Far as I can tell with Corbyn, he isn’t anti-EU (despite Binners’ protestations, whom I usually agree with), rather he thinks it’s broken and needs fixing.

In any case, he’s at best a distraction currently.  I don’t really understand the obsession some people seem to have with him.

‘getting their tits ripped off on pomagne’

I think in my case it was full fat milk and Malibu!

I don’t have any obsession with him or any other politician or for that matter any other person.

In any case, he’s at best a distraction currently.  I don’t really understand the obsession some people seem to have with him.

I suspect it’s cos there’s no one currently from the ‘acceptable’ wing of the labour party who can beat him or do a better job. That must be quite frustrating considering how useless he’s supposed to be 🙂

Strangely, now that May has gone all BINO, JRM has been exposed as being all talk and no trousers, and Farage is busy hiding from US prosecutors, Corbyn could well turn out to be the flag carrier for brexit. How weird would that be?

I suspect it’s cos there’s no one currently from the ‘acceptable’ wing of the labour party who can beat him or do a better job.

Tom Watson would get my vote in a heartbeat.  Starmer?

I would have thought Kier Starmer worth an each way bet in any future leadership bid.

Len McCluskey!

That starmer guy seems to be pretty reasonable from what I’ve read.

Corbyn just seems to have become a caracature.

Tom Watson would get my vote in a heartbeat.  Starmer?

Got to be a woman in my opinion. Pick any of Thornberry, Rayner or Long-Bailey. Cooper would even have an outside chance if she could cast off the stain of new labour.

My summing up of JC chance of getting into No 10.  He as 2 hopes.

Unfortunately they are Bob and No.

The only one of those who I have any real respect for is Starmer.  Long-Bailey I don’t know.  I’ll check her out

Watson is Ok ish but the rest are tainted by warmongering, plotting against Corbyn and thus supporting the tories or are simple policy vacuums – ie follow the papers not lead at all.  anyone who did the briefing agaisnt Corbyn has done so much damage that they can never be rehabilitated IMO

Having said that they are probably more connected with reality that the Tory front bench  But I would never vote for a labour party run by any of them bar Starmer.

I have been a lifelong labour supporter and voter up until a couple of elections ago

Lammy would get my vote. Very impressed with him.

Sadly, he seems to get a non stop barrage of racist mail with threats etc. Symptomatic of the current climate in the UK

Long Bailey looks a decent call actually from what I can find out about her.

Rayner and Long-Bailey are clearly being groomed for it. They’ve both had extensive image makeovers and media training to blunt some of the sharp edges they had before. They probably tried Thornberry too but she probably told the party apparatchiks to f*** off 🙂

Sounds cynical but I wonder if Watson’s weight loss thing is also an image makeover to make him more appealing to the electorate?

I can’t think of any other reasons why certain Brexiteers would be so keen to get us out as soon as possible, regardless of the cost to anyone else.

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/company-tax/anti-tax-avoidance-package/anti-tax-avoidance-directive_en

Comes into force mid-2019

Not this old chesnut yet again, the UK has already enacted the legislation required by this directive – much of it yonks ago, but it is illustrative of how far off the mark so many of the presumed motives are.

Sounds cynical but I wonder if Watson’s weight loss thing is also an image makeover to make him more appealing to the electorate?

He was diagnosed with T2 diabetes, hence the (necessary) weight loss.

@mefty

So what’s your take on those motives?

At midnight on December 31st 1999

We only found two things to fix on the night, but that’s because we’d had more than half our staff working on testing/fixing/testing solidly for more than 2 years on legacy systems. The worst things were where our systems met external ones, or physical media, like cheque stationery, which meant coordination with other companies and regulatory bodies. It was, most definitely, not down to JUST **** BELEVING THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE WILL SORT IT ALL OUT IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS.

As for Labour… there is no time to change the leader… there is no time for a general election… there is only time for the Leadership to back the policy Labour members and voters want, and take advantage of a minority government losing the support of its own MPs, to get an amendment passed that calls for a confirmation referendum and a short extension to A50 to allow time for it. But that needs to happen this year. All this “not now, maybe later” spin just means, “not ’till it’s too late to stop Brexit”. It is the machinations of the Brexit backing leaders of a Brexit opposing party.

As much as we wouldn’t like it to be so, there are two circles to be squared.

As much as i, personally, would like it to all just go away and remain as it was, it won’t.

