “gotten”.
LOL. "gotten", like most non-technological 'Americanisms' such as 'fall' and 'sidewalk', are actually truer to old English than the current British English.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
One thing that might have worked was some sort of brake once the level of free movement went above a country’s percentage of total EU population. So I think the figures are that Britain has ca. 12% of the EU’s population but received about 40% of the free movement. Something that would have allowed a brake to get those figures more in line with each other might well have helped. Something to show that the burdens of free movement were more fairly shared might have helped. As it was, it looked to some as if the burdens were disproportionately borne by one country only.
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
One of the less commented features of her government is how she has survived almost all the critical Commons votes when on paper at least she was probably doomed.
I suppose it is true, I assumed they would have lost more to be honest.
I'm inclined to give May some credit as she does appear to be trying to do a difficult, nay, impossible job, and knowing that she will not last as Leader she is to some degree prepared to suggest some unpopular things as the only way forward. However there is no excuse for putting off the decisions as long as she did, and it has to be said that what good is sticking around if she cannot actually get something through at the end of it? I don't see how she can - at some point the level of the anger at her decision will be too much.
More pressingly, her approach certainly has not gone down well with the headbangers, but nor has it gone down well with the remainiacs in her ranks, so she still faces challenges from both ends, and while they don't have something feasible to replace her approach (if they did, they would have by now), they don't need to to prevent her from getting anything through.
Mr. Divvie (2), if Scotland had left the UK by now, you'd be out of the EU and the remainder of the UK would be in. Which is quite ironic.
Who knows? I don't think many people on here or anywhere else can be too proud of their EU predictions.
At least even in that scenario we would be deciding for ourselves if we wanted to re-apply rather than having our EU status imposed on us. Still, one major prop of Project Fear I kicked away for evermore.
I think the point is the referendum was Cameron's idea, and his government would have collapsed if Scotland had voted for independence (as Salmond's did) so the referendum would not have happened.
That would suggest either a EU friendly Tory taking over from DC or an EU friendly Ed winning a GE. I think it's just as likely that a more right wing Brexity politics would have come to pass in an incredible, shrinking UK scenario; Brexit itself is evidence that all that stuff was bubbling under.
I think Ed Miliband could have won in 2015 had Scotland not been an issue. Don't underestimate how disliked the SNP are in England.
The key point though is that however 'Brexity' another leader might have been it would have been unlikely they would have called a referendum. That was Cameron's idea and it was controversial even among Conservatives - Osborne for example was opposed.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
Dislike of the SNP is entirely rational from an English POV
They have been agitating for a break up of our Union whilst at the same time trying to do all they can to maximise subsidy of Scotland and interfere in English politics. It looks very, very ungrateful
‘Like Scotland; dislike the SNP’, is, I suspect the view of the majority of English voters.
I don't mind the SNP; am I the odd one out? I would rather they ran Scotland than the cynical self-serving machine politicians of Scottish Labour. And Sturgeon, and Salmond before her (before he went off the rails) are serious adult politicians that knock the pathetic shower in Westminster into the shade.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
One thing that might have worked was some sort of brake once the level of free movement went above a country’s percentage of total EU population. So I think the figures are that Britain has ca. 12% of the EU’s population but received about 40% of the free movement. Something that would have allowed a brake to get those figures more in line with each other might well have helped. Something to show that the burdens of free movement were more fairly shared might have helped. As it was, it looked to some as if the burdens were disproportionately borne by one country only.
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
Thanks. That's a very interesting idea. I don't think I've seen it before either - is it one of your originals ?
No wonder the Better In campaign could not come up with any decent reasons for staying it. It is a middle class protection racket would not have gone down well.
Yes vote Remain for cheaper nannies would not have played well in Stoke
If any serious attempt had been made over the previous four decades to articulate a vision for Britain's EU membership beyond "it will make us some extra money" then Britain Stronger in Europe's cacophony of panicked scaremongering would probably have been enough to win, because it got pretty close.
One of the less commented features of her government is how she has survived almost all the critical Commons votes when on paper at least she was probably doomed.
I suppose it is true, I assumed they would have lost more to be honest.
