So if he is "fucking useless", then how shit must everyone else be?
Worse than Him. That was my point. The UK has a pretty spectacularly useless cohort of politicians right now. He's fucking useless, but I don't see anyone replacing him. It's why There are essentially no politicians in the UK that seem to grasp the enormity of what is happening to the UK. And I know that the 2017 election happened. Fair dues to them for grabbing a large number of former UKIP voters by promising to go through with Brexit, and instead talking about other things. The Tories talking about Europe shored up the Remain side of the Labour support, and they did better than anyone could have imagined. They still didn't win though. That tactic of just accepting the result of the Brexit vote might have been good short term tactics, but It has completely taken labour out of the equation when it comes to providing an adequate opposition on the Brexit issue.
And this is the thing to focus on. Leaving the single market is going to fucking obliterate the UK economy and impoverish millions.
1. That Napoleon quote is true and reduced Dominic Raab to writing a fucking letter to the Labour Party demanding to know their plan for Brexit so that he had something to fucking do instead of his job. And Labour told him to fuck right off. What would the Centrists have done? Op-ed in the Observer by midnight and the next fucking week defending themselves.
Right, again a reasonable enough short term tactic, except here we are and there's only about a week left for the UK govt to swallow the backstop, or else there is no deal, and the gates of Economic hell open. This crunch has been coming since last December. In Ireland, we've known for over a year that if the UK didn't accept the backstop, and leave NI in the EU, this would end in disaster. This hasn't really been raised in the UK, and the Labour party haven't really helped with making this clear. In the absence of someone standing up in the parliament every week to say that the UK will be facing a no-deal brexit if Theresa May can't get her head around the Backstop, then call a general election, or hold a second referendum. The important part about the not interfering tactic, is that you have enough time. The Decision is being made this week, and it's not looking good.
The thing is this, I'm not criticizing him from a blairite point of view. I focus not on people say, but on what they propose to do with money, and this labour Party are every bit as timid and disappointing as New Labour. Tackling inequality has to be first on the agenda, and the only effective means to do that is to take more in tax and redistribute it. Promising not to raise taxes on 95% of the population, while going along with Tory spending plans to increase benefit payments at below the level of inflation is fucking shameful. If there was no brexit, and Labour were to take over from the Tories, they've bound their hands in a very serious way. (I came across an article I wrote in a college magazine 20 years ago say that the Labour party lost their nerve after 1992 and Even though they would have won the 1997 election with a landslide with a manifesto that advocated the killing of every first born, they effectively replaced John Smith with a Tory in disguise and banged on at length about their adherence to these spending limits. So don't confuse my criticisms with those of a Blairite.)
The thing is that the biggest obstacle facing any sort of meaningful left wing reform, or improvement in society is the idea that taxes just can't go up. But instead of staying quiet about their future plans, they've now promised not to raise taxes on the bottom 95% of the income spectrum. That's madness. The Tories aren't going to even stick to that. They should be making the argument for a radically restructured and expanded tax base, now and explain what they will spend that money on, so that people are used to the idea by the next election.
Here's the thing, if they wanted to actually achieve anything if they gain power, or if they want to affect the brexit debate they have to be setting out their stall good and early, and make strong clear arguments for their agenda to increase the size of the Govt's share of the Economy towards something approximating the EU Average. This is not that.
But none of it matters, other than to disappoint me with their timidity and rigid adherence to small government orthodoxy, in spite of all the nonsense we have to put with about marxism. Because the UK has basically a couple of days to swallow the NI backstop, or else we are heading for a fucking nightmare that is going to sweep away a large chunk of the UK economy, crater everything, and immiserate millions. The UK Economy has been in the single market for 26 years. It needs it to function. Whatever you might think about the EU, The UK leaving the Single market is in a similar category of suicidal lunacy to giving up electricity. Quite literally the only thing that should be concerning the leader of a left wing party in the UK is the millions and millions of people that are going to utterly impoverished by this. However bad things are for however many people now, they're going to be far worse, for far more.