So…

We ‘accept’ the result of 2016 – we are to leave the EU

I appreciate the arguments that say it was ‘only advisory’, but we have to accept that, even if it had been as narrow a margin ‘our’ way, it would have put the argument to bed for a generation. Admit it – had it been 52-48 the other way, YOU would be saying ‘we won, you lost etc’ – and you’d have solid ground upon which to do so.

Make no mistake, the result was a mistake, but the question was asked and it was answered.

I wholeheartedly agree that a ‘super’ majority should have been necessitated, but it wasn’t. There are obvious reasons for that, none of which help us particularly to understand where we are now. Actually they do, but that’s not massively helpful in this narrative.

It also doesn’t help to keep bleating ‘advisory’ at people, because the executive made it quite clear that even though this was an ‘advisory’ vote they would treat it as if it wasn’t, even though it was. Parliamentary procedure is pretty oblique even to those who have eyes to see, which is why this was made so clear to the electorate from the outset.

We know well enough that this will not be good, in fact we may well be quite right to conclude it will be very bad.

… Or …

We don’t ‘accept’ the result of 2016  – we are to remain in the EU

Are we to thus disenfranchise 17m voters?

I appreciate the arguments that they were lied to, that  there were xyz ‘kinds of’ Brexit they voted for. None of which were achievable. 

They had their reasons, diffuse as they might have been, and they voted accordingly.

But they were asked and they answered – you can’t decry them for that.

What i don’t see from people is the consequence of ignoring the people of 2016 – apart from saying ‘oh, well, most of them are dead anyway’, which is not even mostly true.

This is an element of the debate that is being mentally ‘glossed over’ by people who are generally mentally quite cohesive because they just don’t like it. Ignoring people does not come cost free.

This is going to eat us up for at least ten years, probably more like twenty.

A bit further ^up there i posited an alternative future in which a tight vote in favour of remain saw a leadership election in the Conservative party that elected a ‘hard’ brexiteer who forced through an EU exit anyway, after all it’s as good as 50/50 right? How do you like them apples?

As Larkin noted, a miss can be as bad as a mile, as well as as good as one.

Ignoring people does not come cost free.

Agreed.

Ask someone who is 20 and watching this all unfold, someone who didn’t have a vote in 2016 and is being told that they should have no say in what we do next year.

Those dead against asking the public what we should do next are ignoring people now, surely? They are saying we can’t listen to what voters want now… that to even ask them is somehow “wrong”. That to ask the people is to ignore them. Does that not sound a bit like double speak? Sure sounds odd to me.

Problem with pursuing brexit is that every deal that is presented is readily seem to be massively shitter than what we already have. So no sane MP will vote for it and the public won’t support it.

I’d like to say this had come as a complete shock but of course it was obvious to anyone with the ability to think right from day one.

Good points, but to pick a couple

Admit it – had it been 52-48 the other way, YOU would be saying ‘we won, you lost etc’ – and you’d have solid ground upon which to do so.

Some would but I think there is enough awareness that there were /are a lot of (good) reasons why there were approx 17M people who felt sufficiently pissed off with the status quo to realise it needed changing. But you can’t change the rules to a club you’ve resigned from very easily (made me laugh at Gove’s reason for staying in the Cabinet, btw)

I don’t see very much from the Leave side addressing that were approx 17M who wanted to remain as part of Europe and taking those views into account – it’s their view or nothing at all, and in the stark absence of what their view entails, it’s been left to Remainers to fill in those gaps which are now dismissed as scaremongering.

We don’t ‘accept’ the result of 2016  – we are to remain in the EU

Are we to thus disenfranchise 17m voters?

I appreciate the arguments that they were lied to, that  there were xyz ‘kinds of’ Brexit they voted for. None of which were achievable. 

They had their reasons, diffuse as they might have been, and they voted accordingly.

While respecting that point, a lot has happened since and we are a lot ‘smarter’ (YMMV) about what Leave really means. It is not inappropriate for the Government to say that we aren’t going to get the New Empire / Unicorn riding future that was ‘promised’ and are we still happy about that?

I was ardent Remain, still am. I went through the How could we anger bit after the result. Then I went into the ‘but as a democracy we voted for it’ stage and I still believe that, but as every day passes and more is known and still nothing comes from the Leave / ERG side of any actionable merit, that position changes. We have the gun pointed at our foot, we have the finger tightening on the trigger, someone needs to take this gun off us before it all goes bang.

An advisory referendum based on bare faced lies and funded by illegal money.

If it was a footballl match Leave would have had their win withdrawn, been relegated and docked 20 points.

