This is probably true of a lot of Tory MPs as well: Their base want Brexit, they have to appear to be in favour of it, but they'd rather it went away. The difference between pretending to want Brexit and actually wanting Brexit isn't important until there's an opportunity for procedural shenanigans that allow them to try to stop it happening while appearing to oppose the government from the more-brexity-than-thou end.
Is there any comparison with that with equivalent surveys from years earlier?
I believe there is a tendency for younger people through the ages to believe their right man (or woman) to be right above all else, even pesky things like Parliaments. Older people tend to have more recall of seeing their former idols fall from grace and need to be removed. Older people now will remember seeing Blair go from Teflon Tony to the hated figure he is now. Even older people the same with Thatcher. Younger people don't have that experience yet.
My generation (born in the 80s) are the youngest to remember Blair, from his victory to his removal. Those a decade younger don't.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
Say what you like about TM she is on top of her brief
I cannot imagine anyone else handling this nightmare any better to be honest
She may be but I think you lack imagination.
I have listened to brexiteer after brexiteer and they simply dream the impossible dream
Some definitely. But that's true of some on every side of every divide.
My pick would be Gove. He's on top of his brief and can think the unthinkable and make it work anywhere he's worked - education, justice or DEFRA. He's a true Brexiteer but also a true realist and could reach an agreement.
His big weakness is that he's not personally likeable, but then May shares that with him. So he's an all round improvement.
Gove impresses both myself and my family especially in his present role
Agreed. He may like Batman be the hero we deserve.
An unwelcome analogy - Batman seems to just repeat low level and thuggish actions that don't tackle any serious problems in a way to prevent future recurrences.
If Gove is Batman then he's the George Clooney Batman.
And now I'm thinking about Michael Gove's nipples.
How do you know he has any? Have you seen them? If so, can you please keep them to yourself
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
If we don't blink?
Then I'd assume we had our eyes closed the whole time.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
If we don't blink?
Then we can reject the last minute extension and be the total, complete architects of our failure. If we turn down a way to avoid disruption then Brussels is in the clear and those guilty for chaos are in Westminster.
TBH I think our politicians are too spineless to walk off the cliff-edge. The ERG is a bag of noise and Labour MPs will not even do anything about the nutjobs taking over their party.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s - the politicians then were far from 'superheroes'. What we did have was living memory contact with people who had fought 'Strong Men' and were confronted by a Warsaw Pact, run by same.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
sorry its the EU that has yet to look over the cliff.
To date May has rolled over on the major points. The best thiing can happen is the deal is taken off the table by us. Its the only way prgress will be made, Barnier and co have to deliver if they dont their parties will get hammered in the Euro elections. The last thing they want is a euro sceptic EU parliament. Already their numbers are looking bad as all the big countries are butchering their christian democrats and mainsteam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
Say what you like about TM she is on top of her brief
I cannot imagine anyone else handling this nightmare any better to be honest
She may be but I think you lack imagination.
I have listened to brexiteer after brexiteer and they simply dream the impossible dream
Some definitely. But that's true of some on every side of every divide.
My pick would be Gove. He's on top of his brief and can think the unthinkable and make it work anywhere he's worked - education, justice or DEFRA. He's a true Brexiteer but also a true realist and could reach an agreement.
His big weakness is that he's not personally likeable, but then May shares that with him. So he's an all round improvement.
Gove impresses both myself and my family especially in his present role
Agreed. He may like Batman be the hero we deserve.
An unwelcome analogy - Batman seems to just repeat low level and thuggish actions that don't tackle any serious problems in a way to prevent future recurrences.
If Gove is Batman then he's the George Clooney Batman.
And now I'm thinking about Michael Gove's nipples.
How do you know he has any? Have you seen them? If so, can you please keep them to yourself
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
If we don't blink?
Then I'd assume we had our eyes closed the whole time.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
sorry its the EU that has yet to look over the cliff.
To date May has rolled over on the major points. The best thiing can happen is the deal is taken off the table by us. Its the only way prgress will be made, Barnier and co have to deliver if they dont their parties will get hammered in the Euro elections. The last thing they want is a euro sceptic EU parliament. Already their numbers are looking bad as all the big countries are butchering their christian democrats and mainsteam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
Barnier & Co do not have to deliver ANYTHING. They did not start this. They have always bee clear that we have two options - stay or go.
All 29th March is about is whether we stay or go on that date. The choices are ours and always have been.
Miss Vance, thanks for sharing that young people/strongman tweet. The demographics account it's from often has excellent stats, snippets, and the odd jest.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
I don't see what an extension to A50 gets, if there's been no agreement beforehand. No reason why no deal was done will have changed. Also, a six-month extension would mean the UK participating in European parliament elections. Hello again, UKIP, big-time.
The *only* way I see an extension to A50 being requested and agreed is if an agreement has already been done before March 29 but there's not been time to ratify it. In that case, a few more weeks to tidy up the paperwork would be sensible.
The problem for Downing Street is that in recent days, Cox has emerged as a figure who sees himself very much as the government’s Attorney General rather than Theresa May’s. That may well be the right way to look at things constitutionally speaking but for No 10 it creates a headache. Cabinet attendees report that Cox has become a voice of clarity when it comes to the government position. This is because he cuts through the Brexit fudge and says what No 10’s proposed plans mean legally speaking. At this week’s Cabinet, Cox told his fellow colleagues that the proposed backstop plan would mean that Northern Ireland was treated differently to the rest of the UK. He also said that the proposed backstop would leave ‘the UK with no leverage in future talks’. The reply from Theresa May’s side is that the plans are still ‘unionist’ – what ever she means by that.
On topic, Mike is right: if it comes to a choice between the Union and Brexit, the DUP will choose the Union. That's a mighty big 'if' though.
I don't understand the OP at all. The DUP are in favour of Brexit because, if actually implemented without all this backstop nonsense, it will see NI diverge economically from the ROI. That will make the decision to reunite much more difficult and risky. Whereas in the EU borders are being broken down so eventually it will seem like an easy decision.
That is why the backstop is so unacceptable to the DUP - by keeping NI in the orbit of the EU as the UK leaves it probably makes things worse. Their solution is not going to abandon Brexit, which will simply return to the existing path of integration, but to veto the backstop, which they are perfectly positioned to do.
Hard Brexit is great for unionists in NI and Scotland. In NI it will cause divergence very quickly; in Scotland the idea of voting for a hard border between Scotland and England to gain independence is for the birds.
If anything, the DUP have no conflict between Brexit and the Union. A better piece might be that Scottish Unionists would realise the opportunity in Hard Brexit. Ruth has taken the first steps into a bigger World...:)
And before I get told off by Big_G for having an opinion on Scotland - everyone is entitled to their opinion and cannot really be limited by either living there or marrying someone. If it were, I would be an expert as my wife is Irish...
There is an interesting point buried in that thread. The threat to the DUP position isn't so much the presence of the EU--NI backstop as the absence of a UK-NI one. In other words the real threat to the NI status quo that benefits the DUP position isn't so much NI being tied into the EU as the UK diverging from it over time and without reference to Northern Ireland.
This might sound like a pedantic point, but it explains the position. The United Kingdom IS the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, indivisible.
So your post reframed as the DUP would see it is thus:
The threat to the DUP position isn't so much the presence of the EU-NI(only) backstop as the absence of a UK(Excluding NI)-NI one. In other words the real threat to the NI status quo that benefits the DUP position isn't so much NI being tied into the EU as the UK(Excluding NI) diverging from it over time and without reference to Northern Ireland.
The backstop can be read 'both ways', nowhere does it state explicitly apply that the backstop is to NI only. That is something the EU have said 'after the fact' and spun for, but there simply is no EU-NI(Only) backstop as far as the DUP is concerned, and nor will there ever be. That is the blood red line.
