British Politics Thread

As Euodiachloris said, you've been told multiple times how things work in the UK but you don't seem to take it in.

It would be incorrect to assume that the ability to give a sound-bite is equalled by the media's willingness to either listen to that sound-bite or to report it (and to report it accurately if they do report it). As has been pointed out several times, 80% of the media circulation is pro-Brexit. Of the remaining 20%, the vast majority practice the 'balanced reporting' scenario where they give equal weighting to both sides of the argument, regardless of whether or not the two sides have equal veracity. That means that the pro-Brexit position is reported and supported by greater than 80% of the media circulation.

You've made posts like this so often that I have to ask if you genuinely believe you're coming up with ideas that no-one in Britain has ever thought of.

As Euodiachloris said, you've been told multiple times how things work in the UK.

The Guardian is part of the 20% that may be willing to report the anti-Hard Brexit and anti-Brexit positions, but that simply means they only do it in a way that covers the pro-Brexit/pro-Hard Brexit position at the same time.

Which voters would you be talking about here? The ones who supported Remain? The ones who supported Brexit? The ones who want Soft Brexit? The ones who want Hard Brexit? The Remainers who feel that, to protect democracy, the referendum result should stand without being challenged? The Remainers who feel the referendum should be re-run? The Remainers who feel the whole thing should be cancelled outright? The ones who voted during the referendum? The ones who weren't allowed to vote during the referendum? The ones who were allowed but for whatever reason didn't?

While they may be cherry-picking which voices they choose to listen to, there is not a single MP in the House who can truthfully say their voters have a single voice where the subject of Brexit is concerned.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jul 20th 2018 at 1:16:26 PM

The only true Remainer not constrained by political realities and the press is Ken Clarke, who if memory serves is still saying we should cancel Brexit.

No Tory beyond Ken Clarke is a Remainer that understands the EU, Labour leadership is constrained by trying to not alienate Brexit voters, Labour backbencher are ex-ministers who never understood the EU either.

That leaves the Lib Dems, they’re firmly opposed to Brexit but can’t get air time.

Well, they do get attention if they don't show up to vote.

I am just frustrated. From over here it looks like not one British Politician has something even remotely close to a spine (other than Sturgeon naturally, but her interest is naturally mostly to protect Scotland). And if I am frustrated, even though I actually want the UK out of the EU (yes, I know, I sound like a Remainer, but there is a difference between thinking "this will be good for my country/the Eu" and thinking "this will be great for the people in the UK"), I can't imagine how the people in the UK who see the catastrophe coming feel.

Plus, I really feel that there were a number of opportunities to jump on a story to ring the warning bell. Ie when the business started to protest, there was ample opportunity for politicians to react to it, instead Johnson dominated the media again with his "f.... business".

I just don't think that one can truly excuse the majority of the UK politicians. They are sleepwalking into catastrophe. Well, and are now on holiday instead of fighting for the country (who gets a 10 weeks holiday anyway? That two and a half months….).

Look, any newspaper or other big media outlet that had any inclination to cover that stuff already tried. There's not enough of them, they have little influence aside from preaching to the converted and the Brexit debate has been running around in a very small and boring circle for years now, so comparatively few people actually care. The latest half-arsed fudge of a customs proposal coming out of Downing Street and getting predictably rejected is not going to change that.

Personally I just wish that they would stop trying to bodge together some kind of half-Single Market nonsense. It's quite plainly not going to work, and No Deal is still vastly inferior to a properly negotiated deal that leaves the CU/SM and actually sorts out something with regards to customs and all the comparatively little periphery arrangements like Open Skies. For one thing, Britain badly needs a new economic growth model, since the one we have is low-productivity, low-wages, high-employment in comparatively bad jobs. Makes the unemployment and inflation figures look good, but most people don't actually see any benefits from the growth it provides. Free movement of capital and labour doesn't really help with fixing that and/or the Dutch disease re: City of London, so I'm not particularly broken up about us leaving those.

Yes, the UK needs to shift its economic model. But in order to do this, it needs to invest at the right places, and in order to do that, it needs tax revenue, and currently the majority of the tax revenue comes from the city.

You really underestimate the kind of mess the UK is currently in, and the far reaching consequences it will have.

If Germany or France or Spain wanted to shift their economic model then sure, they'd need tax revenue, because they have the Euro. The British state does not need someone to give it its own money in order to spend, and we have one hell of an output gap these days. There's a lot of room for regional investment before we start generating inflation, and we could use some inflation anyway, too much private debt.

You tax rich people for reasons of equality and to discourage certain activities, not because we need their money for some reason. If the City executives want to move to Frankfurt, good luck to them.

Whut? The UK runs a constant deficit as it is and it stands to lose a huge chunk of both its trade and the city. Sure, it can print money as if there is no tomorrow, but do you really think the pond will stay on its current level? It will slide down again once the No deal scenario becomes a reality.

Probably. The Pound was fairly overvalued when the vote happened because of the London property bubble, so that particular drop wasn't all bad. Surprisingly enough there's very little correlation between monetary base expansion and exchange rate depreciation, and the pass-through effect of depreciation on inflation/cost of living has been declining steadily for years. I don't think it will be as bad you seem to be thinking, although yes, cost of living will probably increase somewhat.

Our current deficit is by far too small, and the last decade's worth of cuts haven't helped at all. The primary limit on what governments can spend is inflation, and we need MORE of that at the moment rather than less.

A Glaswegian councillor tweeted this on the 19th.

Read every single word of it.

Twitter is not a suitable platform for long messages. There is a point where just typing one long message and attaching it as an image works better.