The way it will work out is as follows and something I thought from day one;

– Government takes referendum result and says they will follow it (as they have to)

– Government takes the full 2 years trying to get a deal that we know was never going to get the backing of remainers or leavers

– Only option left is No deal and the majority of parliament are simply not going to let that happen so we end up revoking A50.

So rather than just dismissing the result they have pretended to try to leave but publicly displayed it didn’t make any sense given the viable options.  How upset the 17MM people will be who knows, I imagine a few million will be as they voted for reasons that hey still feel strongly about while the rest didn’t know what they were doing and may not even notice what has happened.

That’s how it worked out kerley but I don’t believe that May had the foresight or intellect to have planned it.

Just catching up on this generally depressing thread and noticed this quote (thanks @raybanwomble):

We use a common-sense approach. We speak plainly. That’s what makes the UK different. We call a spade a spade and don’t need theory.’

Its both hilariously incorrect and also a prime example of why there should never have been a referendum.

Are we to thus disenfranchise 17m voters?

Looking at it purely logically, there are two options.

Disenfranchise 48% of the electorate and devastate the country.

Disenfranchise 52% of the electorate and not devastate the country.

Second option seems much safer to me.

Disenfranchise 48% of the electorate and devastate the country.

Disenfranchise 52% of the electorate and not devastate the country.

Nicely put, I shall be stealing that.  I’ll be saying “half”, though!

No, there are lots of options.

Remain, supported by roughly half

No deal, supported by about 20%

May’s deal, supported by about 10%

Unicorns, supported by half (I’ll be generous – more than half).

The only problem is that unicorns still don’t exist however pretty they are.

I’m not even sure it’s really disenfranchising if the purpose is to not devastate a country. Is it disenfranchising if you stop a child from running with scissors?

Only option left is No deal and the majority of parliament are simply not going to let that happen so we end up revoking A50.

Oh god! Can you imagine Farage and all the gammons? Please god, let this happen? Just to see their faces! 

Would the EU actually want us to stay after all the bother we’ve caused? I’d imagine we’d be on the naughty step for quite some time

And more importantly… what colour would our passports be then?

Not this old chesnut yet again, the UK has already enacted the legislation required by this directive – much of it yonks ago

It doesn’t matter, the UK practises a light touch enforcement of corporate tax affairs, especially in relation to offshoring to British protectorate tax havens. In the UK it is worth the risk for corporations and very wealthy individuals to break tax laws under the pretence of “tax efficiency”, under the new directorate they would be held accountable.

And personally I hope the likes of the channel islands, IoM, Gibraltar, Monaco etc become financial wastelands for the damage they have done to taxable revenues for decades.

I used the same analogy near enough with my kids this weekend.

We warn kids often enough that if they don’t walk properly / keep climbing on things they’ll fall off and hurt themselves. Then we let them do it anyway, because until they hurt themselves they don’t believe us. It hurts and there are tears but the grazes on the knee* aren’t that desperate and will heal.

We also tell them not to run into the road because they’ll get run over. We don’t let them find that out to prove the point.

I’m not one for nanny state politics but standing by as the bus flattens us saying ‘see, I told you’ doesn’t seem that smart.

* Trump might be broken bones, but that too is temporary.

Are we to thus disenfranchise 17m voters?

Yes please. But it’s necessary to explain why. Those who got us into this mess need to be held to account and face the consequences.

Cougar

Far as I can tell with Corbyn, he isn’t anti-EU (despite Binners’ protestations, whom I usually agree with), rather he thinks it’s broken and needs fixing.

Doesn’t seem like it reading this (disclaimer: written by a lib dem)

Jeremy Corbyn’s views on Brexit: a long held stance on Europe

Those who got us into this mess need to be held to account and face the consequences.

Putin style show trials for Arron Banks?

Boris and Gove ceremoniously run over by a bus with lies painted down the side of it?

Moggy paraded through the streets in sack-cloth?

David Cameron fired into the sun?

Disenfranchise 48% of the electorate and devastate the country.

Disenfranchise 52% of the electorate and not devastate the country.

No one is disenfranchised they all got the right to vote.

Are we to thus disenfranchise 17m voters?

No, they will be able vote whichever way they want when we vote to either accept the real deal, or Remain. But so will 18 year olds, 19 year olds and even many 20 year olds… all of whom are currently being told they are not part of “the people” who’s will is immutable.

What did we say to 20 year olds in 1978, 1988, 1998 or even 2008?