I didn't fully explain my point. The actual risk to the DUP position is the UK (or precisely GB) diverging from the EU while NI gets left behind, rather than the backstop per se. Divergence is the bigger problem because the DUP won't have control over it. The backstop isn't simply a requirement of the EU. Most people in Northern Ireland want it because they don't want a hard border and they do want to maintain the links with the South . The DUP is in a minority in opposing the backstop. Also from a practical point, controls on the sea border are easier than on the land border.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s - the politicians then were far from 'superheroes'. What we did have was living memory contact with people who had fought 'Strong Men' and were confronted by a Warsaw Pact, run by same.
That is also true. But it does not explain why disillusionment with democracy is greater amongst young people in the U.K. than Canada or the US. Today's politics in the U.K. seems to many people to be a conspiracy of the old against the young, a view that is not entirely without foundation in fact. The coalition was particularly egregious in protecting old age pensions at the expense of student support and also in pushing up housing costs and rents through help to buy and generous tax treatment for landlords (some of which has now been reversed).
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - t the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
l alernatives.
Barnier & Co do not have to deliver ANYTHING. They did not start this. They have always bee clear that we have two options - stay or go.
All 29th March is about is whether we stay or go on that date. The choices are ours and always have been.
you miss the point
Barnier has done a good deal for his side, but its not a deal unless its delivered. And he has to deliver it to the EU 27. The european press is getting increasingly twitchy about no deal and for the first time I am reading articles critical of the lack of progress.
something like 5 million jobs in the EU depend on trade with the UK. The EU will have a massive budget hole and Ireland is facing major problems.
just because Liam Fox said the EU has risks doesnt mean to say it isnt true.
< It is preposterous to label May's negotiating tactics as bullying while the EU's position is entirely reasonable no matter how demanding it gets. Regardless, the fundamental point is it is not bully ramming for May to tell them the truth that she cannot get what they want through. They can choose not to see that as their problem if they want. (though you seem to be in the camp that thinks reaching deal is the EU doing us a favour when you suggest May's weakness is not also their problem - it is, if they want to get a deal, which they say they do, just not at any cost. It is by far a bigger problem for her, but unless you think they are stupid her weakness is a problem for them).
You have also completely ignored that I pointed out the that EU may well not regard the weakness of May's position as sufficient reason to alter their own position. That doesn't maje it any less true that May cannot give them what they are demanding, and telling the truth is not bullying. Indeed, proponents of the EU are often a great pains to point out that even pointing out harsh truths is not bullying.
May deserves plenty of opprobrium, but the criticisms of her striking a bullish tone, as though people do not talk up their own negotiating position, and that this has had a negative effect on the negotiations for one makes liars out of the EU by making their claims this is about principle false, but is also I think unfair on her because, as noted, she is not lying when she says she cannot bend on some things.
The EU is entitled to play hard ball in this. But May cannot? Maybe she should not, but she cannot? That is going too far, really? The tabloids being given some red meat lines is a step too far?
That's ridiculous. If the EU telling a tough truth is ok, it is ok for May, and I do not buy for one second that the EU leaders and bureaucracy seriously get their feelings hurt by tabloid lines, that they do not understand that politicians need to play for domestic consumption sometimes - there is not a political leader in Europe who does not have to do that.
You should know - remainers always insist that we cave into the EU on everything because they want to 'prove' their point that Brexit is somehow impossible and we can't stand on our own. Obviously it is nonsense, but it is amazing that their plan has been carried out so thoroughly by May and the remainers. Of course, now it has made a sellable deal impossible they do seem to be getting a bit worried...
Does not appear to reflect UK unilateral declaration of EU citizens rights in event of no deal.
Interesting, seems Macron is prepared to use citizens as pawns in the game.
I wonder how that will play with 300,000 electors living in London ? You have to hand it to Macron hes given up courting popularity.
Especially ones with professional qualifications the French may strip recognition of from resident Brits....
yes but that can be reciprocal of course, and if I recall a lot of the professional standard boards cover UK and Ireland so does that mean the Irish lose their qualifications too ?
There is legal doubt whether a measure intended to have permanent effect, such as the backstop, can even be agreed on the basis of Article 50, which is about arrangements for departure and not final outcomes. Even if the UK and EU27 agreed to a permanent backstop as part of the withdrawal agreement, it is not obvious that it could ever be enforced at law. It rests on Article 50 alone.
To say that the backstop requirement should not be part of the withdrawal agreement is not to say it should be ignored. But it could have been dealt with by other means so that the withdrawal arrangements for citizenship, the financial settlement, the transition arrangements and so on were not in jeopardy. Indeed, in view of its sheer importance, a backstop should be a distinct agreement between the UK, Ireland and the rest of the EU, and not something shoehorned into an agreement intended for exit issues.
If there is still no progress on the backstop issue in the next month or so, the UK and EU should consider opening a separate dialogue on the Irish border issue, with the view to a discrete agreement. All sides should accept that such permanent arrangements (and the nature of a backstop is potentially permanent) on a sensitive topic are better dealt with other than in an exit agreement.
This is obviously raising a valid issue - how can the EU claim a permanent NI backstop is possible under A50 but an all UK backstop is not? Answer - they are lying.
The problem is that under the radar, the issue of jurisdiction over the WA has been settled by another May sellout - there will be a joint committee but all items of EU law must be referred to the ECJ. They of course will rule whatever the Commission tells them to, so they know they can have it both ways and get away with it.
For the record, jurisdiction was another thing DD told May never to concede. Noone in their right mind would enter a treaty subject to the law of only one of the parties, but that probably explains why May wants to do it.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s - the politicians then were far from 'superheroes'. What we did have was living memory contact with people who had fought 'Strong Men' and were confronted by a Warsaw Pact, run by same.
That is also true. But it does not explain why disillusionment with democracy is greater amongst young people in the U.K. than Canada or the US. Today's politics in the U.K. seems to many people to be a conspiracy of the old against the young, a view that is not entirely without foundation in fact. The coalition was particularly egregious in protecting old age pensions at the expense of student support and also in pushing up housing costs and rents through help to buy and generous tax treatment for landlords (some of which has now been reversed).
Err, Help to Buy helps young people buy. It tilts the balance away from buy-to-let.
Oh, and the coalition didn't provide generous tax treatment for landlords. And the protection of old-age pensions was only really a smoothing effect: pensioners did very badly (relative to employees) during the build up to the financial crash, but suffered less after the crash. What else would anyone expect? Pensions inevitably work like that.
So, yes, it is entirely unfounded in fact, and it is highly irresponsible of people to play this up as some kind of generational conflict.
On topic, the DUP made a huge strategic blunder backing Brexit in the first place. Why on earth they thought it was a good idea to encourage the destabilisation of the entire United Kingdom when their whole raison d'etre is the union is unfathomable. They just let their prejudices blind themselves to their deeper interests.
Nor was this just passive support - they allowed themselves to be used as the conduit of funding for campaigning in Britain. The source of that funding is yet to be determined.
They are able, unlike the Conservatives, to resile from this with only medium embarrassment ("this is not the Brexit we ordered"). They may yet do so.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s - the politicians then were far from 'superheroes'. What we did have was living memory contact with people who had fought 'Strong Men' and were confronted by a Warsaw Pact, run by same.
That is also true. But it does not explain why disillusionment with democracy is greater amongst young people in the U.K. than Canada or the US. Today's politics in the U.K. seems to many people to be a conspiracy of the old against the young, a view that is not entirely without foundation in fact. The coalition was particularly egregious in protecting old age pensions at the expense of student support and also in pushing up housing costs and rents through help to buy and generous tax treatment for landlords (some of which has now been reversed).
Err, Help to Buy helps young people buy. It tilts the balance away from buy-to-let.
