The B Word

Discussion in 'Politics 2.0' started by sydney_horn, Sep 29, 2021.

  1. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    TBF to Starmer the 'Brexit' bit of his speech doesn't actually mention the EU:

    And it's a reasonably bold political move to claim ownership of "Their Slogan":

    upload_2023-1-5_13-54-47.png

    https://twitter.com/steverichards14/status/1610948293470859265

    I mean it might stop the Brexit looney's complaining that "THEY'RE STEALING YOUR BREXIT!!!!!!!!!!" when it's actually delivered SFA to the communities who were screaming for it....
     
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2023
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  2. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    Whatever Labour plan to do or actually achieve, it's impact should not be overestimated.

    From what I understand, their "5 point plan" includes "making the protocol work", having a veterinary agreement to reduce SPS checks and mutual recognition of qualifications.

    There is a vague "reduce friction" aspiration but without any details.

    While all laudable they will only have a limited impact on non tariff trade barriers.

    There is never going to a post Brexit trade relationship with the EU that will come anywhere close to where it was when we were actually in the SM and CU.

    The trade barriers are just a fact of life when you are a 3rd country and there is only a limited amount of tinkering that can be done to limit their burden.

    Of course I will welcome a more positive and closer relationship with the EU under Labour. I suspect the atmosphere between us and them will be infinitely better overnight.

    But "making Brexit work" is impossible. "Making Brexit ever so slightly less ****" is a more accurate slogan imho.
     
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  3. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I agree that making Brexit slightly less shyte is the real aim or at least moderately tolerable.

    I think that is achievable, firstly by removing barriers to trade and ensuring we get a chance to participate in most nice things them Europeans do.

    To do that requires being a rule taker. The only way to make that tolerable is to set up structures to mediate that an ensure the EU does nothing we really don’t approve of, in the same way we don’t really do foreign policy that upsets any of our anglophone allies.

    We can then rebuild the GDP we have lost, without losing Parliamentary control in an absolute sense (no one has absolute sovereignty given how powerful other countries are and how interdependent we are) and the UK state is free to offer state support to UK industries and prefer them, the one real bonus possible.
     
  4. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Starmer's 5 point plan is detailed here.

    Point 1 is "Sort Out The Northern Ireland Protocol"

    It's very unclear as the highlighted bit would be a major (re)negotiation of the treaties/agreements as there are no guarantees that manufactured goods that don't meet EU SM standards won't enter the RoI.

    Point 2 is "Tear Down Unnecessary Trade Barriers"

    This highlighted bit is the old "alignment" of common standards chestnut.

    Point 3 is "Support Our World Leading Services And Scientists"

    Which reads mainly as us accepting EU GDPR (which viewed in the light of the EU's proposed "opt in" legislation) could be something but the highlighted bits are interesting as he's ruling out us rejoining the single market for financial services but stating that he wants to join the various EU academic schemes (Horizon, Erasmus, Galileo? etc.)

    And the final two points are just gobbledegook (I suppose the defence stuff could be interpreted as joining future EU research schemes or getting interest in Tempest):

     
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  5. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    This is still the same cakism that the Tories wanted during the negotiations.

    The EU won't/can't remove the trade barriers that apply to all other 3rd countries just because we want it. And they certainly won't do it if we intend offering state support to our industries when EU countries are restricted from doing the same for theirs.

    I've no doubt that things can be improved and that almost certainly will require us becoming major rule takers.

    But any impact on GDP from any adjustments to the TCA will be minimal compared to us being in the SM/CU.

    Obviously it's well worth doing but there is no scenario where we can get the same frictionless trade with the EU while we are outside the SM/CU and Labour should start by admitting that imho.
     
  6. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I don’t disagree, but we can move a lot closer, reduce a lot of friction, by agreeing not to diverge.
     