I'm inclined to give May some credit as she does appear to be trying to do a difficult, nay, impossible job, and knowing that she will not last as Leader she is to some degree prepared to suggest some unpopular things as the only way forward. However there is no excuse for putting off the decisions as long as she did, and it has to be said that what good is sticking around if she cannot actually get something through at the end of it? I don't see how she can - at some point the level of the anger at her decision will be too much.
More pressingly, her approach certainly has not gone down well with the headbangers, but nor has it gone down well with the remainiacs in her ranks, so she still faces challenges from both ends, and while they don't have something feasible to replace her approach (if they did, they would have by now), they don't need to to prevent her from getting anything through.
I wonder if it is her that is making it difficult. It seems that it is always May against everybody else. May we are the Nasty Party. May at the home office in the bunker, fighting everybody. May as PM again fighting everybody. The May manifesto, shown to nobody, input from nobody and everyone told "I am right." It seems to me her modus operandi is "I am right and this is it and if you disagree it is fight time."
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
An Associate membership, for those outside the Euro.
The lack of creative thinking by the EU killed Cameron's credibility, when they could have worked towards a looser yet still firm grip on the UK - and only risk a couple of other countries picking up the same arguments.
This is one of the things that annoys me about the EU; because of the difficulty of getting anything past all the members, it can be fairly small-c conservative. Yet this seems to make it want to make massive strides (witness EU constitutionLisbon Treaty) to make things easier - you agree a whole raft of changes aet once. Yet these strides are too far for too many people.
Imagine thinking the Suez Crisis and Accidentally Ripping Britain out of the EU Then Running Away are equal to Being a bit Crap as PM
Eden's reputation was severely tarnished by Suez but I do not think his record as a distinguished statesman stretching back into the 1930s was set at naught. Cameron however will be inescapably defined by Brexit - foolish, reckless, hubristic.
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
It's certainly possible to argue that the EU referendum was the first time since 1945 in which the majority of the middle-class backed one side, the majority of the working-class backed the other, and the working-class won. Certainly the main narrative of British history since 1979 has been the degradation and marginalisation of less prosperous communities, at the same time as the better-off have seen both their wealth and their political and cultural influence escalate almost without interruption.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
Except that there is nothing in Brexit that is going to deal with the unacceptable wealth accumulation by the privileged, nor deliver any new benefit to the disadvantaged. The tragedy of Brexit will be that it delivers the precise opposite of what many of its supporters were hoping for when they took the opportunity of using their referendum vote as a protest against the current economic settlement.
Wrong actually.
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Just watch this space.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
Sooner or later your astonishing ignorance of the concerns the working class had about lack of immigration controls will hit home
That should have been June 2016.....
Yes, the upper middle class Remain vote was astonishingly complacent pre June 2016 and has been absolutely furious ever since at the plebs revolt
I’m not furious but my tax revenues end up in a different jurisdiction. Not sure who will pay the pensions or do the arse wiping of the old but I’m sure that those Britons who conspicuously failed to do it will step up.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
One thing that might have worked was some sort of brake once the level of free movement went above a country’s percentage of total EU population. So I think the figures are that Britain has ca. 12% of the EU’s population but received about 40% of the free movement. Something that would have allowed a brake to get those figures more in line with each other might well have helped. Something to show that the burdens of free movement were more fairly shared might have helped. As it was, it looked to some as if the burdens were disproportionately borne by one country only.
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
One thing that might have worked was some sort of brake once the level of free movement went above a country’s percentage of total EU population. So I think the figures are that Britain has ca. 12% of the EU’s population but received about 40% of the free movement. Something that would have allowed a brake to get those figures more in line with each other might well have helped. Something to show that the burdens of free movement were more fairly shared might have helped.
But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
Thanks. That's a very interesting idea. I don't think I've seen it before either - is it one of your originals ?
I dreamt it up ca. 20 minutes ago. But I would have thought others might also have come up with something similar. I think the difficulty is that to win such a case you need to have been showing for months beforehand what is happening and why it is unfair not ask for it at the last minute and present it as just something for your benefit.
Cameron simply did not realise the strength of feeling on immigration and did not take the time to make the case for some temporary changes to EU colleagues in a way that made sense to them.