Oh, and the coalition didn't provide generous tax treatment for landlords. And the protection of old-age pensions was only really a smoothing effect: pensioners did very badly (relative to employees) during the build up to the financial crash, but suffered less after the crash. What else would anyone expect? Pensions inevitably work like that.
So, yes, it is entirely unfounded in fact, and it is highly irresponsible of people to play this up as some kind of generational conflict.
For me the real generational conflict - it isn't really, more who the government prioritises - is between the young/old on the one hand and those in between. The latter have done very well in the last 10 years.
On topic, the DUP made a huge strategic blunder backing Brexit in the first place. Why on earth they thought it was a good idea to encourage the destabilisation of the entire United Kingdom when their whole raison d'etre is the union is unfathomable. They just let their prejudices blind themselves to their deeper interests.
Nor was this just passive support - they allowed themselves to be used as the conduit of funding for campaigning in Britain. The source of that funding is yet to be determined.
They are able, unlike the Conservatives, to resile from this with only medium embarrassment ("this is not the Brexit we ordered"). They may yet do so.
Presumably they, like everyone else, didn't predict that the EU would act irrationally on the Irish border issue. I might have missed some references, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned before the referendum, and it was hardly mentioned until late 2016.
The latest account of Khashoggi's alleged killing is more disturbing than ever:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552 ...Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same....
On topic, Mike is right: if it comes to a choice between the Union and Brexit, the DUP will choose the Union. That's a mighty big 'if' though.
I don't understand the OP at all. The DUP are in favour of Brexit because, if actually implemented without all this backstop nonsense, it will see NI diverge economically from the ROI. That will make the decision to reunite much more difficult and risky. Whereas in the EU borders are being broken down so eventually it will seem like an easy decision.
That is why the backstop is so unacceptable to the DUP - by keeping NI in the orbit of the EU as the UK leaves it probably makes things worse. Their solution is not going to abandon Brexit, which will simply return to the existing path of integration, but to veto the backstop, which they are perfectly positioned to do.
Hard Brexit is great for unionists in NI and Scotland. In NI it will cause divergence very quickly; in Scotland the idea of voting for a hard border between Scotland and England to gain independence is for the birds.
If anything, the DUP have no conflict between Brexit and the Union. A better piece might be that Scottish Unionists would realise the opportunity in Hard Brexit. Ruth has taken the first steps into a bigger World...:)
And before I get told off by Big_G for having an opinion on Scotland - everyone is entitled to their opinion and cannot really be limited by either living there or marrying someone. If it were, I would be an expert as my wife is Irish...
I would be arrogant to critise posters expressing their own opinions on Scotland but overnight the discussion became bizarre, even suggested police and the army could be sent in
In my own case I lived in the borders and Edinburgh for 11 years, voted in Scottish elections, married a Scot from the north east, and have family across Scotland and travel there twice a year.
On topic, Mike is right: if it comes to a choice between the Union and Brexit, the DUP will choose the Union. That's a mighty big 'if' though.
I don't understand the OP at all. The DUP are in favour of Brexit because, if actually implemented without all this backstop nonsense, it will see NI diverge economically from the ROI. That will make the decision to reunite much more difficult and risky. Whereas in the EU borders are being broken down so eventually it will seem like an easy decision.
That is why the backstop is so unacceptable to the DUP - by keeping NI in the orbit of the EU as the UK leaves it probably makes things worse. Their solution is not going to abandon Brexit, which will simply return to the existing path of integration, but to veto the backstop, which they are perfectly positioned to do.
Hard Brexit is great for unionists in NI and Scotland. In NI it will cause divergence very quickly; in Scotland the idea of voting for a hard border between Scotland and England to gain independence is for the birds.
If anything, the DUP have no conflict between Brexit and the Union. A better piece might be that Scottish Unionists would realise the opportunity in Hard Brexit. Ruth has taken the first steps into a bigger World...:)
And before I get told off by Big_G for having an opinion on Scotland - everyone is entitled to their opinion and cannot really be limited by either living there or marrying someone. If it were, I would be an expert as my wife is Irish...
I would be arrogant to critise posters expressing their own opinions on Scotland but overnight the discussion became bizarre, even suggested police and the army could be sent in
In my own case I lived in the borders and Edinburgh for 11 years, voted in Scottish elections, married a Scot from the north east, and have family across Scotland and travel there twice a year.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s - the politicians then were far from 'superheroes'. What we did have was living memory contact with people who had fought 'Strong Men' and were confronted by a Warsaw Pact, run by same.
Though there was a lot of anti establishment feeling against that war time generation. I think we have to look deeper to see why democracy seems unpopular with British youngsters.
Reminds me of reading about Beria making Lakoba's (his former boss, and deceased enemy) wife go insane by putting a snake in her cell, and killing his kids. [The joys of reading about 1930s Russia].
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s - the politicians then were far from 'superheroes'. What we did have was living memory contact with people who had fought 'Strong Men' and were confronted by a Warsaw Pact, run by same.
That is also true. But it does not explain why disillusionment with democracy is greater amongst young people in the U.K. than Canada or the US. Today's politics in the U.K. seems to many people to be a conspiracy of the old against the young, a view that is not entirely without foundation in fact. The coalition was particularly egregious in protecting old age pensions at the expense of student support and also in pushing up housing costs and rents through help to buy and generous tax treatment for landlords (some of which has now been reversed).
Err, Help to Buy helps young people buy. It tilts the balance away from buy-to-let.
Oh, and the coalition didn't provide generous tax treatment for landlords. And the protection of old-age pensions was only really a smoothing effect: pensioners did very badly (relative to employees) during the build up to the financial crash, but suffered less after the crash. What else would anyone expect? Pensions inevitably work like that.
So, yes, it is entirely unfounded in fact, and it is highly irresponsible of people to play this up as some kind of generational conflict.
Help to buy pushes up house prices and benefits no one except house builders. How many people in their 20s can afford to buy now compared to previous decades? And there is no reason why state pensions should have been protected from cuts applied to other benefits - this has nothing to do with the crash, it was a political choice. The old would be protected at the expense of the young.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
sorry its the EU that has yet to look over the cliff.
To date May has rolled over on the major points. The best thiing can happen is the deal is taken off the table by us. Its the only way prgress will be made, Barnier and co have to deliver if they dont their parties will get hammered in the Euro elections. The last thing they want is a euro sceptic EU parliament. Already their numbers are looking bad as all the big countries are butchering their christian democrats and mainsteam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
Once again you allow your visceral hatred for the EU to cause you to spout nonsense. The "they need us more than we need them" argument is one of the biggest lies in the pile of whoppers told by the Leave campaign. There is secondly, no evidence (except in the minds of Daily Mail readers), that there will be any electoral damage for the EU/27 sovereign nations by them standing up to our childish tantrums. Like other Leave zealots you at deluded by your own side's desperate rhetoric
On topic, the DUP made a huge strategic blunder backing Brexit in the first place. Why on earth they thought it was a good idea to encourage the destabilisation of the entire United Kingdom when their whole raison d'etre is the union is unfathomable. They just let their prejudices blind themselves to their deeper interests.
Nor was this just passive support - they allowed themselves to be used as the conduit of funding for campaigning in Britain. The source of that funding is yet to be determined.
They are able, unlike the Conservatives, to resile from this with only medium embarrassment ("this is not the Brexit we ordered"). They may yet do so.
Presumably they, like everyone else, didn't predict that the EU would act irrationally on the Irish border issue. I might have missed some references, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned before the referendum, and it was hardly mentioned until late 2016.
You almost get the impression it was a clever idea that popped up in a brain storming session.
The latest account of Khashoggi's alleged killing is more disturbing than ever:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552 ...Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same....