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  7. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

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  8. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Great article by Umair Haque about the economic impact of Brexit, state of the NHS, how the political parties are handling it and more.

    https://eand.co/britains-finally-fi...iggest-mistake-in-modern-history-8419a8b940c6

    While the data in there isn't really new, the comparisons to previous world economic events certainly add a dimension I don't think anyone has articulated up until now. The datapoints from the Great Depression and Argentina sharply put things into context.

    Well worth a read.

    If you can't read the article without registering, try opening in an Incognito session (or the equivalent on the browser you use).
     
  9. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    I wonder if Khan is speaking with the sanction of the party leadership?

    Sadiq Khan condemns Brexit 'amnesia' and calls for 'pragmatic debate' about case for rejoining single market

    Personally I *think* the poll of polls isn't showing enough distance between to two camps:

    upload_2023-1-12_9-44-54.png

     
  10. Obviously not but being Mayor of London he has a pretty big mandate. Also I only just now caught Starmer's "reason" for not wanting to try to rejoin- "the uncertainty that it would bring".
    What, the uncertainty between certain continuing economic and social decline and the certainty of a stronger pound, lower inflation, increased growth and better public finances?
    Imagine your doctor saying "well there is a cure but the improvement might cause you to think about your life choices so maybe we'll just leave it."
     
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  11. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    To be blunt, I think the uncertainty he speaks of are about his own chances of becoming PM.

    However, while the simple questions of ‘should we have left’ or ‘should we rejoin’ poll nicely for the team formerly known as ‘Remain’ these don’t do so well as soon as people start asking ‘should we rejoin the CU or SM?’ We are immediately back to the general ignorance that surrounds this issue and makes the outcome fraught with ‘heart not head’.

    That’s why I prefer death to Brexit by a thousand cuts. Realign, get closer, promise not to diverge etc, claw back what we have lost until the political consensus is clear.
     
  12. I don't know how old you are Moose, but I don't think I want to wait that long, or for my kid's lives to be blighted just as they are heading out into the world of work (although that unfortunately is pretty much a done deal. I wish ZZTop was still here living no doubt in denial). It is estimated that our standard of living will be below Poland by 2030 on our present course.
     
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  13. The EU is disintegrating, is it?
    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    One word. Tories.

    Nothing is getting better until they are dealt with.
     
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  15. V Crabro

    V Crabro Reservist

    My thoughts exactly. I don't want to spend my remaining years watching this country slowly deteriorate. Measured by GDP we have now changed places with India, slipping from 5th to 6th in the world. France will be the next country to overtake us!

    I am clinging to one hope, that Labour get some sort of majority at the next GE (or maybe form a government in coalition with the LibDems). A couple of weeks after coming into power, SKS comes to the HoC and states that "having now had a chance to properly examine the books", the situation is far more dire than anyone realised and that our only hope is to begin immediate negotiations to reintegrate with the huge economic bloc on our doorstep. Of course it won't happen, but can you imagine the reaction of the right wing media, the ERG and various other Brexit loons :D. (If you want to argue "manifesto" I would counter with "parliamentary sovereignty")
     
  16. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I’m afraid that I don’t agree that our only way forward is to rejoin the EU. There are European nations that are not members, who are doing fine. However, they have to accept the EU’s terms to retain their advantageous arrangements. We can do the same.

    I’ve explained several times why it is politically unlikely that a rejoin platform would work for Labour. For a start, it fundamentally overestimates Labour’s political strength and fails to take into account how it can win an election. Nevertheless, a Labour win would be a massive boost for our relationship with Europe.

    All else that is possible follows only that win unless you can conjour up a Rejoin Party which is a similar threat to a big party that UKIP/Brexit Party were.
     
  17. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Would be the logical place for the LibDems to position themselves as they would be targeting mainly southern and Scottish seats that would be pro-EU. Sadly, I don't even know what their stance is anymore!