2. Labour isn't absent from the Brexit stage. It is completely and utterly being ignored. Labour has been saying something and you haven't been fucking listening. Six tests, designed to be failed. Been there for two years. We'll vote down a shit deal. Second referendum.
There isn't time. There's literally a couple of days to conclude negotiations, in order to have something sufficiently detailed for prime minsters to vote on, and then bring back to their parliaments to ratify. Lets say that Theresa May even manages to bring back some form of agreement, after the meeting in mid december it would be the end of jamuary before you could have an election, And I know about the Six tests. It's just a reheating of Gordon Brown's bullshit tests for the Euro. But the second and third one together set my teeth on edge.
2 Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?
3. Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?
Test two is only possible within the Single Market and Customs union, but that requires freedom of movement. Is that what test three means? See it's essentially "cake", and Labour have Trafficked in Cake for far too long. They needed to be holding the Govt to account in the world of reality. The Red lines about freedom of Movement and the ECj have always meant that the UK was going to lose almost all of its access to the single market, thereby ending the export of Services to the EU. That's about 15% of the UK economy snuffed out overnight. This is a point that needed to be made repeatedly in parliament from the day after the referendum on.
It has also been clear that the UK negotiating its own trade deals would mean a radical and impossible increase in customs barriers. This is a point that needed to be hammered home repeatedly. What were the Government's plans for dealing with this? But the really big one would have been to take the Backstop and use it as a wedge to pry the DUP and the Tories apart. Theresa May lied to Arlene Fosters face about that backstop. I would have mentioned that in parliament. I would have mentioned it every week at leader's question time. "So have you decided whether you're going to stab Arlene, or the Country in the Back?" That sort of thing. You know, Oppose. Make it known that the UK would have to agree to the backstop or there would be no deal. This seems to have snuck up on a lot of people in the UK.
I appreciate that this isn't exactly constructive, or going to make anyone but then again There is virtually nothing constructive or positive that can be said about british politics at the moment. There is a fucking cataclysm coming, an order of magnitude greater than "Project Fear" during the referendum, and no-one in any british political party seems to be grasping this.
Worse than Him. That was my point. The UK has a pretty spectacularly useless cohort of politicians right now. He's fucking useless, but I don't see anyone replacing him. It's why There are essentially no politicians in the UK that seem to grasp the enormity of what is happening to the UK. And I know that the 2017 election happened. Fair dues to them for grabbing a large number of former UKIP voters by promising to go through with Brexit, and instead talking about other things. The Tories talking about Europe shored up the Remain side of the Labour support, and they did better than anyone could have imagined. They still didn't win though. That tactic of just accepting the result of the Brexit vote might have been good short term tactics, but It has completely taken labour out of the equation when it comes to providing an adequate opposition on the Brexit issue.
And this is the thing to focus on. Leaving the single market is going to fucking obliterate the UK economy and impoverish millions.
1. That Napoleon quote is true and reduced Dominic Raab to writing a fucking letter to the Labour Party demanding to know their plan for Brexit so that he had something to fucking do instead of his job. And Labour told him to fuck right off. What would the Centrists have done? Op-ed in the Observer by midnight and the next fucking week defending themselves.
Right, again a reasonable enough short term tactic, except here we are and there's only about a week left for the UK govt to swallow the backstop, or else there is no deal, and the gates of Economic hell open. This crunch has been coming since last December. In Ireland, we've known for over a year that if the UK didn't accept the backstop, and leave NI in the EU, this would end in disaster. This hasn't really been raised in the UK, and the Labour party haven't really helped with making this clear. In the absence of someone standing up in the parliament every week to say that the UK will be facing a no-deal brexit if Theresa May can't get her head around the Backstop, then call a general election, or hold a second referendum. The important part about the not interfering tactic, is that you have enough time. The Decision is being made this week, and it's not looking good.
