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Literally a shit-eating grin.
(I didn't mean it, Binners!)
It was never that simple TJ no matter how blinkered your own outlook is.
Because the other parties are shining bacons of integrity?
When integrity compared to the other parties is your USP - Also what MSP says.
@binners Thanks, I was leaning that way anyway. Voted Green in locals and nationals so at least I'm consistent.
I will check the polls and predictions for Scotland. Last time a uikpper sneaked in with the greens just missing out so green seems the best anti brexit vote in the europeans for me.
Enjoy the cakes Uncle Jezza 😃
FFS that’s not pro-brexit, it’s simply honouring a democratic vote. I still can’t get my head around why people can’t grasp this simple point.
If you're going to claim that you cannot get your head around it after having had multiple people including myself explain it to you countless times over the last few months, then you're either being spectacularly dense or disingenuously trolling. And I don't really believe for a moment that you're dense.
But we know the answer to this one now don't we, after you finally revealed your hand the other day. You understand it perfectly well; you just don't like it. Which, k'now, is absolutely fine and we can agree to differ, I can't help but think that debate would be much simpler on both sides and might actually progress somewhere if you were simply more honest about that.
Fine for the euros as they’re completely meaningless.
This literally made me laugh out loud.
Brexiters for the last three years: "unelected bureaucrats!"
Us: "Oh look, the European elections, you can actually go and elect your MEPs after all, just what you wanted!"
Our resident RINO: "... they’re completely meaningless."
binners
Subscriber
Enjoy the cakes Uncle Jezza 😃
Wot these cakes?
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ON the Lib dems – its not just tuition fees. Its Carmicheals lying before the last election. Its Cable selling off the post office. Plus of course enabling a hard right tory government
I don't think this is true.
I'm a member of a Remain echo-chamber Facebook group. Whenever a political party gets mentioned, for whatever reason, with depressing regularity someone will always pop up with a reason why they can't support that party. With the Lib Dems it's the tuition fees argument, without exception; in three years I don't think I've ever seen any other reason cited (if it has it's rare). I've never seen the post office mentioned and I've never even heard of Carmichael. It's exactly the same with Labour and the Iraq War.
I think perhaps people generally are largely disengaged from politics, so latch on to a single policy be that a positive or negative one. We saw it in the referendum - "well, I voted leave because I thought giving more money to the NHS was a good idea" - and we're seeing it right now with Toadface's Brexit Party which is gaining support despite not even having a single word on a manifesto. (Farage actually said that they were tired of politicians lying which is why they weren't going to have a manifesto, and people actually bought that rather than going "um, well, have you tried not lying?")
Couple this with inertia - people often vote for who they've always voted for, which is essentially a zero policy vote rather than even a single policy - and it's really not difficult to see why we've been stuck with the same shower of shit in different pyjamas for decades.
We have to start looking forwards rather than backwards. What happened ten years ago is an irrelevance, we can't change that now.
Voting LibDem would be easier if Carmichael was no longer an MP. I can't stand the man, he's dodgy. Sad that so many good MPs lost their seats because of being tainted by their party being in coalition with the Tories… yet he held on.
Anyway, the weird thing about the coalition "punishment" is that the other parties have been in coalitions with the Tories in other bodies across the UK, but, with voters being mostly politically unaware, that's ignored.
Cougar
Subscriber
With the Lib Dems it’s the tuition fees argument, without exception
I don't disagree but, I think "tuition fees" is pretty much the figurehead/most obvious thing to mention when it comes to the coalition disaster, if it wasn't for that there'd most likely be something else.
But I kind of agree with TJ too, in that they haven't done enough to move past that. Carmichael was the perfect example, faced with a perfect moment to take a moral stand, they instead backed him to the hilt. And their leader in Scotland is casually dishonest when he thinks there's a trivial point to score. That sort of dishonesty just reinforces the legacy of the coalition, rather than doing anything to repair their reputation.
if it wasn’t for that there’d most likely be something else.
I don't doubt that for a second. Point was, all those other reasons, and I'm sure they must be legion for all parties, rarely if ever get a look-in.
As transgressions go, I think it's a pretty lame stick to be beating them with. They were a minority voice in a coalition government and as such had to pick their battles. They couldn't object to everything the Tories came up with, and we quickly saw what happened when their influence was removed. They surely were a force for good overall in that government even if they made some mistakes along the way.
I don't really know what they can do to repair that in honesty, people simply have long memories. I've oft wondered whether the best thing they could do would be to rebrand so that they aren't called the LDs any more.