    On another note, this is an excellent (if depressing) read about the class of leading Tories that went through Eton and Oxford (with a particular focus on the place of the Oxford Union). Covers the origin of Brexit in some detail too: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58993078-chums
     
  18. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Cheers. The influence of Oxford on Politics is quite staggering. It’s always been so, as the list of PMs who have been to a university shows. (Callaghan not there as he did not go to university). However, since 2010, Oxford has completely dominated most ministerial positions too, so much so that Truss and Sunak, make the next two Oxford PMs.

    I’m sure the book is really good, but I’m not sure I can read any more about them all without whimpering.

    734E498B-C9E4-4407-81F3-B4F3ECA6BB25.jpeg
     
  19. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    That's why Patel would have been an interesting PM. Adding Westfield School for Girls to that list.:)
     
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  20. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Yeah, well: the cream will always rise to the top. :D
     
  21. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

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  22. C
    Cakeism, I'm afraid. Your "firstly" will depend on free movement if it is to have anything but a negligible effect. Once you've got that you might as well be in. Your point about state aid is also cakeist - if UK can favour specific industries with state aid, no way on earth is the EU going to allow free trade for those industries and related trades. Are you Mick Lynch by any chance? ;)
     
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  23. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    TBF Lynch is supremely full o'shyte when talking about the EU.
     
  24. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    The EU will want to do a deal if we want to do a deal. We certainly wouldn’t be the only Country they trade with that provides significant State Aid, indeed Countries within the EU do lots of things that are pretty much state aid. It depends where you target them or even what you call them.

    Free movement isn’t going to happen in any short to medium term. That doesn’t prevent us getting much closer than we are now.

    If you think a rejoin platform can win, where is your movement for rejoin? Where is its political power? Power like UKIP had? Where will it win opposition parties votes and where would it lose them?

    Seems to me that you are relying on winning the British people over to an argument that has recently failed to do so twice. Quit losing, is my view.
     
  25. So what's the issue?
     
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  26. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    No, why didn’t we do it then?

    But in any case, that’s not where this Government is. We need another one for every possible reason.

    You seem to feel that short of rejoining, little can be done to improve life in the UK. I don’t agree and I also don’t agree that the EU and the UK can’t come to a bespoke arrangement. It just wouldn’t be one that would satisfy Brexit headcases nor is it going to have free movement.

    You seem to be willing to risk re-running the Brexit debate in the run up to an election. Remind me how often we’ve won those in the last decade.
     
  27. Because a Tory government is never going to be amenable to state aid, and to be able to say "the EU won't let us" is a double win for them.

    Norway is short of rejoining. Don't get me wrong, of course we need a different government. But quite honestly, that is pretty much inevitable. What I DON'T want is Starmer emulating the Tories in just about every subject from Brexit to NHS to gender, and come up with garbage that we KNOW he doesn't believe or think right for the country, purely in order to get a 200 seat majority. In that respect it makes him only a bit better than Johnson.
     
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  28. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Maybe not if he uses that majority to enable the manifesto for the subsequent election to deliver those changes. I know Blair didn't do so; we have to hope Starmer has learned from that.
     
  29. EnjoytheGame

    EnjoytheGame Reservist

    This is the phoney war period, though, isn't it. When things get said to lodge in the brain and begin to shift perceptions. Look at what Starmer – or indeed anyone who is not the Tories – is up against.

    I was in a coffee shop today surrounded by retired people chugging down The Times and Mail with their americanos and lattes and wondering when it was that a supposedly respectable title like The Times would just abandon journalism all together and run a front page on a poll about the NHS. May as well have said: "Tories told people what to think, so that's what they think."

    The poll was conducted by You Gov. You Gov was founded by Stephan Shakespeare and Nadim Zahawi. Shakesepeare was once Jeffrey Archer's (Conservative) campaign manager. Shakespeare also stood for the Conservatives at the 1997 general election. Didn't win. Zahawi was, of course, a Tory minister and his wife set up some sort of private health company not that long ago. It was incorporated as Zahawi Medical Ltd but changed its name one day later to Warren Medical Ltd. It lists its business as letting and real estate – just like wot all good medical companies do. The company was formed in June 2020 and dissolved in April 2021, so what it did is anyone's guess. I am sure it's just a coincidence that all the lucrative PPE contracts were going around at the time and I make absolutely no link between the two whatsoever.

