I hope your wedding goes ok and that it doesn't get much hotter. We are getting large amounts of rain at the moment, it feels like it has been raining for two months, the weather is definitely becoming less stable. I would start a thread on climate change, but I'm no expert on it.

How are things in Sydney? It looks terrifying on the news.

Unwarranted cynicism at this stage I think. It's a huge problem. At least give Boris the chance to address it before shooting him down..

Perhaps you are right, although since I wrote that, Eddie Mair was interviewing a political commentator who spelt out what I said. This understanding of the government is already in the political discourse.

I suggest you need to get on board with what it means for an administration to be lacking in integrity, truth and honesty. Have you noticed that Johnson in the House of Commons and all the government ministers who were on the media today are saying 36 billion for the NHS and that it's a big increase in spending and 40 new hospitals. That it will be easy to negotiate a trade deal with the EU in 11 months, because we are in perfect alignment on tariffs and regulations etc. All which have been proven to be untruthful by analysts and fact checkers. They are not going to let up, they are just getting going.

Oh and we won't know if he actually addresses it, rather than just claiming to have done so.

Yes, but if the opposition doesn't agree to cross party talks the government will start shouting that they don't care about social care. Although if the Labour Party gets a good orator he/she should be able to stand their ground, it will be a few years before social care becomes an acute crisis.

Judging by the Queen's speech today Johnson is not a good orator, he's not over the detail, or the subject even. He's nothing more than a showman, UK Trump.

I came here to point out a cynical development. The government is proposing cross party talks to come up with a solution to social care. This is a trap to blame their own failure to deal with it on opposition parties. So if the opposition parties cooperate, then when the government fails, they can blame the opposition. Alternatively if the opposition refuses to cooperate, then they will get the blame for not caring about social care.

This government is showing its colours, integrity, truth, honesty has left the building. They will use any underhand tactics they can to hold on to power. Next we can expect them to mimic the Labour Party so as to move onto Labour political territory, leaving them politically homeless. The fact that it will only be hollow promises and they won't deliver is irrelevant, because they will just bluff and bluster and claim black is white, or white is black.

IOW they don't have a potential partner already in the EU to lobby for them.

They do have a partner, the EU itself.

Quite so, remember Johnson's plans for a bridge between Scotland and Ireland. So that EU citizens can move seamlessly between parts of the EU without having to go via Little England. We wouldn't want pesky EU nationals sneaking in by the back door.

let's see if they make a similar declaration for Scotland.

This article lays it out

In Brussels yesterday, Blair met Guy Verhofstadt and learnt how Belgium handles freedom of movement for European citizens who want to work and live in Belgium. Measures include identity cards, registration when a European arrives or moves homes, the obligation to leave Belgium after three months without a job, a requirement to take out health care, unemployment and other insurance.

As a result, although Belgium has about one third more of its population from other EU member states than Britain, there is none of the obsession with other Europeans that was central to the Brexit debate.

(https://www.euractiv.com/section/uk-europe/opinion/tony-blair-is-right-on-immigration-but-did-nothing-to-control-freedom-of-movement/)

I agree that ideas like benefit tourism and tight control of immigration are a myth. They don't go on about immigration anymore because it is toxic, they can be accused of racism. They simply reduced all discussion about Brexit to two slogans, "get it done" and "the will of the people". There were more remainers in parliament than leavers and yet no one took the government to task on the issue. There was an open goal, but we required a statesman/woman to lead the opposition. Corbyn failed in this, even though he was also a leaver, he could have taken the initiative and won the argument and given us a Labour deal. I know that his party and support was split down the middle, which left him hamstrung, but that was no excuse for in action.

Yes there are some benefits which are in reality small beer. The fishing rights would benefit only a few hundred boats at most. Those rights in question were granted when we entered the EU, but for some strange reason, the fishermen sold the quoters or rights to the EU fishermen. Effectively they voluntarily gave them away. Also I expect the fishing rights would be one of the first concessions to be thrown under the bus during the negotiations.

I have never heard of a case where the EU courts caused a problem and a forthright Prime minister would probably be able to demand a change in the rules on live animal exports.

