Yeah. I think it is the end of an Empire, but it needs to happen sooner or later.
In my local coffee shop the staff are Eastern European but many of them work here to save money. When you are young single and childless you can find ways to live on £8.50 an hour. When you return home the money you have saved will go much further than in London. If you are local and have to try to bring up a family on £8.50 an hour it cannot be done without state benefits.
It seems many people were misled into using the referendum as a protest vote with no real understanding of the consequences of an out vote. The Brexiteers are now claiming that no promises were made, and very little is going to change in immigration policy but the feeling of being in control is what matters.
Yes, they may be pinheaded, but the more they get shafted by politicians the more pinheaded they will become, here in England, France, Germany, Hungary etc.
It’s a well known, widely used currency and the US has a stable enough economy that it works. It doesn’t need to be perfect to be the preferred solution. Plus, in this case, the US is probably one of the best insulated Western countries from Brexit.
While there seems to be quite a bit of indignation in Scotland now, perhaps enough to initiate an new Independence Referendum. Is a scottish Independence economically viable? Aren’t those new cries for Independence just a momentous fad? Would Scotland really cut of it’s nose just to spite England (same way England did this with the EU) assuming it’s economically unwise?
Do I get the latest discussion correctly that a high percentage of those that voted leave saw the referendum like some sort of protest vote against established political parties, never expecting it to really happen?
The split from the Catholic Church in the 16th century, the Tudor creation of Modern England and the concomitant military expansion as part of that creation within the islands of Britain and the New World.
As this guy explains, yes, a protest vote, but more specifically, one rooted in ever-declining fortunes – a punch up, thrown at those who have for so long been punching down.
ETA: And from what I’ve seen, it’s not true that a large percentage of those who voted Leave never really expected it to happen. Saying so seems like another way of branding the those who voted Leave as reactionary idiots (and thus of being idiotic oneself, by ignoring the reality that many working-class people actually can see through the fog of neoliberal propaganda, which tells them that if they just accept their ever-declining circumstances, things will eventually turn around for them).
Yes, Scotland is economically viable as a nation. It’s contributed more than its population share in taxes to the UK budget for something like 29 out of the last 30 years. It has a strong export sector, and so on. In European terms it’s fairly similar in size and population to Denmark.
Whitehall, meanwhile, will be severely stretched by the mammoth exercise of withdrawal. The civil service has zero spare capacity after the cuts of the last five years: many departments have seen budget cuts of over a quarter since 2010, and total civil service employment has fallen by almost a fifth in the same period. Further spending reductions for the coming years were set out in last year’s spending review. The UK has no current capacity at all in trade negotiations, as this is a job that has been outsourced to Brussels. The task of reviewing 40 years of EU and domestic legislation could take five or ten years. It will make it very difficult for the government to embark on any new policy while it reviews all these old policies. Whitehall also risks becoming very clumsy in handling important relationships (such as with Scotland: see below) because it will be so severely distracted.
Ah, so brexit is just creating the need for Her Majesty’s Jobs program.
As left factions in the UK (and US) continue organizing around the economic (i.e. individual debt relief) issues, there are opportunities for alignment with the internationalist democratic left in the EU.
Mixed in with the harm from the wrong votes for Brexit are opportunities to accelerate progress for working communities. Debt relief is a big one.
As in the US, conservative leaders should continue to factionalize over the conflicts driven by their supply-side policies of tolerating heavy debt for working people.
All the conservatives have to offer working voters in response to debt and low wages is racism.
The bar on the left to take more and more initiative gets lower every day.
I supported him becoming leader, certainly ahead of the Blairite alternatives, and I know he still commands support amongst the party members, but his MPs loathe him. I’m not sure how you can rebuild a party when it won’t work with you.
He just doesn’t seem very good at the game of politics, his performances at PMQs never held Cameron to account, he totally missed the chance to attack him over IDS’s resignation, and he just generally seems uncomfortable in his role.
Yes, the press is out to get him and misses no opportunity to make him look silly, but he needs to be better than that. He (and the Labour Party in general) actually needs to provide an effective opposition and he doesn’t seem capable.
Not that I think a Labour Party lead by Jarvis, or Hunt, or Chuka Umunna would actually offer a lot of change from the Tories, policy-wise.
It’s job is to win an election to form a progressive social democratic government. He needs to win wide enough support to do that.
If you live here and know what is going on it is hard not to.
My father was in despair this morning because his cleaner voted for Leave. Why? Because that Obama came over here and told us to stay and she wasn’t going to be told what to do by a black man.
Yeah, I’m sure a lot of them are reactionary idiots who seem to fully confirm that narrative. But, it is the case that so many of them are so bad off financially, with no end in sight for the ever-downward slide, and surely it’s also the case that many of them know, at least generally, who the culprits are.
I suspect that he is going to be pushed out, but here’s a few points:
The Labour party is not the PLP. A lot of those Labour members are only there because the national party supported them. They are representatives who have, frankly, got above themselves. Labour in parliament has been hijacked by people who have simply adopted the party most likely to get them elected (as did many Conservatives). The result is the general dissatisfaction with Parliamentary democracy.
Politics should not be a game. It is in the English speaking world, and that hasn’t done much for us. The Conservatives treat the Commons as a public school debating society when the masters are absent. We need to get away from that. Refusing to play the yah-boo-sucks point scoring game made things more difficult for Cameron, not less, because Corbyn realised that the television audience are not impressed by it.
On the other hand, he did achieve several government U-turns. That is providing opposition.
It is a pity that Corbyn will be removed because I think he would do well against Johnson. The constant bluster and failure to answer questions against persistence is more likely to expose Johnson than trying to play his own game, at which he is very good. This afternoon I watched a village cricket match where a fast bowler was trying to get out an experienced batsman. As he got more desperate his balls were getting shorter, and he went for two sixes and four byes in short order, followed by a couple more sixes. I’d have replaced him with the horrible sort of bowler I used to be, consistent on a length, accurate and rather flat, because that really frustrates that kind of batsman and after a bit they take a wild swing. Not fun to watch but it gets them out.
Clearly then, you and your father have been hanging around in some rather unsavoury circles. Try talking to some of those with some wisdom and experience and you’ll get different answers. Stop trying to equate independence with bigotry, it makes you sound very bitter.
Perhaps we’ll be able to make our own trade deals with those countries instead. We buy far too many products from those nations to have them simply turn their backs on us and end up losing billions in lost revenue, possibly even having to put their own workers on the dole due to lost productivity and trade.
Oh ye of little faith.[quote=“milliefink, post:360, topic:80366”]
You don’t say…
[/quote]
I certainly do, or perhaps you deliberately misunderstand my quote. Here, I’ll re-state it.
“I’ve been working long, hard, late hours recently.”
Quite…[quote=“KarlS, post:367, topic:80366”]
after joining the UK consented to every step along the way.
[/quote]
The politicians in charge certainly did, the electorate certainly didn’t.
The small-minded myth-making came straight from those old Etonians and political and economic establishments who wanted us shackled to an undemocratic and unaccountable political union.
You mean take democratic and independent destiny into its own hands? To be free to make trade agreements with the rest of the developing world unhindered? To save millions of pounds weekly to allocate to areas of our own choice? To have a chance to reject TTIP without having it imposed upon us without a say? Sounds like a win/win for all to me.
Calm yourselves. Armageddon isn’t upon us. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