So one issue is this: all are agreed that for the euro to work effectively there need to be transfers of capital from the richer countries to the poorer. Not so much free movement of capital but a necessary movement. Germany adamantly set its face against that. One of the effects of that was high youth unemployment in those poorer countries and they dealt with that by exporting their unemployed to Britain. We had to bear the cost of Germany’s refusal to understand what monetary union really entailed. If the argument had been linked in this way, it is possible that countries which felt aggrieved at Germany’s holier than thou approach to sharing the costs of monetary union might have been more willing to accommodate Britain on one of its consequences.
Mr. JohnL, the SNP had won a clear majority and had a mandate for a referendum on Scottish separation. Denying that would've been unacceptable (although I entirely agree with May rejecting the SNP shenanigans in trying to get another referendum even as the EU situation unfolds, which is nothing but opportunistic mischief-making).
Cameron's purely negative campaign, that Scotland was too wee, too poor, too stupid almost ended the union. It was only the late, positive contributions of Gordon Brown, and Ruth Davidson, to be fair, that saved the country. Learning nothing, Cameron then repeated the tactic to lose Brexit.
Those two donkeys have plenty to answer to, both must hate Scotland a lot. Cringing lickspittles.
Mr. Divvie (2), if Scotland had left the UK by now, you'd be out of the EU and the remainder of the UK would be in. Which is quite ironic.
Who knows? I don't think many people on here or anywhere else can be too proud of their EU predictions.
At least even in that scenario we would be deciding for ourselves if we wanted to re-apply rather than having our EU status imposed on us. Still, one major prop of Project Fear I kicked away for evermore.
I think the point is the referendum was Cameron's idea, and his government would have collapsed if Scotland had voted for independence (as Salmond's did) so the referendum would not have happened.
That would suggest either a EU friendly Tory taking over from DC or an EU friendly Ed winning a GE. I think it's just as likely that a more right wing Brexity politics would have come to pass in an incredible, shrinking UK scenario; Brexit itself is evidence that all that stuff was bubbling under.
I think Ed Miliband could have won in 2015 had Scotland not been an issue. Don't underestimate how disliked the SNP are in England.
The key point though is that however 'Brexity' another leader might have been it would have been unlikely they would have called a referendum. That was Cameron's idea and it was controversial even among Conservatives - Osborne for example was opposed.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
Dislike of the SNP is entirely rational from an English POV
They have been agitating for a break up of our Union whilst at the same time trying to do all they can to maximise subsidy of Scotland and interfere in English politics. It looks very, very ungrateful
‘Like Scotland; dislike the SNP’, is, I suspect the view of the majority of English voters.
As is hate Westminster like English the view of the majority of Scots. We would never want to enslave England though and neither would we pretend that we subsidised them when the opposite is blatantly obvious to anyone who can read. Just compare Norway and Scotland and see how much Westminster has conned out of Scotland, makes places like Zimbawe etc seem to have had model governments rather than thieving despots.
Mr. Divvie (2), if Scotland had left the UK by now, you'd be out of the EU and the remainder of the UK would be in. Which is quite ironic.
I think the point is the referendum was Cameron's idea, and his government would have collapsed if Scotland had voted for independence (as Salmond's did) so the referendum would not have happened.
That would suggest either a EU friendly Tory taking over from DC or an EU friendly Ed winning a GE. I think it's just as likely that a more right wing Brexity politics would have come to pass in an incredible, shrinking UK scenario; Brexit itself is evidence that all that stuff was bubbling under.
I think Ed Miliband could have won in 2015 had Scotland not been an issue. Don't underestimate how disliked the SNP are in England.
The key point though is that however 'Brexity' another leader might have been it would have been unlikely they would have called a referendum. That was Cameron's idea and it was controversial even among Conservatives - Osborne for example was opposed.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
Dislike of the SNP is entirely rational from an English POV
They have been agitating for a break up of our Union whilst at the same time trying to do all they can to maximise subsidy of Scotland and interfere in English politics. It looks very, very ungrateful
‘Like Scotland; dislike the SNP’, is, I suspect the view of the majority of English voters.