    In fairness, if The Times was doing journalism Zahawi would have been on the front page today anyway – with some serious questions about his tax affairs relating to... yes, you've guessed it, YouGov. He used an off-shore company to hold his You Gov shares and avoid tax. But being wealthy and important, he was able to come to an arrangement with HMRC to avoid trouble.

    So, a major poll conducted by Tories to give a result on the NHS that the Tories want is then run, unquestioned and unscrutinised by a Tory newspaper and lapped up by Tories who don't have the information in front of them to join the dots.

    Slightly off-topic for the Brexit thread, I know, but this could quite easily go in the venal media thread or the fwah fwah Tories one. In fact, all these issues are interconnected. Literally nothing has changed since the days of Johnson making up stories about the EU for his powder-puff Telegraph column back in the 90s.
     
  30. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    The same YouGov which shows Labour is twice as trusted as the Tories on the NHS?
     
  31. EnjoytheGame

    EnjoytheGame Reservist

    That's not really the point I was making. The thing that matters is who set up, runs, funds and profits from this particular polling company and that information should be presented to people at the outset every time because it is fundamental. The other thing that matters is whether or not media organisations run each of the polls as prominently as one another or whether they just select the ones that suit them / their owners.

    Identifying one poll in isolation and saying: "See, this shows it's not in any way biased" doesn't really wash. Although nor does picking one poll and saying 'This shows it is inherently biased" to be fair.

    What matters is that there is an enormous unacknowledged conflict of interest at the heart of You Gov and yet it is granted inflated importance by the media. If there were an explainer at the bottom of every single newspaper article citing You Gov as the source and explaining what it is then fair enough. The same goes for every Tufton Street think-tank (and every left-wing pressure group for that matter).

    Anyway, journalism dies on the page with stuff. It's basically no different to advertising.
     
  32. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Hmm, I'm not 100% sure I agree with the thrust of that statement. In the same way that criminals shouldn't be excused because not everything they do is a crime, biased polling outlets shouldn't get a pass because not every poll they conduct is biased. All polls should be unbiased with fair methodology if they're going to be of use. It's a baseline criteria for the poll to have any credibility. On that basis, I think proving a single poll was conducted with deliberate and implicit bias is absolutely fair to make strong statements about.

    Having said that, I do feel there is a major difference between a poll biased by accident or mistake, and one biased on purpose.

    I have no particular insight into Yougov's methods, so this is more of a general observation than anything specific to Yougov.
     
  33. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    OK, fair enough: but I’m not sure it’s just the right wing media which makes substantial use of YouGov? Your original post did seem to suggest that this was all part of a Tory/right wing media strategy (at least, that’s how I read it).
     
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2023
  34. EnjoytheGame

    EnjoytheGame Reservist

    I think the existence of a polling company set up by members of a political party is a problem. YouGov is a private, for-profit company listed on the stock exchange, and it has a fast-track relationship with plenty of media outlets to get its polls directly into the heart of mainstream media without scrutiny. They are just presented as facts. This, in itself, nudges opinion, steers debate and lends credibility to certain view points without any oversight. Crucially all that happens *without* any of the important stuff – such as who they are – being made clear enough.

    And my view would hold if YouGov had been set up by Labour politicians. Polling is a corrosive influence on the public discourse but it feeds the political news machine and so it has gained an entirely disproportionate role. Seeing a once-major newspaper lead with a story that can be distilled as: "Some people reckon..." is depressing.

    Reading their polling methodology is interesting though – https://yougov.co.uk/about/panel-methodology/
     
  35. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Meh. You are sounding like a Corbynite now.

    It’s all politics. Labour will be miles better than the Tories, we know this. We also know that Starmer will reliably throw off any conviction he has today for another one tomorrow. Don’t expect him to be King of Pure Brexit for long.
     

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