I've heard that we will get back our Blue passports, but it turns out we don't need to leave the EU to do that. As far as I know all the benefits suggested are not actively prevented by the EU except for divergence on regulation, tariffs and the liberty to have total control of the movement of citizens and their benefits.

Of all the benefits I have come across, the freedom to control the movement of citizens and their benefits is the greatest and certainly from my experience this is the primary reason for the vote to leave.

However it has been pointed out following the vote that there were a number of means of controlling these citizens while in the EU, but they were never exercised by the government, during the critical periods of mass immigration. So it was the incompetence of our government which caused the circumstances which lead to the referendum.

It's probably as good an idea as the Scots leaving Britain, which is as much based upon their desire for independence and desire to lose their association with England than it is whether they'll actually economically benefit.

Scotland would gain a great deal of independence, as currently it is almost entirely controlled from Westminster. Britain is already independent of the EU, except for certain treaties of cooperation between a number of independent countries.

I think independence has value in its own right, even if means a loss of economic benefit. It's entirely possible that Canada, for example, would economically benefit if it ceded certain powers to the US, but I can fully understand why Canada wouldn't do that.

In the case of Britain about 40% of our trade is through and benefits from the common market, plus the thing I value most, total freedom of movement throughout the European Union, including access to all benefits.

Except that didn't happen following the Great Recession.

Do you think that the financial crisis was a blip and in a year or two the world economy will be booming again?

They'll just wait for them to turn 45 years old. Older people are more conservative because they like the way things were, even though things weren't like the way they remembered them. I can say this because I'm over 45 and I remember things being better even though they weren't.

I gave my reasons for why that won't happen, in my opinion. Although I expect a proportion to switch for financial reasons like, pensions, or inheritance tax relief. But I see a loss of confidence in the usefulness of a free market capitalist model following the global financial crisis.

Also regarding change, our system is such that now Johnson has lots of power and can do almost anything he wants and no one can stop him for the next five years.

But this is politics 1.0. It's basically quite arrogant not to understand how the other side will take your views. A mainstream party ought to look at what it says.

Yes of course, but I don't know if you were aware, there is an equally pervasive issue with Islamophobia in the Tory party and opposition MPs repeatedly called this out, but it didn't cut through in the media and was repeatedly laughed off by Tory politicians. While the media couldn't stop talking about the media circus they had created around anti semitism in the Labour Party.


"I'm not sure if he was your best hope. I put my hope on politicians that take extremely seriously and treat with respect the people who oppose them and think differently. Far too often we just dismiss the opposing views and start to believe our own biased views."

Did you notice that Johnson and his team would say one thing and then the opposite in the next sentence, or the next day. Just repeat meaningless populist slogans constantly, ignore any kind of critical questioning. The problem for people who were opposed to Brexit, is that once article 50 was triggered there was a ticking clock, so all the government needed to do was distract and delay until the clock ran out.

Talking about views on the Brexit issue, can anyone name a tangible benefit to leaving the EU?

If he’d resigned several months ago, then yeah. If and buts don’t matter now.

Perhaps if a remain alliance had been formed and they had held back in their manifesto, which was seen as to good to be true. I lay the blame for a failure to do either of these at the door of Corbyn and McDonnell respectively.

"Labour party complaining about him being too centrist/right-leaning"

Yes, I regard Blair as Tory light, he just carried the Tory batton for a few years.


"Personally I don’t think ONLY the popular vote should determine members of parliament but it seems ridiculous to treat a marginal win in this or that county as a victory and shut out half of the population of that constituency."


Agreed, we need Proportional representation now. The tragic duplicity of this election is that Johnson used it as a solution to the Brexit stalemate, by calling it a Brexit election and campaigning on that ticket. Thus settling the developing questioning of the wisdom of the referendum and its result, as the reality was emerging. But in a way which conflates the issue with other things and disenfranchised millions of voters through the constituency system.

"I guess commonsense isn’t exactly synonymous with politics though."

It went out of the window this time.

Ok, I'm listening, but the original point I was making that you replied to was about a long term (over a 100 year period) stream of anti socialism dogma. I wasn't really referring to recent developments, but rather that recent developments sit on the top of an edifice of anti socialist dogma and prejudice, Comy', Marxist, Trotskyist. They will let the Comy's in by the back door.