As is hate Westminster like English the view of the majority of Scots. We would never want to enslave England though and neither would we pretend that we subsidised them when the opposite is blatantly obvious to anyone who can read. Just compare Norway and Scotland and see how much Westminster has conned out of Scotland, makes places like Zimbawe etc seem to have had model governments rather than thieving despots.
You wouldn’t want to pretend Scotland had subsidised England because it is blatantly obvious to anyone who can read that the opposite is the case?
One thing that might have worked was some sort of brake once the level of free movement went above a country’s percentage of total EU population. So I think the figures are that Britain has ca. 12% of the EU’s population but received about 40% of the free movement. Something that would have allowed a brake to get those figures more in line with each other might well have helped. Something to show that the burdens of free movement were more fairly shared might have helped. As it was, it looked to some as if the burdens were disproportionately borne by one country only.
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
We could have. But why should we? Britain likes its welfare system; it is part of its history, its sense of what sort of society we are. Why should young Britons be deprived of welfare in order to keep out unemployed Romanians? Some might say: keep out the non-British and keep our welfare state. Some might say the opposite of course. But the idea that we should dismantle our welfare state in order to prevent those who have done nothing to contribute to it from benefiting from it seems, well, quite hard right. It may feel to some as if it is a decision forced on Britain because it has lost an obvious lever of control - namely control over who comes into the country.
One thing that might have worked was some sort of brake once the level of free movement went above a country’s percentage of total EU population. So I think the figures are that Britain has ca. 12% of the EU’s population but received about 40% of the free movement. Something that would have allowed a brake to get those figures more in line with each other might well have helped. Something to show that the burdens of free movement were more fairly shared might have helped. As it was, it looked to some as if the burdens were disproportionately borne by one country only.
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
We could have. But why should we? Britain likes its welfare system; it is part of its history, its sense of what sort of society we are. Why should young Britons be deprived of welfare in order to keep out unemployed Romanians? Some might say: keep out the non-British and keep our welfare state. Some might say the opposite of course. But the idea that we should dismantle our welfare state in order to prevent those who have done nothing to contribute to it from benefiting from it seems, well, quite hard right. It may feel to some as if it is a decision forced on Britain because it has lost an obvious lever of control - namely control over who comes into the country.
+1
I notice the ‘let’s just reform our welfare system’ advocates are arely those who rely on it...
Please learn some history. Yes, that goes for Paxman too. And until you have done so, please refrain from making remarks that only showcase your ignorance of the subject.
Perhaps it is you who should go back to history school. Brown led the fight against the global financial crisis. Chamberlain sought peace but also began rearmament -- perhaps you have him confused with Stanley Baldwin. Goderich, your own choice, seems to have done nothing of note in his five months in Downing Street, for good or ill.
Mr. Divvie (2), if Scotland had left the UK by now, you'd be out of the EU and the remainder of the UK would be in. Which is quite ironic.
I think the point is the referendum was Cameron's idea, and his government would have collapsed if Scotland had voted for independence (as Salmond's did) so the referendum would not have happened.
That would suggest either a EU friendly Tory taking over from DC or an EU friendly Ed winning a GE. I think it's just as likely that a more right wing Brexity politics would have come to pass in an incredible, shrinking UK scenario; Brexit itself is evidence that all that stuff was bubbling under.
I think Ed Miliband could have won in 2015 had Scotland not been an issue. Don't underestimate how disliked the SNP are in England.
The key point though is that however 'Brexity' another leader might have been it would have been unlikely they would have called a referendum. That was Cameron's idea and it was controversial even among Conservatives - Osborne for example was opposed.
Do you think all that 'dislike' of the SNP (as irrational as the more extreme EUrophobia) would have suddenly switched off as these types saw one third of their land mass being snipped off their Britishness? I don't believe a kinder, gentler politics was ever on the agenda in any scenario, or in any other country as events have proved.
Dislike of the SNP is entirely rational from an English POV
They have been agitating for a break up of our Union whilst at the same time trying to do all they can to maximise subsidy of Scotland and interfere in English politics. It looks very, very ungrateful
‘Like Scotland; dislike the SNP’, is, I suspect the view of the majority of English voters.