Again, everyone opposed to the current situation is being ignored. The Tory party's existential crisis is literally the only force that has any influence on how the negotiations play out. You need to drop the persistent illusion that they could do something but are choosing not to—see the customs vote just this week.

Unless the government suddenly decides that cross-party efforts are not some mortal sin even when you have effectively no majority, everyone is just stuck watching this unfold like a slow motion trainwreck.

It's less sleepwalking and more them trying to be heard over the crowd of Leavers screeching "PROJECT FEAR".

Kind of like how Napoleon would have the sheep bleat out a catchphrase. "Four legs good, two legs better!"

Edited by M84 on Jul 21st 2018 at 9:43:53 PM

Would anyone ignore Corbyn if he spoke up?

What I see is more that no one is ready to go against the party line. Remainer Tories feel the need to defend May, so they talk down the dangers of Brexit. And Labour feels the need to appease the part of the voters who are Brexiters, so they act as if there is a better option which will appease everyone and the Tories are just too incompetent to implement it. And I can't forgive either.

Yes. Because he did during the referendum campaign, repeatedly. Guess what, basically none of it was reported because the Leave campaign was much flashier and David Cameron's Remain campaign was better to cover for the Both Sides papers than that of a socialist they all dislike to varying degrees. All his "I'm a eurosceptic, but Remain and Reform is the better option" rhetoric got him is both sides considering him a sellout.

Scroll up, reread the part about the media, then scroll down. Being ignored would be the best thing that Corbyn could get, most likely the majority of the media would twist anything suggested into a warped parody of itself.

"Nobody is willing to go against the party line."

Did you miss the vote this week? It had people going against the party line. It also wasn't enough to make a difference. Worth noting that everyone else is opposed to the Tories' plans but that's not going anywhere.,

Also, you're still not understanding how the government is structured. Only the party in power actually has any influence in negotiations, so unless the entire party breaks ranks to the extent of electing a minority Labour government or forcing a coalition—and like hell any of the soft Brexit Tories will go for that; they're safe regardless of how Brexit falls out so better to not risk their positions—there is nothing that the rest of the parties can do aside from oppose in votes and tell the papers that they disagree.

Which they keep doing, but get even less cover than internal Tory divisions.

It wasn't a vote, it was theatre. The whole White Paper was something the EU would have rejected anyway.

What the UK government really needs to vote on is if they want Norway, Canada or no deal at all as basis for negotiation. Those are the options. Have been since day one and the EU has been clear about this.

And no, I don't understand how a government can be structured in a way that a minority can block it effectively into an economic catastrophe.

Edited by Swanpride on Jul 21st 2018 at 7:20:40 AM

All of this is easy to understand when one recognizes that British media is...biased to put it lightly.

Please don't try and change the topic like that.

When I was talking about "how the government was structured", I meant that the government controls all diplomatic activity, the opposition has basically no say in it. And they're squeaking past with a majority due to the DUP, so it doesn't make a blind bit of difference what any other party says or does unless the Tories literally split in two.

So what? They could have voted against triggering Article 50 by making clear that they first wanted an impact assessment and a clear plan from the Tories which kind of Brexit they wanted to go for. They didn't. They could have uniformly voted for the White Paper while ALSO making clear that they would do so to show that the EU would not accept this kind of fudge. They didn't. They could have taken a "I am a remainer and I will still be a remainer until the Tories offer a workable plan for the Irish Border and for our citizen" stand instead of going "the day the referendum went through we became all Brexiters".

This is just BS! They wanted to dance on both weddings to keep their precious positions and they are now paying the price for it.

Edited by Swanpride on Jul 21st 2018 at 7:30:35 AM

I have no idea who you're even complaining about now.

I think the point everyone's making is that no, in fact, they couldn't do any of the things you're suggesting.

Edited by sgamer82 on Jul 21st 2018 at 8:36:36 AM

Yes.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jul 21st 2018 at 6:28:43 PM

Presumably, somewhere in that rambling word salad is something about how the UK political system is awful and the Germans wouldn't have fallen for it.

That tends to be the way with Swanpride.

Edited by math792d on Jul 21st 2018 at 4:45:55 PM

And I still don't get why. What is it about the UK system which makes it impossible for the M Ps to insist on something as simple as "We don't trigger article 50 without an impact assessment and with an agreement on which kind of Brexit we actually want/go for". Okay, I can imagine that the latter would have been screamed down, but who makes any political decision on this scale without impact assessment?

The UK system is the UK system and like every system (including the German one) it isn't perfect. It still has worked for decades without the people in government f... up on this scale. And I don't really see how in any system which is supposed to be democratic supposedly nobody is able to speak up or do anything at all. This notion simply doesn't compute for me.

Edited by Swanpride on Jul 21st 2018 at 7:51:10 AM

My understanding is that the Opposition's ability to actually oppose is quite limited, nobody in the Government either recognizes the incoming train wreck or wants to acknowledge if they do, and those who do both recognize it and want to deal with it are ignored and/or marginalized on all potential fronts.

That's the basic gist as I understand it, anyway.

Edited by sgamer82 on Jul 21st 2018 at 8:51:36 AM

It's a system built up of nothing but precedence and accepted norms. Thus, a simple majority vote is enough to carry any decision. And aside from Ken Clarke, none of the Tories were so bent on remaining in the EU that they wanted to go against the "will of the people"/become targets for the entire media.

So Brexit gets declared, what everyone else thinks or would want to modify it with doesn't matter.

The whips and party-line votes come into it, too, as I don't think a free vote was allowed.

Edited by RainehDaze on Jul 21st 2018 at 3:58:04 PM