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
sorry its the EU that has yet to look over the cliff.
To date May has rolled over on the major points. The best thiing can happen is the deal is taken off the table by us. Its the only way prgress will be made, Barnier and co have to deliver if they dont their parties will get hammered in the Euro elections. The last thing they want is a euro sceptic EU parliament. Already their numbers are looking bad as all the big countries are butchering their christian democrats and mainsteam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
Once again you allow your visceral hatred for the EU to cause you to spout nonsense. The "they need us more than we need them" argument is one of the biggest lies in the pile of whoppers told by the Leave campaign. There is secondly, no evidence (except in the minds of Daily Mail readers), that there will be any electoral damage for the EU/27 sovereign nations by them standing up to our childish tantrums. Like other Leave zealots you at deluded by your own side's desperate rhetoric
+1
Refusal, or an inability, to engage with the world as it actually is would appear to be base camp for many ardent leavers.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - t the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
l alernatives.
Barnier & Co do not have to deliver ANYTHING. They did not start this. They have always bee clear that we have two options - stay or go.
All 29th March is about is whether we stay or go on that date. The choices are ours and always have been.
you miss the point
Barnier has done a good deal for his side, but its not a deal unless its delivered. And he has to deliver it to the EU 27. The european press is getting increasingly twitchy about no deal and for the first time I am reading articles critical of the lack of progress.
something like 5 million jobs in the EU depend on trade with the UK. The EU will have a massive budget hole and Ireland is facing major problems.
just because Liam Fox said the EU has risks doesnt mean to say it isnt true.
The Danish papers are now full of stories expressing extreme concern that a failure to do a deal will cause all sorts of expensive and stupid problems such the port of Esbjerg having no parking - they hate the idea of Brexit but also feel ‘no deal’ is a choice and not one Denmark should allow
On topic, Mike is right: if it comes to a choice between the Union and Brexit, the DUP will choose the Union. That's a mighty big 'if' though.
I don't understand the OP at all. The DUP are in favour of Brexit because, if actually implemented without all this backstop nonsense, it will see NI diverge economically from the ROI. That will make the decision to reunite much more difficult and risky. Whereas in the EU borders are being broken down so eventually it will seem like an easy decision.
That is why the backstop is so unacceptable to the DUP - by keeping NI in the orbit of the EU as the UK leaves it probably makes things worse. Their solution is not going to abandon Brexit, which will simply return to the existing path of integration, but to veto the backstop, which they are perfectly positioned to do.
Hard Brexit is great for unionists in NI and Scotland. In NI it will cause divergence very quickly; in Scotland the idea of voting for a hard border between Scotland and England to gain independence is for the birds.
If anything, the DUP have no conflict between Brexit and the Union. A better piece might be that Scottish Unionists would realise the opportunity in Hard Brexit. Ruth has taken the first steps into a bigger World...:)
And before I get told off by Big_G for having an opinion on Scotland - everyone is entitled to their opinion and cannot really be limited by either living there or marrying someone. If it were, I would be an expert as my wife is Irish...
I would be arrogant to critise posters expressing their own opinions on Scotland but overnight the discussion became bizarre, even suggested police and the army could be sent in
In my own case I lived in the borders and Edinburgh for 11 years, voted in Scottish elections, married a Scot from the north east, and have family across Scotland and travel there twice a year.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
Many people including my generation in the 80s and much earlier have seen disastrous blunders by politicians and we don't appear to have en masse become enamoured of strongman leaders.
This isn't a 'my generation is better' argument but I struggle to see what is unique from the 90s onwards that would see such a shift in attitude. A preference that 'my side's whoever that is, should not be held back by others as it is so morally correct? Again I struggle to see the uniqueness.
He was deputy Prime Minister for five years. Whether you like him or not, he is of importance.
He had the courage to put the nation's interests first at a time of tremendous economic dislocation at a considerable cost to himself and his party.
Considerable cost to himself?
He was elevated from obscure third party politician who only gets attention when the media needs to show the third party to being the most meaningful deputy Prime Minister that post has ever had, key part of the 'quad' that authorised all government actions, member of the cabinet, ministerial limo, pay increase and attention that has allowed him to generate personal wealth from public speaking etc afterwards.
He may have cost his party, he may have cost his colleagues their jobs, but not himself.
By forming a coalition with the Conservatives, the Lib Dems (led by Clegg) steered the UK out of economic collapse so that we have the full employment and manageable deficit we have today. Of course the electorate normally fails to show gratitude (eg Churchchill kicked out post the war).
I agree. I think the Cameron/Clegg government was easily the best government of my adult life (2000 onwards).
But it wasn't formed at a considerable cost to Clegg.
Very true. First most of his councillors then most of his MPs picked up the tab.
If only he had had the sense to insist on STV for local elections rather than that dumb AV referendum
That wouldn't have saved the Lib Dems and might have made it worse. The Lib Dems have a poor record in PR elections, from the EP through to devolved assemblies, taking less of the share than they tend to under FPTP.
STV, in wards of c5 members would put a threshold at around 15% - well above the LD average since 2010, so in most wards they still wouldn't be elected. Worse, a lot of that localism work would be lost as you move from electorates of, say, 10000 to ones of 50000. Only in areas where the LDs have a strong enough presence to be winning 2+ wards out of 5 would they do OK under STV - but then in those areas they wouldn't be making gains either.
The Lib Dems might genuinely favour STV for ideological / principled reasons but you can't help notice that it would have been by far the most favourable PR (or PR-like; STV isn't really PR) system to them. But that was when they were a third party with 15-30% of the vote. That's changed; their thinking hasn't.
You are arguing from the point of view of what is good or bad for parties. STV would be good for voters.
The latest account of Khashoggi's alleged killing is more disturbing than ever:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552 ...Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same....
Jesus Christ. Why?? What do they gain dismembering him alive? Apart from some sadistic pleasure?
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
sorry its the EU that has yet to look over the cliff.
To date May has rolled over on the major points. The best thiing can happen is the deal is taken off the table by us. Its the only way prgress will be made, Barnier and co have to deliver if they dont their parties will get hammered in the Euro elections. The last thing they want is a euro sceptic EU parliament. Already their numbers are looking bad as all the big countries are butchering their christian democrats and mainsteam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
Once again you allow your visceral hatred for the EU to cause you to spout nonsense. The "they need us more than we need them" argument is one of the biggest lies in the pile of whoppers told by the Leave campaign. There is secondly, no evidence (except in the minds of Daily Mail readers), that there will be any electoral damage for the EU/27 sovereign nations by them standing up to our childish tantrums. Like other Leave zealots you at deluded by your own side's desperate rhetoric
as I said youre not very good at understanding negotaition or indeed in following events outside little England
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
I mean that if No Deal is the outcome that will be very painful for us, but also very painful for a lot of their citizens.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
Many people including my generation in the 80s and much earlier have seen disastrous blunders by politicians and we don't appear to have en masse become enamoured of strongman leaders.
This isn't a 'my generation is better' argument but I struggle to see what is unique from the 90s onwards that would see such a shift in attitude. A preference that 'my side's whoever that is, should not be held back by others as it is so morally correct? Again I struggle to see the uniqueness.
we've seen it working?
we've seen the fall of the previous 'rival' system?
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
Many people including my generation in the 80s and much earlier have seen disastrous blunders by politicians and we don't appear to have en masse become enamoured of strongman leaders.
This isn't a 'my generation is better' argument but I struggle to see what is unique from the 90s onwards that would see such a shift in attitude. A preference that 'my side's whoever that is, should not be held back by others as it is so morally correct? Again I struggle to see the uniqueness.
The 90s generation do not have the contrary example of the USSR to demonstrate how valuable democracy is.