As is hate Westminster like English the view of the majority of Scots. We would never want to enslave England though and neither would we pretend that we subsidised them when the opposite is blatantly obvious to anyone who can read. Just compare Norway and Scotland and see how much Westminster has conned out of Scotland, makes places like Zimbawe etc seem to have had model governments rather than thieving despots.
You wouldn’t want to pretend Scotland had subsidised England because it is blatantly obvious to anyone who can read that the opposite is the case?
Glad you’ve admitted that. Thanks Malc.
Been a huge subsidy to England since the sixties, Dick Turpin was hung for less.
Please learn some history. Yes, that goes for Paxman too. And until you have done so, please refrain from making remarks that only showcase your ignorance of the subject.
Perhaps it is you who should go back to history school. Brown led the fight against the global financial crisis. Chamberlain sought peace but also began rearmament -- perhaps you have him confused with Stanley Baldwin. Goderich, your own choice, seems to have done nothing of note in his five months in Downing Street, for good or ill.
Please learn some history. Yes, that goes for Paxman too. And until you have done so, please refrain from making remarks that only showcase your ignorance of the subject.
Perhaps it is you who should go back to history school. Brown led the fight against the global financial crisis. Chamberlain sought peace but also began rearmament -- perhaps you have him confused with Stanley Baldwin. Goderich, your own choice, seems to have done nothing of note in his five months in Downing Street, for good or ill.
Brown was and still is an absolute dumpling, must be the worst politician never mind PM in History.
Please learn some history. Yes, that goes for Paxman too. And until you have done so, please refrain from making remarks that only showcase your ignorance of the subject.
Perhaps it is you who should go back to history school. Brown led the fight against the global financial crisis. Chamberlain sought peace but also began rearmament -- perhaps you have him confused with Stanley Baldwin. Goderich, your own choice, seems to have done nothing of note in his five months in Downing Street, for good or ill.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
There is the libertarian argument that we could have slashed and burned the State. That would have been fine ,within the EU, so long as we treated EU nationals exactly the same as British Nationals.
My guess is that about 2% of the voters would have been in favour
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
Switching the entire basis of the welfare state to a contributory model would probably have done almost nothing to reduce immigration, which was of course stoked by predominantly younger people who came with job offers or were actively looking for (largely low-paid) work. I think most of us can agree that benefit scrounging was not a major factor in all of this, except perhaps in the minds of some referendum voters who erroneously believed that it was happening on a large scale.
What it would've done, on the other hand, was to strip young adults of virtually all of their entitlements - because the only way that the British Government could've got round EU rules on the equal treatment of member state citizens would've been to make its own people as well as everybody else's contribute through NI for a set period of time (e.g. 3 years) before receiving an entitlement to Income Support, JSA and other goodies. That would've been politically unsustainable.
In any event, withholding benefits would've done nothing to resolve the additional pressure on public services and especially housing imposed by a growing population.
The UK is substantially smaller than any of the rest of the EU's big 6, and almost half of it is the three Celtic nations which consist very largely of remote upland terrain quite unsuited to urban development. England alone, where the vast bulk of immigrants to the UK want to live and which is only about a fifth of the size of Metropolitan France (and which already has a higher population density than any EU state save for Malta,) could really do without having the equivalent of an extra Liverpool added to it every year, but that's what was happening by 2016. Much of the population growth was natural, but about half was down to net international migration and I'd imagine a good chunk of the extra births were to immigrant families as well.
As population grows so all of the extra people need to be housed, but space also needs to be found for their cars, extra capacity needs to be built into the public transport system as well, new places of work, schools, hospitals, shops and other amenities need to be constructed, and additional food, water and power have to be laid on. Our water resources are finite and already vulnerable to prolonged drought, and each time we accept another thousand people, and sacrifice a few more hectares of agricultural land to house them, so our dependence on expensive imported food increases.
Thus, one might conclude that voters who thought that stuffing Britain with an endless number of extra people was unsustainable - socially, economically and environmentally - had a point.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
There is the libertarian argument that we could have slashed and burned the State. That would have been fine ,within the EU, so long as we treated EU nationals exactly the same as British Nationals.