It's essentially what Farage has just done with his new UKIP 2.0 party, it's a canny move. Same shit only without all the previous baggage. Change could do the same with a mass defection from the LDs and the less bonkers aspects of Labour, could end up essentially being the new liberals without the millstone of something something tuition fees something.
In other news and with a crushing sound of inevitability, Boris has confirmed that he's going to run for leadership (and by extension, PM).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48299424
"International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey have announced they will run and Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has said she is "considering" doing so.
Other widely touted possible contenders include former and current members of the cabinet, including Michael Gove, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss."
Gods help us all. Everyone wants May gone, but like Cameron before her this is a big fat case of "be careful what you wish for."
Not for the first time in the last couple of years, I find myself deferring to the wisdom of Douglas Adams.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”
I said essentially the same about 1000 pages ago. Lib Dems need to drop the party name and rebrand themselves. The traditional meaning of the word liberal, in the political sense, is no longer understood. For vast swathes of the population the term "liberal" has major negative connotations. Even if the LDs were the only party left those people wouldn't be able to vote for them just on the name alone.
Our resident RINO
Chuckle.
Although shouldn’t that really be ‘Leaver in RINO’s clothing’.
In any case the mask slipped too far a couple of weeks ago with the ‘E.U. is basically a dictatorship’ slip-up.
Credit where it is due, though, it was 4-5 months before the inevitable.
But in the end it was, quoting the immortal Captain E Blackadder “about as convincing as a giraffe in dark glasses trying to get into a Polar Bears Only golf club”.
“International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey have announced they will run and Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has said she is “considering” doing so.
Other widely touted possible contenders include former and current members of the cabinet, including Michael Gove, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss.”
St Nige of Faarange doesn't like answering difficult questions does he.......
Grrrr, I have no idea how to link a twitter feed......
St Nige of Faarange doesn’t like answering difficult questions does he…….
That last few seconds needs to be cropped and shared far and wide. The leavers like out-of-context quotes, they'd love it.
The LibDems are for being allowed into someone else's government and against not being allowed into someone else's government. That is the only policy that isn't getting thrown out.
When they were in government they quietly went along with the Tories instead of raving and threatening to tear everything down if they didn't get their way.
Sure, people always say the tuition fees but I think that's because tuition fees represent what would probably happen again with pretty much any policy if they were given a sniff of a government job.
If TM had been lucky enough to get a coalition government with them her deal would have passed months ago. And without any kind of confirmatory referendum.
When they were in government they quietly went along with the Tories
Selective memory much? The tories have since undone most of what the lib dems achived in the coalition but here's a short list of what they did get done...
The snoopers charter was consistently blocked by the lib dems
Blocked tory plans to reduce the number of commons MPs from 650 to 600
The allocation of 0.7% of GDP to International Development, both in practice and as law
The raising of the Income Tax personal allowance from £6475 to £10,600
Steve Webb delivered the “triple lock” on the State Pension
Nick Clegg saw through the pupil premium of (eventually) £1320 per primary school child and £935 for secondary children to reduce the attainment gap in England and Wales
A £2.5 billion banking levy
Free school meals for infant-school children and in the first three years in primary school in England
Vince Cable vetoed a proposed “fire-at-will” employment law
Stopping welfare cuts and ensuring benefits kept up with inflation
Same sex marriage legislation
15 hours free child care for disadvantaged children
Prohibition of the export of chemicals to where it is known they may be used to carry out the death penalty
Strong and stable government (true!)
5p charge on plastic bags.
Not too shabby considering they were a complete minority and had to pick thier battles very carefully.
Grrrr, I have no idea how to link a twitter feed……
Depressing thing is many of the comments. Apparently its the elite being nasty to him asking awkward questions.
if you’re in the north west then the tactical voting site says a vote for the Green Party
Which of the several sites is that one binners? The advice I've seen is for LibDem.
Grrrr, I have no idea how to link a twitter feed……
Depressing thing is many of the comments. Apparently its the elite being nasty to him asking awkward questions.
Reading the twitter feed , like most open Brexit discussions to be honest, is pretty depressing reading. I despair at the willful ignorance of these people.
"We" get everything we deserve.
mattyfez
Member
Not too shabby considering they were a complete minority and had to pick thier battles very carefully.
Half od what you list there is "stopped the Tories from doing X" but literally everything the Tories did for that entire term was made possible by the Lib Dems. You don't get patted on the back for putting someone in government then standing in front of them occasionally.