I also think that democratic politicians have done an increasing amount to undermine democratic norms. There is less attempt to find common ground and a greater tendency to paint the other side as beyond the pale. If the other side are beyond the pale then why risk the people voting for them? It is only the logical endpoint of contemporary democratic rhetoric.
The latest account of Khashoggi's alleged killing is more disturbing than ever:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552 ...Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same....
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
Indeed - and apparently done in so obvious a way and by people it is hard to disavow. Lots of nations put up with a lot of very awful things in international relations, but this event if as described is insane.
Help to buy pushes up house prices and benefits no one except house builders. How many people in their 20s can afford to buy now compared to previous decades? And there is no reason why state pensions should have been protected from cuts applied to other benefits - this has nothing to do with the crash, it was a political choice. The old would be protected at the expense of the young.
Help to Buy might have a small effect on house prices, but as I said it tilts the balance towards not away from young people wanting to buy, because it's available only to first-time buyers and not for buy-to-let. And of course most importantly in the aftermath of the crash it did provide confidence for house builders: that's why they are working flat-out to build houses as fast as they can. That's what you want, right? And of course house buyers have been protected by low mortgage rates.
As for state pensions: yes they have been protected, and rightly so. They are not exactly mega-generous in the first place, and they are taxable.
Meanwhile the young have been protected in the best possible way: by the extraordinary achievement of low unemployment despite all the problems of the post-crash fallout.
This 'at the expense of the young' is divisive, unpleasant, damaging and just plain wrong.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
Many people including my generation in the 80s and much earlier have seen disastrous blunders by politicians and we don't appear to have en masse become enamoured of strongman leaders.
This isn't a 'my generation is better' argument but I struggle to see what is unique from the 90s onwards that would see such a shift in attitude. A preference that 'my side's whoever that is, should not be held back by others as it is so morally correct? Again I struggle to see the uniqueness.
Whilst the economics for the 80s and 90s generation (I was born in 1981) are not dissimiliar, the biggest split is in that when we (80s cohort & before) disagree with someone then we seek to defeat them with strength of argument. The post 90s have increasingly trended towards 'winning' arguments by removing the platform of the speaker. I'd say that's the biggest difference between people broadly in their 20s and 30s right now.
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
I don't see what the Saudis gained by murdering him in the consulate, they could have kidnapped him from outside, run him over, stabbed him, gunned him down, or poisoned him, and then blamed some shadowy "other". Inside the consulate such claims are ludicrously implausible.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
I mean that if No Deal is the outcome that will be very painful for us, but also very painful for a lot of their citizens.
But it will be more painful for us. Much more. And the EU could live with that, though it would prefer a deal. But the imperative for them is that the UK comes off worst. And it will.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s - the politicians then were far from 'superheroes'. What we did have was living memory contact with people who had fought 'Strong Men' and were confronted by a Warsaw Pact, run by same.
That is also true. But it does not explain why disillusionment with democracy is greater amongst young people in the U.K. than Canada or the US. Today's politics in the U.K. seems to many people to be a conspiracy of the old against the young, a view that is not entirely without foundation in fact. The coalition was particularly egregious in protecting old age pensions at the expense of student support and also in pushing up housing costs and rents through help to buy and generous tax treatment for landlords (some of which has now been reversed).
Err, Help to Buy helps young people buy. It tilts the balance away from buy-to-let.
Oh, and the coalition didn't provide generous tax treatment for landlords. And the protection of old-age pensions was only really a smoothing effect: pensioners did very badly (relative to employees) during the build up to the financial crash, but suffered less after the crash. What else would anyone expect? Pensions inevitably work like that.
So, yes, it is entirely unfounded in fact, and it is highly irresponsible of people to play this up as some kind of generational conflict.
Help to buy pushes up house prices and benefits no one except house builders. How many people in their 20s can afford to buy now compared to previous decades? And there is no reason why state pensions should have been protected from cuts applied to other benefits - this has nothing to do with the crash, it was a political choice. The old would be protected at the expense of the young.
About 128,000 people have been assisted through Help to Buy. Overall, 750,000 people have become first time buyers over the past two years. Greater London is where housing has become unaffordable. It remains affordable in most of the provinces.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
sorry its the EU that has yet to look over the cliff.
To date Mam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
Once again you allow your visceral hatred for the EU to cause you to spout nonsense. The "they need us more than we need them" argument is one of the biggest lies in the pile of whoppers told by the Leave campaign. There is secondly, no evidence (except in the minds of Daily Mail readers), that there will be any electoral damage for the EU/27 sovereign nations by them standing up to our childish tantrums. Like other Leave zealots you at deluded by your own side's desperate rhetoric
I think Varadkar, for one, would be very badly damaged by No Deal. Perhaps unfairly, but it would be a terrible outcome for Ireland, that happened on his watch, and that is never a good thing for any leader. He would get blamed (as well as the Brits and Brussels).
I think you are right on that, and most of the EU27 know that a deal is in their interests too, not least that a British economy in meltdown is not a good thing to have on their periphery.
The idea, though, that the EU27 will compromise on core areas to appease us is pure fantasy as they know the damage to us is much greater than it is to them collectively, so as . They will do what is in their collective good, and who can blame them for that? The easiest deal in history is just another whopper of a lie.
On topic, the DUP made a huge strategic blunder backing Brexit in the first place. Why on earth they thought it was a good idea to encourage the destabilisation of the entire United Kingdom when their whole raison d'etre is the union is unfathomable. They just let their prejudices blind themselves to their deeper interests.
Nor was this just passive support - they allowed themselves to be used as the conduit of funding for campaigning in Britain. The source of that funding is yet to be determined.
They are able, unlike the Conservatives, to resile from this with only medium embarrassment ("this is not the Brexit we ordered"). They may yet do so.
Presumably they, like everyone else, didn't predict that the EU would act irrationally on the Irish border issue. I might have missed some references, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned before the referendum, and it was hardly mentioned until late 2016.
You almost get the impression it was a clever idea that popped up in a brain storming session.
The EU external border is a known issue. Lots of moans about it not properly enforcing it elsewhere which let in refugees - so one of the issues that led to our departure was that the EU didn't have a solid enough external border.
You can therefore understand how it was a real shocker for our "negotiating" team to hear that the EU would be forced to run the kind of solid external border we had argued for ai its external border in Ireland...
Its like the idiots who demand much tougher checks for foreigners coming through the UK border who are outraged at the idea of reciprocal checks on us at someone else's border.
I think Varadkar, for one, would be very badly damaged by No Deal. Perhaps unfairly, but it would be a terrible outcome for Ireland, that happened on his watch, and that is never a good thing for any leader. He would get blamed (as well as the Brits and Brussels).
There was an interesting moment on the Today programme this morning when Simon Coveney was asked the obvious question: Wouldn't No Deal mean exactly the hard border you are trying to avoid? He seemed flummoxed by it.
Say what you like about TM she is on top of her brief
I cannot imagine anyone else handling this nightmare any better to be honest
Really? The nightmare is mainly of her own doing. She decided to play party politics with Brexit in an attempt to destroy the Labour party and as a result boxed herself in with a series of red lines and lost her Commons majority.
If she had made an attempt to heal the divide in the nation by forging a consensus on Brexit that most people could mostly live with then we wouldn't be in half this mess.
There is now no consensus everyone can live with.
Remainers and the Scots and Irish will never accept No Deal and WTO terms and Leavers will never accept an EUref2 leading to Remain and most would not accept staying in the single market and customs union either. The EU as is clear will never accept Chequers nor will most Leavers and Remainers either.
The only reasonable position of consensus would be a Canada style FTA but that can only be done for GB not NI
There is hysteresis in politics. Much damage has been done over the last two and a bit years that would take a long time to undo.
It is still worth pointing out why we are where we are so we can avoid making the same mistakes again.