My guess is that about 2% of the voters would have been in favour
German benefits are better than those in the UK. Indeed, the same goes for Ireland.
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
There is the libertarian argument that we could have slashed and burned the State. That would have been fine ,within the EU, so long as we treated EU nationals exactly the same as British Nationals.
My guess is that about 2% of the voters would have been in favour
German benefits are better than those in the UK. Indeed, the same goes for Ireland.
So that is not the only reason.
Neither country is a major source of immigration to the UK. (Ireland was, but 50 years ago)
There is no comparison. Heath took Britain into Europe because asleep at the wheel.
Clegg did warn him, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he thought he could deliver the vote and see off the nutters in his party once and for all. Yet he has now allowed them to take over the asylum.
If the 2015 general election had seen the Tories largest party again but lacking a majority and having to do another coalition with the LDs there would have been no EU referendum and Cameron would still be PM.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Cameron could still be PM. The choices he made in a) the Renegotiation and then b) the Referendum campaign itself killled his career - not the break from the LibDems.
Certainly his failure to get any meaningful concessions on free movement in talks with the EU doomed the Remain campaign
What would such concessions have looked like, and what could the EU have agreed to without pi**ing off all the other member nations?
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
We could have addressed our benefit and welfare systems rather than blame somebody else for decisions which we are perfectly sovereign to address, perhaps.
There is the libertarian argument that we could have slashed and burned the State. That would have been fine ,within the EU, so long as we treated EU nationals exactly the same as British Nationals.
My guess is that about 2% of the voters would have been in favour
German benefits are better than those in the UK. Indeed, the same goes for Ireland.
So that is not the only reason.
You have to have worked in Germany for 5 years before you get them.
Please learn some history. Yes, that goes for Paxman too. And until you have done so, please refrain from making remarks that only showcase your ignorance of the subject.
Perhaps it is you who should go back to history school. Brown led the fight against the global financial crisis. Chamberlain sought peace but also began rearmament -- perhaps you have him confused with Stanley Baldwin. Goderich, your own choice, seems to have done nothing of note in his five months in Downing Street, for good or ill.
Brown was and still is an absolute dumpling, must be the worst politician never mind PM in History.
You say that only because Brown's intervention was crucial in Sindyref. The route to Scottish independence is simple: Nicola Sturgeon must investigate what has gone wrong with Scottish football, and fix it. A successful Euro or World Cup run will do wonders for Scottish national spirit. Scotland is not too wee -- Croatia is smaller and reached the World Cup final; nor is the SPL too poor, since it supplied players for many countries in Moscow. Maybe it is the schools -- anyway, football must be the SNP's priority.
Comments
‘Happily ever after’
Exhibit A:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/18/noel-gallagher-fiction-waste-time
Those who saw themselves as English not British voted 79% to 21% to Leave the EU, those who saw themselves as British not English voted 60% to 40% to Remain in the EU so both those voters were miles off the final result
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/
He always seemed to be longing for the pre-recession easy days of 'sharing the proceeds of growth' rather than the realities of what he had to contend with.
Please learn some history. Yes, that goes for Paxman too. And until you have done so, please refrain from making remarks that only showcase your ignorance of the subject.
So ironically an EU referendum promise which was meant to strengthen Cameron by helping him get a majority in 2015 and to see off UKIP ended up shortening his premiership once the break was made with Clegg
Which is a shame, as there is much positive about the EU. (*)
The Europhobes were allowed to set the running: all the ills of the country were laid at the door of the EU, even when they weren't the EU's fault, or even necessarily ills. This led to a situation which was unsustainable in the medium, yet alone the long, term. That is why I supported calls for a referendum (and not a pointless one on a Lisbon Treaty that had already been signed).
Cameron just bowed to the inevitable. I voted remain (somewhat reluctantly, and surprisingly to myself), but don't regret the referendum itself. I do regret the leavers' behaviour before and since, though. They're effing clueless.
(*) Awaits the obvious replies ...
Slightly more on-topic and writing from a non-Conservative perspective.
The only reasons to replace May would be if a) the Conservatives were certain to lose with her in charge and b) with A.N Other or S.O Else in charge, the party wouldn't lose.