The thing is this, I'm not criticizing him from a blairite point of view. I focus not on people say, but on what they propose to do with money, and this labour Party are every bit as timid and disappointing as New Labour. Tackling inequality has to be first on the agenda, and the only effective means to do that is to take more in tax and redistribute it. Promising not to raise taxes on 95% of the population, while going along with Tory spending plans to increase benefit payments at below the level of inflation is fucking shameful. If there was no brexit, and Labour were to take over from the Tories, they've bound their hands in a very serious way. (I came across an article I wrote in a college magazine 20 years ago say that the Labour party lost their nerve after 1992 and Even though they would have won the 1997 election with a landslide with a manifesto that advocated the killing of every first born, they effectively replaced John Smith with a Tory in disguise and banged on at length about their adherence to these spending limits. So don't confuse my criticisms with those of a Blairite.)
The thing is that the biggest obstacle facing any sort of meaningful left wing reform, or improvement in society is the idea that taxes just can't go up. But instead of staying quiet about their future plans, they've now promised not to raise taxes on the bottom 95% of the income spectrum. That's madness. The Tories aren't going to even stick to that. They should be making the argument for a radically restructured and expanded tax base, now and explain what they will spend that money on, so that people are used to the idea by the next election.
Here's the thing, if they wanted to actually achieve anything if they gain power, or if they want to affect the brexit debate they have to be setting out their stall good and early, and make strong clear arguments for their agenda to increase the size of the Govt's share of the Economy towards something approximating the EU Average. This is not that.
But none of it matters, other than to disappoint me with their timidity and rigid adherence to small government orthodoxy, in spite of all the nonsense we have to put with about marxism. Because the UK has basically a couple of days to swallow the NI backstop, or else we are heading for a fucking nightmare that is going to sweep away a large chunk of the UK economy, crater everything, and immiserate millions. The UK Economy has been in the single market for 26 years. It needs it to function. Whatever you might think about the EU, The UK leaving the Single market is in a similar category of suicidal lunacy to giving up electricity. Quite literally the only thing that should be concerning the leader of a left wing party in the UK is the millions and millions of people that are going to utterly impoverished by this. However bad things are for however many people now, they're going to be far worse, for far more.
2. Labour isn't absent from the Brexit stage. It is completely and utterly being ignored. Labour has been saying something and you haven't been fucking listening. Six tests, designed to be failed. Been there for two years. We'll vote down a shit deal. Second referendum.
There isn't time. There's literally a couple of days to conclude negotiations, in order to have something sufficiently detailed for prime minsters to vote on, and then bring back to their parliaments to ratify. Lets say that Theresa May even manages to bring back some form of agreement, after the meeting in mid december it would be the end of jamuary before you could have an election, And I know about the Six tests. It's just a reheating of Gordon Brown's bullshit tests for the Euro. But the second and third one together set my teeth on edge.
2 Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?
3. Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?
Test two is only possible within the Single Market and Customs union, but that requires freedom of movement. Is that what test three means? See it's essentially "cake", and Labour have Trafficked in Cake for far too long. They needed to be holding the Govt to account in the world of reality. The Red lines about freedom of Movement and the ECj have always meant that the UK was going to lose almost all of its access to the single market, thereby ending the export of Services to the EU. That's about 15% of the UK economy snuffed out overnight. This is a point that needed to be made repeatedly in parliament from the day after the referendum on.
It has also been clear that the UK negotiating its own trade deals would mean a radical and impossible increase in customs barriers. This is a point that needed to be hammered home repeatedly. What were the Government's plans for dealing with this? But the really big one would have been to take the Backstop and use it as a wedge to pry the DUP and the Tories apart. Theresa May lied to Arlene Fosters face about that backstop. I would have mentioned that in parliament. I would have mentioned it every week at leader's question time. "So have you decided whether you're going to stab Arlene, or the Country in the Back?" That sort of thing. You know, Oppose. Make it known that the UK would have to agree to the backstop or there would be no deal. This seems to have snuck up on a lot of people in the UK.
I appreciate that this isn't exactly constructive, or going to make anyone but then again There is virtually nothing constructive or positive that can be said about british politics at the moment. There is a fucking cataclysm coming, an order of magnitude greater than "Project Fear" during the referendum, and no-one in any british political party seems to be grasping this.
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