The basic error was to play party politics with Brexit. The only way to start making things better is to open up the process within the UK.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
I mean that if No Deal is the outcome that will be very painful for us, but also very painful for a lot of their citizens.
But it will be more painful for us. Much more. And the EU could live with that, though it would prefer a deal. But the imperative for them is that the UK comes off worst. And it will.
It is though, cold comfort, that your opponent in negotiation comes off worse.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
I mean that if No Deal is the outcome that will be very painful for us, but also very painful for a lot of their citizens.
But it will be more painful for us. Much more. And the EU could live with that, though it would prefer a deal. But the imperative for them is that the UK comes off worst. And it will.
So much for friendly neighbours, and some people want the UK to stay in the EU?
About 128,000 people have been assisted through Help to Buy. Overall, 750,000 people have become first time buyers over the past two years. Greater London is where housing has become unaffordable. It remains affordable in most of the provinces.
Help to Buy has certainly helped young people to buy, it's also created a trap which kicks in around 5 years down the line for many. Weirdly you're better off if the value of your house heads south under H2B I think. But yes it has achieved the primary aim of getting more young people on the ladder, albeit their equity position is inferior to what it would have been if H2B did not exist.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
Many people including my generation in the 80s and much earlier have seen disastrous blunders by politicians and we don't appear to have en masse become enamoured of strongman leaders.
This isn't a 'my generation is better' argument but I struggle to see what is unique from the 90s onwards that would see such a shift in attitude. A preference that 'my side's whoever that is, should not be held back by others as it is so morally correct? Again I struggle to see the uniqueness.
Whilst the economics for the 80s and 90s generation (I was born in 1981) are not dissimiliar, the biggest split is in that when we (80s cohort & before) disagree with someone then we seek to defeat them with strength of argument. The post 90s have increasingly trended towards 'winning' arguments by removing the platform of the speaker. I'd say that's the biggest difference between people broadly in their 20s and 30s right now.
Whenever you see Alastair Campbell banging on about stopping Brexit, cast your mind back to the time he thought it was perfectly reasonable for Gordon Brown to stay in number 10 for 6 months after he lost in 2010
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
sorry its the EU that has yet to look over the cliff.
To date May has rolled over on the major points. The best thiing can happen is the deal is taken off the table by us. Its the only way prgress will be made, Barnier and co have to deliver if they dont their parties will get hammered in the Euro elections. The last thing they want is a euro sceptic EU parliament. Already their numbers are looking bad as all the big countries are butchering their christian democrats and mainsteam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
Barnier & Co do not have to deliver ANYTHING. They did not start this. They have always bee clear that we have two options - stay or go.
All 29th March is about is whether we stay or go on that date. The choices are ours and always have been.
It's not that we're trying to leave that's the problem. It's that we're trying to leave while retaining some of the privileges of membership.
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
I don't see what the Saudis gained by murdering him in the consulate, they could have kidnapped him from outside, run him over, stabbed him, gunned him down, or poisoned him, and then blamed some shadowy "other". Inside the consulate such claims are ludicrously implausible.
It's unclear, but it would make more sense if it was a bungled attempt to kidnap him and spirit him back to Saudi Arabia for a show trial.
Alanbrooke, you really are a moron. Made up childish insults about someone you don't know is really pathetic, and probably suggests you have some weird thing about bestiality yourself. Can you not put a cogent argument together? You clearly know no more know about negotiation than you know how to spell it. Please also try and learn how to use an apostrophe, or didn't they teach that in estate agency skool.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - they can play that card up to 28th March 2019 and then help prevent a catastrophic exit by a last minute extension. In such a situation, facing a meltdown on both sides, I suspect that both sides would agree to an extra 6 months (or whatever)
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
I mean that if No Deal is the outcome that will be very painful for us, but also very painful for a lot of their citizens.
But it will be more painful for us. Much more. And the EU could live with that, though it would prefer a deal. But the imperative for them is that the UK comes off worst. And it will.
Are there any past precedents for 'what happens next' after European countries receive deliberately poor deals ...
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
I don't see what the Saudis gained by murdering him in the consulate, they could have kidnapped him from outside, run him over, stabbed him, gunned him down, or poisoned him, and then blamed some shadowy "other". Inside the consulate such claims are ludicrously implausible.
It's unclear, but it would make more sense if it was a bungled attempt to kidnap him and spirit him back to Saudi Arabia for a show trial.
They were planning to put him back together again?
The latest account of Khashoggi's alleged killing is more disturbing than ever:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552 ...Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same....
Jesus Christ. Why?? What do they gain dismembering him alive? Apart from some sadistic pleasure?
Killing him by itself is surely enough to frighten dissidents into silence. This just makes the Saudi regime look psychotic, worse than North Korea, and deserving of similar isolation.
There is legal doubt whether a measure intended to have permanent effect, such as the backstop, can even be agreed on the basis of Article 50, which is about arrangements for departure and not final outcomes. Even if the UK and EU27 agreed to a permanent backstop as part of the withdrawal agreement, it is not obvious that it could ever be enforced at law. It rests on Article 50 alone.
To say that the backstop requirement should not be part of the withdrawal agreement is not to say it should be ignored. But it could have been dealt with by other means so that the withdrawal arrangements for citizenship, the financial settlement, the transition arrangements and so on were not in jeopardy. Indeed, in view of its sheer importance, a backstop should be a distinct agreement between the UK, Ireland and the rest of the EU, and not something shoehorned into an agreement intended for exit issues.
If there is still no progress on the backstop issue in the next month or so, the UK and EU should consider opening a separate dialogue on the Irish border issue, with the view to a discrete agreement. All sides should accept that such permanent arrangements (and the nature of a backstop is potentially permanent) on a sensitive topic are better dealt with other than in an exit agreement.
This is obviously raising a valid issue - how can the EU claim a permanent NI backstop is possible under A50 but an all UK backstop is not? Answer - they are lying.
I don’t think they have said that (apologies if I missed some comments on this last night) - as I understand it the NI backstop is a concession that they have offered which is beneficial because it allows NI to be treated as SM/CU member without cash contributions or FOM. The EU aren’t willing to extend those benefits to the whole of the UK for obvious anti-cakeist reasons.
If the UK honours the commitment in the December 2017 agreement and unilaterally maintains full alignment with the EU on the matters covered then this suffices to provide an all-UK backstop. It doesn’t give the UK much in the way of benefits (for example as I read it, it possibly gives the EU access to UK market with no reciprocal access) but it is possible and as far as I know the EU haven’t said it is impossible,
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
I don't see what the Saudis gained by murdering him in the consulate, they could have kidnapped him from outside, run him over, stabbed him, gunned him down, or poisoned him, and then blamed some shadowy "other". Inside the consulate such claims are ludicrously implausible.
It's unclear, but it would make more sense if it was a bungled attempt to kidnap him and spirit him back to Saudi Arabia for a show trial.
I think Obama correctly realised that the best chance for some form of liberal democracy to emerge in the Middle East lay in Iran not Saudi, albeit the Iranian regime can be just as brutal, it is also more fractured.
May telling the EU she really does not have the parliamentary support for the options they are currently insisting upon is not bully ramming.
The EU27 know well the perilousness of May's parliamentary arithmetic, they're not idiots. However:
1) They feel that May's dismal position is entirely self-inflicted, and her attempts to use a mixture of weaponised pity and tabloid jingoism to try to bully the EU into thinking that it's somehow their problem has (rightly) fallen on deaf ears.
2) They have, like everyone else, "done the math", and realised that the best chance they've got of getting what they want is to ensure that May remains entirely isolated on all fronts, so her only way out is either SM/CU with Labour support, a second referendum, or a catastrophic Brexit.
I can see that that might not turn out well for them as well as for us.
Au Contraire - t the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
l alernatives.