In 1990, what did for Thatcher were polls showing the Conservatives ten points behind Neil Kinnock's Labour with her as Prime Minister and level with Michael Heseltine in charge. John Major emerged as the alternative to Heseltine when polling showed him to be doing as well if not better against Labour than Heseltine.
Throughout the 1992-97 period, there was never a point when any single Conservative was shown to be polling better than Major - the Party went down badly with him in charge but they'd have gone down even worse with Redwood or Portillo or Lilley in charge.
May's position vis-à-vis Labour isn't that bad - slightly behind in some polls, level in others and while Boris would be about the same everyone else would see the Conservatives trailing Corbyn's Labour by 5-10 points. Apart from Boris, there's no one for a Conservative backbencher in a marginal to turn as an alternative so the Conservatives soldier on behind May and will continue to do so until or unless the polls change.
Next May the Conservatives have the not inconsiderable task of defending over 5,000 Council seats - TSE witters on about gains but much more likely is or are a fistful of losses - 500? 1000? In 1995, 2000 went down in a single night and that lead to a challenge against Major - would a poor local election performance finally be the trigger to a No Confidence vote against May?
https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1025506253823340544
Which is a bit of a stretch surely? The first time in British history?
First time in a generation would be more accurate.
In terms of managing expectations, what do you expect "heavy losses" to be ? 500? 1000? From a base of 5,500 seats, losing 500 wouldn't be too severe in all honesty and even 1,000 seats could be written off but what constitutes a "poor" performance?
Don't take my comments out of context.
I made one comment where I just pointed out May 2015 saw UKIP poll 13% in the locals and I don't think they have the ability/infrastructure to put up a full slate in May 2019, so where the bulk of 13% goes will be interesting.
Could a plurality/majority of that 13% go to the Tories, it is possible, but unlikely.
My predictions for the 2018 locals were pretty good, Con to make net gains outside of London, and net losses in London.
I was also the first PBer to tip Labour not to take Barnet, when Labour were the 1/8 favourites.
In Poole wards, for example, the electoral calculus best estimates show huge increases in Labour votes that would split the (traditionally Liberal) opposition.
You could go back to 1974 to see Cambridge and Hampstead on the same losing side as Chelsea and Westminster but all would have been Conservative at that time.
The revolt of the Remainers is all about privileged people who are used always to getting their own way being thwarted for once. They're having something that they value forcibly stripped from them for a change, and they're not letting go of it without a bloody good fight.
In any case the Home Counties voted for Brexit.
I also note that he uses the horrible American word “gotten”.
To the extreme EUphiles such as Clegg the Referendum had attractions.
Maybe a slight exaggeration.
What isn't to like?
It will end the reduction in wages of the low skilled and the pressure on public services and housing from free movement once that is ended
Also, wasn't Goodwin on the other day about how wide and deep the Leave vote was? All classes, BME voters etc etc.
Sooner or later your astonishing naivety must arrive at reality checkpoint.
"Ending freedom of movement will help with access to public services" - will it? The people needing public services the most are elderly British people who are bankrupting Conservative-run shire Councils by living and wanting care.
"lead to further wage growth" - well, yes, reducing the labour supply will boost the wages of those in work but don't those get past on to the consumer in terms of rising prices triggering inflation?
"more employer investment in skills and R&D" - well if it becomes more expensive to hire workers because there are fewer of them it will make sense for companies to look at automaton and reviewing business processes to cut labour costs; It would be nice to see workers getting re-skilled and hopefully up-skilled but that won't help with retention as there will be a huge market for skilled workers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Checkpoint
The lack of creative thinking by the EU killed Cameron's credibility, when they could have worked towards a looser yet still firm grip on the UK - and only risk a couple of other countries picking up the same arguments.
It's very unusual to see working class/lower middle class voters rejecting patrician Conservatives and Labour intellectuals simultaneously.
In 2015 the Conservatives made 541 gains:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_local_elections,_2015
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-45068663
How is this having 'no case to answer'????