I am aware of Blair's thoughts on this and accept that there is some anti-semitism in the Labour Party, but not as much as claimed by the media. The subtlety of the distinction between "anti-Israeli foreign policy" sentiment and "anti-Israel" sentiment. Has been exploited by critics and sometimes mistakenly blurred by those being criticised. This story is then blown up into some massive crisis by the populist media and lots of their loyal readers take it as read.

As an aside, the interviewer in the video you linked to, James OBrian, who has worked as a reporter on one of the papers I highlighted ( The Express) agrees with me on the media bias and the ways in which over years it turns their readers in the direction these lead them in. Also that it has effected the result of this election.

I agree that this was not pivotal in the result and that there were a number of other important factors, which we can look at.

Actually, I am not partisan, or a supporter of Corbyn particularly. I am actually a supporter of the Green Party. My beef in this is that I am anti-Brexit and Corbyn was our best hope if somehow stopping it.

Well the evidence is there in print, the bias and attack of any consideration of socialism by the right wing media. I don't see any left wing media generating bias in the other direction which is being fed to the metropolitan socialists and the young. The magazine Socialist Worker, the only populist left wing paper I know of was desolved in April this year. There is one left leaning mainstream newspaper The Gardian, but this paper gives politically balanced intellectual analysis of politics and is only left leaning by contrast to the right wing papers which predominate. It is widely regarded as having the highest standards of reporting in the UK. Here are some of the front pages of high circulation papers in the run up to polling day. There is one tabloid facing the other way politically, the Mirror, but it doesn't criticise right wing politics.

We wake up to the exciting (not) news that the cliff edge no deal is back on the table. Johnson is going to legislate to make it illegal to extend beyond December 2020. The idea being to crank up the pressure on the EU to capitulate. Talk about burning your bridges.

Nice summary, I would add that the drip feeding of anti socialism poison goes right back to the origin of the Labour Party and has become endemic now everywhere except for the metropolitan socialist elite and the younger educated voter.

I predict a shift to the left as the demographic changes

I can't see the likelihood that the Tory's can recruit sufficient numbers from anyone under 45 years old, due to the fallout and rise of personal debt, and poor economic prospects amongst the young since the credit crunch. Also the gradual failing of the real economy and inexorable rise in the national debt. This is the existential crisis which the party faces and why I keep saying that the Tory's are struggling to save their party. Brexit was their latest effort, which has worked in that it brought an extra layer of support for them in the election from leavers who wanted to "get it done" and castrated UKIP/Brexit party. The next stage, although probably not intended, is the break up of the union, purging the SNP, leaving a strongly Tory little England.

but I do think there's some denial in this thread that perhaps the voters actually voted exactly as they wanted, as they believed, and they did it with their eyes wide open

You may be right, as I am clearly on one side of the argument. I would like to debate it with someone on the other side but they haven't turned up. I don't think that you would be able to say that I don't understand the arguments though, or don't rehearse them.

I would point out that there are probably as many different forms of Brexit as there are leave voters. The referendum was perhaps too simple a proposition and one which Cameron assumed would vote to remain. He didn't consider that it would go the other way and was intending to use it as a way to silence UKIP which was poaching his support. There was no detail about what Leave would mean, which resulted in 2 years of squabbling about what leaving meant in terms of future trade, legal and citizen circumstances that we would get.

Now we have an election which Johnson called "the Brexit election", surely the impasse should have been broken by a confirmatory referendum. But it is widely acknowledged among commentators that the result would probably go the other way. This means of deciding the way forward on Brexit confuses the vote with other election issues and disenfranchises many voters who would like their vote to indicate the view on the issue of Brexit. For example, nearly everyone I know of my own age voted remain and all of them, except two, live in safe Tory seats, so they were disenfranchised in the decision on "the Brexit election". Also, now that Johnson has a large majority, he is at liberty to bring on any kind of Brexit he likes with no redress to the electorate, or effective opposition in Parliament.

Yes, Johnson might deliver, I'm sure he has the talent, unlike Trump. However he has a large and difficult brief with some quite excruciating tensions built in. So when push comes to shove, I expect he will put party before country again and push his new converts under the bus. But these people might be the very people he needs to keep onside if he is to save the party. So here is the first tension. Between his traditional support which is privelidged, inward looking, wealth and business oriented and his new support which is crying out for investment, welfare and a wholesale reconstruction of deprived areas. There is more to this tension, but I will leave it at that for now.