Barnier & Co do not have to deliver ANYTHING. They did not start this. They have always bee clear that we have two options - stay or go.
All 29th March is about is whether we stay or go on that date. The choices are ours and always have been.
you miss the point
Barnier has done a good deal for his side, but its not a deal unless its delivered. And he has to deliver it to the EU 27. The european press is getting increasingly twitchy about no deal and for the first time I am reading articles critical of the lack of progress.
something like 5 million jobs in the EU depend on trade with the UK. The EU will have a massive budget hole and Ireland is facing major problems.
just because Liam Fox said the EU has risks doesnt mean to say it isnt true.
The Danish papers are now full of stories expressing extreme concern that a failure to do a deal will cause all sorts of expensive and stupid problems such the port of Esbjerg having no parking - they hate the idea of Brexit but also feel ‘no deal’ is a choice and not one Denmark should allow
The point, I think is, that the EU can force the issue if it wants to. The question is whether it decides the NI backstop is more effort than it's worth, particularly if it can achieve its aims another way. So far it hasn't budged. No Deal will never work for us however. Ultimately we will accept whatever the EU offers us.
Most people born in the 1990s would have become politically aware since the financial crash. And bearing in mind the disastrous blunders of elected politicians in the U.K. since that time it is hardly surprising that young people are not enamoured of the system that seems to be set on destroying their future.
I posted a couple of weeks ago about the political attitudes of those entering the electorate in 2022 and asked whether there is any long term political attitude tracking of 13-18 year olds. Does anyone know of anything?
I suspect if you had a 2000s row on this graphic, it might scare us even more.
Whenever you see Alastair Campbell banging on about stopping Brexit, cast your mind back to the time he thought it was perfectly reasonable for Gordon Brown to stay in number 10 for 6 months after he lost in 2010
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
I don't see what the Saudis gained by murdering him in the consulate, they could have kidnapped him from outside, run him over, stabbed him, gunned him down, or poisoned him, and then blamed some shadowy "other". Inside the consulate such claims are ludicrously implausible.
It's unclear, but it would make more sense if it was a bungled attempt to kidnap him and spirit him back to Saudi Arabia for a show trial.
A bungled kidnap attempt does not accidentally turn into a live dismemberment, beginning with the cutting off of fingers and ending with decapitation, all done by an expert doctor/butcher.
True, but you are assuming that that unsourced account is accurate. Perhaps it is, but you have to wonder how the source got the information.
All I was saying was that a bungled kidnap attempt might explain why they killed him in the consulate. It's hard to see any other explanation.
I think Varadkar, for one, would be very badly damaged by No Deal. Perhaps unfairly, but it would be a terrible outcome for Ireland, that happened on his watch, and that is never a good thing for any leader. He would get blamed (as well as the Brits and Brussels).
There was an interesting moment on the Today programme this morning when Simon Coveney was asked the obvious question: Wouldn't No Deal mean exactly the hard border you are trying to avoid? He seemed flummoxed by it.
I was half asleep when that interview was on. He seemed a bit hysterical. Would that be fair?
Whenever you see Alastair Campbell banging on about stopping Brexit, cast your mind back to the time he thought it was perfectly reasonable for Gordon Brown to stay in number 10 for 6 months after he lost in 2010
That was indeed amusing, if only for seeing Bolton throw a wobbly. Had he been knocking them back a bit?
Which one?
Still beggars belief that a self confessed psychotic alcoholic was given such an important role in running the country, and that people think nothing of it/take him seriously. Imagine a country we didn’t like having such people in positions of influence
Alanbrooke, you really are a moron. Made up childish insults about someone you don't know is really pathetic, and probably suggests you have some weird thing about bestiality yourself. Can you not put a cogent argument together? You clearly know no more know about negotiation than you know how to spell it. Please also try and learn how to use an apostrophe, or didn't they teach that in estate agency skool.
Barnier & Co do not have to deliver ANYTHING. They did not start this. They have always bee clear that we have two options - stay or go.
All 29th March is about is whether we stay or go on that date. The choices are ours and always have been.
You are wrong.
Barnier and Co. all signed up to Article 50. That has an obligation in 50.2:
"2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament."
Barnier and Co. have signed up to an OBLIGATION - "shall negotiate and conclude". Including within that arrangements relating to "its future relationship". A No Deal Brexit represents a breach of the EU's Treaty obligations.
Whilst that may be unenforceable in practice, it gives the UK some considerable moral high ground.
It's impossible to say at the moment whether that account is accurate, but what seems to be undeniable is that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents. It seems the oddest place to carry out an extra-judicial killing: utterly baffling as well as horrendous.
I don't see what the Saudis gained by murdering him in the consulate, they could have kidnapped him from outside, run him over, stabbed him, gunned him down, or poisoned him, and then blamed some shadowy "other". Inside the consulate such claims are ludicrously implausible.
It's unclear, but it would make more sense if it was a bungled attempt to kidnap him and spirit him back to Saudi Arabia for a show trial.
A bungled kidnap attempt does not accidentally turn into a live dismemberment, beginning with the cutting off of fingers and ending with decapitation, all done by an expert doctor/butcher.
True, but you are assuming that that unsourced account is accurate. Perhaps it is, but you have to wonder how the source got the information.
All I was saying was that a bungled kidnap attempt might explain why they killed him in the consulate. It's hard to see any other explanation.
As unsourced accounts go, it seems pretty believable to me. No one involved has an interest in making this stuff up. It's hugely awkward for Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the USA.
I think Varadkar, for one, would be very badly damaged by No Deal. Perhaps unfairly, but it would be a terrible outcome for Ireland, that happened on his watch, and that is never a good thing for any leader. He would get blamed (as well as the Brits and Brussels).
There was an interesting moment on the Today programme this morning when Simon Coveney was asked the obvious question: Wouldn't No Deal mean exactly the hard border you are trying to avoid? He seemed flummoxed by it.
I was half asleep when that interview was on. He seemed a bit hysterical. Would that be fair?
He started off quite well, but couldn't really handle questions about the logical inconsistency of the Irish/EU position.
The latest account of Khashoggi's alleged killing is more disturbing than ever:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552 ...Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same....
Jesus Christ. Why?? What do they gain dismembering him alive? Apart from some sadistic pleasure?
Killing him by itself is surely enough to frighten dissidents into silence. This just makes the Saudi regime look psychotic, worse than North Korea, and deserving of similar isolation.
Any human with a soul must despise Saudi Arabia, quite possibly the most despicable regime on earth alongside North Korea. However it is not hard to work out why realpolitik ensures we must pretend to be their friends.
What happens if the Saudi government is toppled? It won't turn into Norway. It will be taken over by jihadis - Wahhabists and Salafists, with access to endless oil billions and a huge military. Think ISIS with nukes.
That's why we prop up the Saudi royals. Because the alternative, incredibly, is even WORSE.
No it isn't. It is never worth propping up such a regime.
I think Varadkar, for one, would be very badly damaged by No Deal. Perhaps unfairly, but it would be a terrible outcome for Ireland, that happened on his watch, and that is never a good thing for any leader. He would get blamed (as well as the Brits and Brussels).
There was an interesting moment on the Today programme this morning when Simon Coveney was asked the obvious question: Wouldn't No Deal mean exactly the hard border you are trying to avoid? He seemed flummoxed by it.
I was half asleep when that interview was on. He seemed a bit hysterical. Would that be fair?
He started off quite well, but couldn't really handle questions about the logical inconsistency of the Irish/EU position.
Which boils down to “don’t put up a hard border or we’ll put up a hard border”.