I agree that, theoretically, a bargain could've been struck, creating some outer circle with additional divergences but fewer rights that the UK (along with the EFTA states and other potential refusniks like the Swedes) could have been parked in, and this would have had mutual benefits for all concerned. But the EU wasn't capable of offering anything meaningful because it's almost frozen to the spot and can no longer move forwards, backwards or sideways, save within the straight jacket of its existing rules and structures.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gotten
Of course there were benefits for Britain. But there were costs and the costs of free movement were neither equally shared within the EU nor within Britain itself. That sense of unfairness lay behind some of the concerns I think. That should and could have been addressed without offending the Four Freedoms theologians.
I suppose it is true, I assumed they would have lost more to be honest.
I'm inclined to give May some credit as she does appear to be trying to do a difficult, nay, impossible job, and knowing that she will not last as Leader she is to some degree prepared to suggest some unpopular things as the only way forward. However there is no excuse for putting off the decisions as long as she did, and it has to be said that what good is sticking around if she cannot actually get something through at the end of it? I don't see how she can - at some point the level of the anger at her decision will be too much.
More pressingly, her approach certainly has not gone down well with the headbangers, but nor has it gone down well with the remainiacs in her ranks, so she still faces challenges from both ends, and while they don't have something feasible to replace her approach (if they did, they would have by now), they don't need to to prevent her from getting anything through.
https://twitter.com/Sunil_P2/status/752644694140719104
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nUwZmg4W6c
If any serious attempt had been made over the previous four decades to articulate a vision for Britain's EU membership beyond "it will make us some extra money" then Britain Stronger in Europe's cacophony of panicked scaremongering would probably have been enough to win, because it got pretty close.
But no such case was advanced. Hence the result.
It seems to me her modus operandi is "I am right and this is it and if you disagree it is fight time."
Cameron simply did not realise the strength of feeling on immigration and did not take the time to make the case for some temporary changes to EU colleagues in a way that made sense to them.
So one issue is this: all are agreed that for the euro to work effectively there need to be transfers of capital from the richer countries to the poorer. Not so much free movement of capital but a necessary movement. Germany adamantly set its face against that. One of the effects of that was high youth unemployment in those poorer countries and they dealt with that by exporting their unemployed to Britain. We had to bear the cost of Germany’s refusal to understand what monetary union really entailed. If the argument had been linked in this way, it is possible that countries which felt aggrieved at Germany’s holier than thou approach to sharing the costs of monetary union might have been more willing to accommodate Britain on one of its consequences.
Glad you’ve admitted that. Thanks Malc.
I notice the ‘let’s just reform our welfare system’ advocates are arely those who rely on it...
And rarely those on low wages, either.
‘Led the fight’
I heard it was Darling, myself.
My guess is that about 2% of the voters would have been in favour
What it would've done, on the other hand, was to strip young adults of virtually all of their entitlements - because the only way that the British Government could've got round EU rules on the equal treatment of member state citizens would've been to make its own people as well as everybody else's contribute through NI for a set period of time (e.g. 3 years) before receiving an entitlement to Income Support, JSA and other goodies. That would've been politically unsustainable.
In any event, withholding benefits would've done nothing to resolve the additional pressure on public services and especially housing imposed by a growing population.
The UK is substantially smaller than any of the rest of the EU's big 6, and almost half of it is the three Celtic nations which consist very largely of remote upland terrain quite unsuited to urban development. England alone, where the vast bulk of immigrants to the UK want to live and which is only about a fifth of the size of Metropolitan France (and which already has a higher population density than any EU state save for Malta,) could really do without having the equivalent of an extra Liverpool added to it every year, but that's what was happening by 2016. Much of the population growth was natural, but about half was down to net international migration and I'd imagine a good chunk of the extra births were to immigrant families as well.
As population grows so all of the extra people need to be housed, but space also needs to be found for their cars, extra capacity needs to be built into the public transport system as well, new places of work, schools, hospitals, shops and other amenities need to be constructed, and additional food, water and power have to be laid on. Our water resources are finite and already vulnerable to prolonged drought, and each time we accept another thousand people, and sacrifice a few more hectares of agricultural land to house them, so our dependence on expensive imported food increases.
Thus, one might conclude that voters who thought that stuffing Britain with an endless number of extra people was unsustainable - socially, economically and environmentally - had a point.
So that is not the only reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JepKVUym9Fg