Secondly, the issue of the Union, Johnson will be desperate to retain Scotland in the Union, he doesn't give a toss about Northern Ireland, which he said before the election. But in reality the only way he can keep Scotland is to deliver a soft Brexit. While his backers and base want a hard Brexit. If however Northern Ireland unifies with Ireland, that in itself might make keeping Scotland impossible.

Historians still might say that it was the infighting of the Conservative party which broke up the Union.

Next its Scotland, would that be Sexit, I wonder.

Would Heseltine have done that?

I suggest you listen to the Peter Hennessy interview with Heseltine, you can see his vision for the country there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07m5gwm

Johnson has already said that he wants to model his vision on Heseltine, somehow I don't think he is up to it, but he might well surprise us.

I thought it despicable that Johnson's first celebratory visit was to Sedgfield, Blair's seat. Rubbing salt into the wound like that is not Heseltine's style.

They disliked Corbyn as a leader, also seeing him as a possible security risk and not a good ambassador for the UK internationally.
They did not believe Labour's huge spending promises could ever be paid for.

I agree with this. I was discussing a slower long term shift of the traditional Labour heartlands away from traditional socialism.

Yes I heard Heseltine, I agree with him and have already moved on. For me I will benefit from continued Conservative government to the extent of a six figure sum, from a heafty inheritance. Which I would almost certainly not have had if Corbyn had got in and removed the tax free allowance. But for me it was worth the sacrifice if the health of the society were to be restored. I am not all that concerned about Brexit provided a sensible approach is adopted*. I was expecting it to happen at some point, perhaps in another 10 or 15 years. But I still think it is a mistake and a poor strategy for our long term future. I agree with the your assessment of the Labour front bench, but I don't see them as any worse than the Tory front bench, just the opposite side of the political divide.

* I will be entitled to a Scottish passport, so I expect to get an EU passport when Scotland leaves the UK.

As an aside I believe that if Heseltine had become PM the world would be a different place now. The best prime minister we never had.

Well said.
I hark from Yorkshire, but have picked up the southern sensibilities and to a degree live amongst the privelidged classes now. I am a bit out of touch with the north, my knowledge now is of the east. There is not much depravity around here compared to the midlands and the north. However there is a profound difference from the truly privelidged regions of Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire etc. Here the issue is more to do with the influx of Polish people. I suspect that over 90% of the voters who voted in my polling station voted leave and primarily for this reason. On reflection I realise that socialism of the kind proposed is not favoured by many outside metropolitan Labour supporters.

I really do think the blue collar workers are waking up to things. The problem for them is that you don’t realise that they are.

Edit: so much so that we can’t even define them.

Yes, you have a point, in the constituencies we are discussing the situation is complex. Because the large industries they used to work in have gone and some people have picked themselves and their communities up and become more prosperous, but many haven't. Others think their deprived neighbourhoods are the normality with no idea of the large belts of prosperity in the affluent areas, predominantly in the south.

It is imerging that the reason these areas supported Johnson is, apart from "get Brexit done", is that they feel that the Labour Party has moved away from them moving further to the left with a metropolitan ideological socialism and don't anymore represent them.

Your observation of my ignorance is misplaced, I am well aware of the situation. I have been putting the case from the position that leaving the EU is a bad idea, that the Tory party was incompetent in carrying it out and that a more left wing government would be a good idea at the moment, following 10 years of austerity. I'm not partisan.

It can be difficult to convey the subtleties of a situation to people looking in from elsewhere. The Tory party is the sort of party which always returns to the centre and consolidates with pragmatism following the crisis. The only reason that they lurched to the right was due to the failure of Theresa May to secure a majority in 2017. This left her a lame duck dependent on NI politicians and held hostage by the ERG ( the hard right anti EU faction in her party, there are about 20 or 30 of them).

Now Johnson has total freedom and clear space to fashion and restore a "one nation" Conservative party in the centre ground.

Also I should point out that Johnson will turn on a sixpence on any of his promises, if it suits his purpose and everyone knows it. He now has free reign for a number of years, or at least until he gets snarled up in the EU negotiations etc.