The only people that put Tories into the government were the people who voted for them. The alternative of a minority government, followed swiftly by a general election, wouldn't have magically stopped the Tories being in power. In addition, it would have been a messy few months, considering what was going on with the world economy. Once in coalition, the Conservative party out played the LibDems brilliantly, and those involved on the LibDem side absolutely should take the blame for that. Which is why the current leader is holding (what's left) of the party back, in my opinion.
Anyway, LibDems are climbing in the polls as regards the Euro elections, and I think giving them more support will help reduce the narrative after the count being all about the Brexit party success, especially if they can get the second highest number of votes ahead of both of the two "main" parties. No real movement towards them as regards a general election, and that probably won't change… [edit] well, even that may be a dangerous prediction as we don't know for sure who'll be leading the parties when it comes around.
anywhere talks have ended, shock horror.....
As for lib dems, welcome to coalition governments, Labour lost. You don't have to like it but that is the fact. So you try and do what most grown up European countries cope with, or you can carry on with the pointless crap that has got us where we are.
Bombshell Brexit leak reveals Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn discussed plan to leave EU on July 31 and avoid second referendum
A Whitehall source said the aim was to rule out a referendum before an exit plan is chosen.
Bombshell? The option of binding indicative votes in parliament has been one of the primary proposals for breaking the deadlock for months. Yet they aren't supposed to discuss it?
Seems to me that the brexit deadlock is now being used by MPs on both sides to replace their own leaderships. There's no interest in solving the brexit conundrum, only petty short term and self-interested motives around their own careers. And they wonder why the people are pissed off!
Meanwhile,
Always follow the money.
https://www.channel4.com/news/nigel-farages-funding-secrets-revealed
There’s no interest in solving the brexit conundrum, only petty short term and self-interested motives around their own careers. And they wonder why the people are pissed off!
Blimey! I actually agree with you on something Daz. This is a first
Remember the words of the EU when they granted the extension to Article 50? Not to waste the time?
Seems that was taken by both parties to mean more pointless posturing, and petty internal squabbling. The Tories leading to a leadership election that will be the nastiest in political history, probably returning an absolute raving anti-EU headbanger as PM, the Labour party to carry on sitting on the fence, dreaming of the revolution, while trying to pretend none of this is actually happening. Then they all go on holiday for 2 months
Don't waste the time indeed....
One things for sure. We're all ****ed! And none of this shower actually care
I can still see Corbyn stitching it up and Whipping his MPs to abstain on Mays vote so she can get it through, as thats what suits them both most
What will happen when we get to October and have to go back again for another extension ? I get the feeling Donald Tusk was intimating about how another extension wouldn't happen; I think Merkel is our main (only?) ally, whereas Macron and a few others would happily see us crash out and burn just to demonstrate to their electorates that LePen and the other hardliners are wrong.
If the talks really have concluded then May will be gone sooner than she likes because the withdrawal agreement can't go back unaltered again and there's no tory appetite for anything like a voteable position
One things for sure. We’re all ****ed! And none of this shower actually care
Then people just need to vote for people that do care (I would put the Green party in that group)
Clearly nothing with be resolved before the end of October and what would get voted through then? Can't see it being any different than before unless the new tory leader has an election and gets a bigger majority. They thought they would get that last time...
Clearly nothing with be resolved before the end of October and what would get voted through then?
It seems fairly obvious that if the MPs can't vote for anything, then this will result in another referendum, probably a simple no deal vs no brexit vote. Given the current support for Farage I'm not sure that will be a good thing.
I can still see Corbyn stitching it up and Whipping his MPs to abstain on Mays vote so she can get it through, as thats what suits them both most
Corbyn is aiming for an early GE. 🤔
It seems fairly obvious that if the MPs can’t vote for anything, then this will result in another referendum, probably a simple no deal vs no brexit vote. Given the current support for Farage I’m not sure that will be a good thing.
Confirmatory vote?
I think we need a confirmatory vote for GE too 🤣
Clearly nothing with be resolved before the end of October and what would get voted through then?
This is why the SNP proposal to give parliament the power to choose to revoke rather then exit with no deal, if it comes down to that at the final hour, was absolutely essential. But Labour didn't vote for parliament to take that power from this or any other Tory PM, so that power is still with whoever that is. As it stands, parliament can not force the next PM to revoke (in a timely manner)… it can vote all it wants to reject "no deal" as an idea, but it can't do anything to stop it once time has run out.
As it stands, parliament can not force the next PM to revoke… it can vote all it wants to reject “no deal” as an idea, but it can’t do anything to stop it.
I suggest the parliament revoke it entirely by forcing the people for confirmatory second referendum then call for a GE to confirm to see if they are doing the right thing.