Comments
https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1052532196182020099
I believe there is a tendency for younger people through the ages to believe their right man (or woman) to be right above all else, even pesky things like Parliaments. Older people tend to have more recall of seeing their former idols fall from grace and need to be removed. Older people now will remember seeing Blair go from Teflon Tony to the hated figure he is now. Even older people the same with Thatcher. Younger people don't have that experience yet.
My generation (born in the 80s) are the youngest to remember Blair, from his victory to his removal. Those a decade younger don't.
The payback for the EU is to see if the UK "blinks" when faced with the WTO cliff-edge. If, a month or two out, we "blink" either Brexit will be stopped or we agree to the EU's terms.
They hold all the cards - as was said from day 1
https://twitter.com/kimwillsher1/status/1052514469270749184
Does not appear to reflect UK unilateral declaration of EU citizens rights in event of no deal.
TBH I think our politicians are too spineless to walk off the cliff-edge. The ERG is a bag of noise and Labour MPs will not even do anything about the nutjobs taking over their party.
To date May has rolled over on the major points. The best thiing can happen is the deal is taken off the table by us. Its the only way prgress will be made, Barnier and co have to deliver if they dont their parties will get hammered in the Euro elections. The last thing they want is a euro sceptic EU parliament. Already their numbers are looking bad as all the big countries are butchering their christian democrats and mainsteam socialists ( the core of the EU consensus ) and replacing them with more colourful alernatives.
All 29th March is about is whether we stay or go on that date. The choices are ours and always have been.
Miss Vance, thanks for sharing that young people/strongman tweet. The demographics account it's from often has excellent stats, snippets, and the odd jest.
The *only* way I see an extension to A50 being requested and agreed is if an agreement has already been done before March 29 but there's not been time to ratify it. In that case, a few more weeks to tidy up the paperwork would be sensible.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/theresa-mays-mufasa-becomes-a-problem-for-downing-street/
That is why the backstop is so unacceptable to the DUP - by keeping NI in the orbit of the EU as the UK leaves it probably makes things worse. Their solution is not going to abandon Brexit, which will simply return to the existing path of integration, but to veto the backstop, which they are perfectly positioned to do.
Hard Brexit is great for unionists in NI and Scotland. In NI it will cause divergence very quickly; in Scotland the idea of voting for a hard border between Scotland and England to gain independence is for the birds.
If anything, the DUP have no conflict between Brexit and the Union. A better piece might be that Scottish Unionists would realise the opportunity in Hard Brexit. Ruth has taken the first steps into a bigger World...:)
And before I get told off by Big_G for having an opinion on Scotland - everyone is entitled to their opinion and cannot really be limited by either living there or marrying someone. If it were, I would be an expert as my wife is Irish...
Barnier has done a good deal for his side, but its not a deal unless its delivered. And he has to deliver it to the EU 27. The european press is getting increasingly twitchy about no deal and for the first time I am reading articles critical of the lack of progress.
something like 5 million jobs in the EU depend on trade with the UK. The EU will have a massive budget hole and Ireland is facing major problems.
just because Liam Fox said the EU has risks doesnt mean to say it isnt true.
The problem is that under the radar, the issue of jurisdiction over the WA has been settled by another May sellout - there will be a joint committee but all items of EU law must be referred to the ECJ. They of course will rule whatever the Commission tells them to, so they know they can have it both ways and get away with it.
For the record, jurisdiction was another thing DD told May never to concede. Noone in their right mind would enter a treaty subject to the law of only one of the parties, but that probably explains why May wants to do it.
Oh, and the coalition didn't provide generous tax treatment for landlords. And the protection of old-age pensions was only really a smoothing effect: pensioners did very badly (relative to employees) during the build up to the financial crash, but suffered less after the crash. What else would anyone expect? Pensions inevitably work like that.
So, yes, it is entirely unfounded in fact, and it is highly irresponsible of people to play this up as some kind of generational conflict.
Nor was this just passive support - they allowed themselves to be used as the conduit of funding for campaigning in Britain. The source of that funding is yet to be determined.
They are able, unlike the Conservatives, to resile from this with only medium embarrassment ("this is not the Brexit we ordered"). They may yet do so.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552
...Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same....
In my own case I lived in the borders and Edinburgh for 11 years, voted in Scottish elections, married a Scot from the north east, and have family across Scotland and travel there twice a year.
In my own case I lived in the borders and Edinburgh for 11 years, voted in Scottish elections, married a Scot from the north east, and have family across Scotland and travel there twice a year.
He has stated that he voted Leave. I rest my case.
Reminds me of reading about Beria making Lakoba's (his former boss, and deceased enemy) wife go insane by putting a snake in her cell, and killing his kids. [The joys of reading about 1930s Russia].
Refusal, or an inability, to engage with the world as it actually is would appear to be base camp for many ardent leavers.
This isn't a 'my generation is better' argument but I struggle to see what is unique from the 90s onwards that would see such a shift in attitude. A preference that 'my side's whoever that is, should not be held back by others as it is so morally correct? Again I struggle to see the uniqueness.
stick to grooming dogs
we've seen the fall of the previous 'rival' system?
I also think that democratic politicians have done an increasing amount to undermine democratic norms. There is less attempt to find common ground and a greater tendency to paint the other side as beyond the pale. If the other side are beyond the pale then why risk the people voting for them? It is only the logical endpoint of contemporary democratic rhetoric.
As for state pensions: yes they have been protected, and rightly so. They are not exactly mega-generous in the first place, and they are taxable.
Meanwhile the young have been protected in the best possible way: by the extraordinary achievement of low unemployment despite all the problems of the post-crash fallout.
This 'at the expense of the young' is divisive, unpleasant, damaging and just plain wrong.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/saudi-journalist-khashoggi-decapitated-after-fingers-cut-off-reports-137960
These people of course are our 'allies'.
The idea, though, that the EU27 will compromise on core areas to appease us is pure fantasy as they know the damage to us is much greater than it is to them collectively, so as . They will do what is in their collective good, and who can blame them for that? The easiest deal in history is just another whopper of a lie.
You can therefore understand how it was a real shocker for our "negotiating" team to hear that the EU would be forced to run the kind of solid external border we had argued for ai its external border in Ireland...
Its like the idiots who demand much tougher checks for foreigners coming through the UK border who are outraged at the idea of reciprocal checks on us at someone else's border.
It is still worth pointing out why we are where we are so we can avoid making the same mistakes again.
The basic error was to play party politics with Brexit. The only way to start making things better is to open up the process within the UK.
But yes it has achieved the primary aim of getting more young people on the ladder, albeit their equity position is inferior to what it would have been if H2B did not exist.
https://youtu.be/8DnQcO17uYY
In unrelated news:
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1052557048716517377
https://twitter.com/IsraaAlGhomgham/status/1051907856251772929?s=19
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
If the UK honours the commitment in the December 2017 agreement and unilaterally maintains full alignment with the EU on the matters covered then this suffices to provide an all-UK backstop. It doesn’t give the UK much in the way of benefits (for example as I read it, it possibly gives the EU access to UK market with no reciprocal access) but it is possible and as far as I know the EU haven’t said it is impossible,
I suspect if you had a 2000s row on this graphic, it might scare us even more.
All I was saying was that a bungled kidnap attempt might explain why they killed him in the consulate. It's hard to see any other explanation.
Still beggars belief that a self confessed psychotic alcoholic was given such an important role in running the country, and that people think nothing of it/take him seriously. Imagine a country we didn’t like having such people in positions of influence
Barnier and Co. all signed up to Article 50. That has an obligation in 50.2:
"2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament."
Barnier and Co. have signed up to an OBLIGATION - "shall negotiate and conclude". Including within that arrangements relating to "its future relationship". A No Deal Brexit represents a breach of the EU's Treaty obligations.
Whilst that may be unenforceable in practice, it gives the UK some considerable moral high ground.
As an aside, I think you're spot on about Saudi Arabia.