I guess the question is whether people voted for SNP to have another referendum or did so in order to give a big middle finger to Labour.

Scotland is drifting away from England politically, so there doesn't seem to be a point for Labour, or Conservative party's there anymore. This mirrors Northern Ireland, where there are none.

Following this debacle the independence of both from the UK has dramatically increased.

This is what I wrote,


Are you familiar with British politics?

Johnson got into power on the backs of the poor, to whom he made populist promises. Let's see if he forgets all about them now he's in control. Andrew Niel regarded as the most erudite commentator in the UK, asked Tory's repeatedly through the night what they will do for these poor people and received no answer and little comprehension of the issue.

I'll qualify it by saying blue collar voters rather than "the poor".

I disagree. Show me some evidence..

I can have a look later, but I thought people think that a snap referendum would be 52/48 the other way. Media commentators have been saying this for over a year. Also why are the brexiters so vehemently against it and have been saying that the people who were making the case for a confirmatory vote, where doing it to stop Brexit. Surely they wanted more democracy now that we are better informed.

Its the power of populism. I say this more in reference to the overwhealming feeling amongst these voters that Corbyn is the Devil incarnate. There is also Brexit and I have some sympathy as I have said before, with the anti immigration vote, because I have seen the towns where you can walk down the street and only hear people speaking Polish

I wasn't talking of any mandate for a second referendum. Only what would be the likely result. You should consider that there would be a campaign before the vote and that the demographic would have moved on( the young reaching the voting age).

The Tory's didn't need to mention Corbyn, or their socialist policies much, as the anti socialist ideology is quite widespread already. But it is what they were banking on. Interestingly there is a weakness in Labour's approach which has become evident today. That they were banking on the poor and those concerned about public services etc, but forgot the slightly better off in their traditional seats, "the managing", rather than "the just about managing". These people really didn't want socialism and had become supporters of New Labour, they thought the party had left them and moved to the left.

The lack of holding Tory's to account during the campaign is unfortunate, but their strategy was honed down to two or three slogans, so they avoided the media. It was populism what swung it.

I guess they chose Brussels over their own country. What a shame.

Not at all, I acknowledge that you are looking on from afar. But for Scotland, it would give them autonomy, to be free of a Westminster with overbearing control, little accountability and little concern for the plight of the Scott's. They would join the EU as an independent country cooperating with 27 partner countries.

This is not something they wished to do, but rather is a remedy to a chaotic destructive Westminster.

Boris can and probably will swing back to the center now and stuff the far right Brexiteers he no longer needs with a softer trade deal etc.

Agreed, Johnson will take the path of least resistance, which will be a softer Brexit, probably along the lines of May's deal, because anything harder will throw up some intractable problems. Including the destruction of the Union, although that may be lost already.

Also the working class are as I said earlier going to have quite a hangover.

So it’s the stupid poor responsible for this?

You didn't answer my question?

Right, so you have no faith in the voters.

Are you familiar with British politics?

Johnson got into power on the backs of the poor, to whom he made populist promises. Let's see if he forgets all about them now he's in control. Andrew Niel regarded as the most erudite commentator in the UK, asked Tory's repeatedly through the night what they will do for these poor people and received no answer and little comprehension of the issue.

Congrats to everyone in the UK!!

No not the UK, but Great England. The poles spell it out that NI and Scotland will leave to remain in Europe. Johnson will be the last Prime Minister of the UK. We will be known as Boris Isles.

Yes, you're right about the will to get it done, rather than more dither. It is important not to forget that the master stroke of Johnson's advisors is to conflate Brexit with domestic issues and the threat of a socialist government. If we had had a second referendum on leaving the EU, we would have voted remain, this is widely known and is the reason why brexiters were vehemently against a second referendum.

It was won by disenfranchising voters who wish to remain in the EU via the electoral system. So we have a Brexit election piggy backing on and doubling down on a domestic issue general election. Focussing on the fear of a socialist government. It has worked, but it will betray and anger more than half the population. We are in for a rollercoaster ride now, which will probably result in the break up of the Union with the pieces breaking away, rejoining the EU.

Let's get Scottish and Northern Irish independence done.

Yes that's inevitable now, can Blojo call England Great England, or will it be little England?