All that (assuming I can translate your deliberately opaque badly worded nonsense) would take lots of time, and would need to be starting now to be complete before October.
The Lab/Con talks were always going to fail. Any concessions won by Labour would be meaningless once May finally leaves No 10, which would otherwise bind whoever wins the leadership contest to a policy which is unpopular with Conservative grassroots activists - these are dwindling rapidly in number common in ideology.
Threat of deselection will keep Conservative MPs in line, but I would not be surprised to see more Johnny Mercer type rebellions over the coming months.
It's interesting how narratives have shifted in three years - the mooted Norway type arrangements have given way to the nuclear option of "no deal". I have engaged frequently with some Brexiteers to explain this reasoning, the gist of it is that the master plan is to turn the UK (or what's left off it) into a giant Amazon style warehouse to flood the EU marketplace with sub-standard goods which have been imported from all around the world. Such a move would invite a trade war and/or sanctions from EU27. The Irish border is a key issue - Brexiteers actually want a leaky border but you cannot reconcile the fact that differing regulatory standards obligate some form of border. The GATT 24 proposal is fantasy - if I read the WTO rules correctly, it requires unanimous agreement AND for us to fully declare our intended "end state" where we will be in ten years when GATT 24 expires. This is impossible, the only feasible outcome is a series of "emergency" temporary arrangements which ultimately cannot favour us.
Conservative grassroots activists – these are dwindling rapidly in number common in ideology.
And any new members now are mostly ex UKIP activists.
This article is good on the membership, and the very real effect of what you correctly identify on the events that have got us to here…
https://twitter.com/jameskirkup/status/1129278555513344000?s=21
All that (assuming I can translate your deliberately opaque badly worded nonsense) would take lots of time, and would need to be starting now to be complete before October.
Take a lot of time? In that case no need to have a confirmatory 2nd referendum.
Just simply revoke Article 50 with the support from the main parties since Parliament can decide as they reign supreme.
Then call for a GE.
(I like voting, me)
It seems fairly obvious that if the MPs can’t vote for anything, then this will result in another referendum, probably a simple no deal vs no brexit vote. Given the current support for Farage I’m not sure that will be a good thing.
It sort of feels like we're being inexorably pulled towards a 2nd ref' at times doesn't it? But I think a Tory leadership change in late June will probably help delay anything like that long enough for Halloween to creep up on us...
The truth is Brexiteers of all flavors, hard line no-dealers, Maybot deal supporters or even those that believe an alternative deal is somehow possible will resist a 2nd referendum with every ounce of their being because that runs the very real risk of the whole thing being called off. Those of us who supported remain have generally had our fears confirmed and would more than likely vote the same way again. A proportion those who voted for painted buses are probably re-evaluating their positions, it would only take ~4% of them changing their minds to scupper Brexit, it's a knife-edge margin and they know it so it WILL be blocked.
Much as I'd love a 2nd ref' it ain't going to happen, those standing in the way of it are the shoutiest, and they have too much to lose if one were to happen.
Much as I’d love a 2nd ref’ it ain’t going to happen, those standing in the way of it are the shoutiest, and they have too much to lose if one were to happen.
Then force the govt to have a GE to decide as the current govt fails.
If you don't want a 2nd referendum and want a deal then you will end up with worst of both world as the outcome of the negotiation with EU means, they are going to lock you in further without further privilege of full members.
Your ideal position is to:
1. fight for a 2nd confirmatory referendum.
2. Revoke article 50.
3. "force" a GE to form new govt (if you win) to deal with it differently ... stay or go.
or
4. Go with No deal.
How hard can that be?
🤔
p/s: the current main parties are all spinless ...
This article is good on the membership, and the very real effect of what you correctly identify on the events that have got us to here…
Thank you!
The fact that party members have fallen increasingly out of step with the social and economic trajectory of the country won't simply end in Brexit (whatever form that takes), Brexit itself will merely serve to ensure that the monster is never sated. The collapse of the Conservative in the opinion polls is as predictable as it is gratifying (for me at least!), the only way out is to broaden appeal to a wider membership base but this cannot happen when the party itself moots a portfolio of policies that a growing number of voters find offensive.
This is why some long-standing members seem to be doing all they can to change the ideological landscape to fit see Roger Scruton's utterly bizarre argument here by force. Senior conservatives have lurched into 4chan-esque terms like "cultural marxism" and "culture war" - a la href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cultural-marxism-suella-braverman-conservative-mp-antisemitism-a8842806.html">Suella Braverman who allowed the mask to slip, either by accident or by intent.