UK Politics: The Edge of Destruction

[SeanF]

23 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

Excellent work on Dispatches this week. They confirmed that both BAE and RAF personnel are actively working with the Saudi military in the campaign over Yemen. RAF officers are in the Saudi Air Force headquarters helping with target selection and military planning, and BAE staff are refuelling the jets and maintaining them. This is in contradiction to the BAE testimony in committee that they have no involvement with the campaign other than selling the planes and offering minimal technical advice. 

Without Brexit, I suspect this would be a much, much bigger story. The British government is helping an unreliable ally carry out a legally and morally dubious military campaign which has killed thousands of civilians and triggered the world's worst humanitarian crisis. When challenged on this, ministers simply responded with, "They are paying us a fuckload of money and if we didn't do it, someone else would," which apparently makes it okay.

Young voters turning into old voters is a cliche. It's rooted in the idea that young people with no money have no problem being idealistic and suggesting more tax money is spent on causes they believe in because they are not paying the taxes. The idea used to be that the second they did end up earning decent money (usually in middle age, having paid off mortgages), they wouldn't be so quick to dish out that money themselves. That's why (so it's theorised) so many right-on young celebrities who sign up to progressive campaigns and so on also shove their money into offshore accounts.

Fortuitously, the Conservative and Blairite process of transferring money to the ultra-rich means this isn't such an issue any more, and since more young people now have no realistic prospect of ever owning their own homes before they die, that should keep that idealism burning stronger for longer.

Unless the whole thing is bollocks and most people actually stick with their political voting choices for most of their life, except for unusual circumstances, which seems better-supported.

 

Indeed, but we should also consider having a 21st century voting system which makes sense where such shenanigans are impossible to carry out.

If we do want to rejoin, it'll be with the Euro, no budget repayments and none of the exceptions the city of London gets for services. No more special snowflake status for the UK. So if we want to stay on our current, preposterously favourable terms, we have to stay. If we leave, we lose all of that extra incentive to remain, and we're not getting it back.

 

One of the solutions would have been to allow 16-17 year olds to vote in the referendum. Why Cameron didn't do that, following the precedent set for the Scottish independence referendum, is still rather unclear. It's also unclear why they rushed the paper ballot system for British expats, meaning many of them received their ballots far too late to actually post their votes. They also didn't let EU nationals who'd been living in the UK for more than 5 years vote, which was really strange, since the changing date of the referendum meant those who wanted to become UK citizens to vote in some cases didn't have enough time to go through the process.

Cameron fucked up the campaign badly enough without arbitrarily doing shit that badly impacted on the Remain campaign he was supposedly leading, but he decided to do that as well.

It's a cliche, but one there is quite a lot of evidence for.  For example,  the Conservatives finished third behind the Liberals in February 1974, among 18-24 year olds, but as that age cohort grew older, so it increasingly voted Conservative.  By 2015, the Conservatives were in clear first place among them.  Ditto, Americans who were aged 18-30 in 1972 and backed McGovern, but backed Trump 44 years on.

The franchise that was used for the EU referendum was the normal franchise for Parliamentary elections.  

[Spockydog]

*note to self* Don't become a hateful old cunt in your dotage.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Meanwhile we have angry Dunt back, who is so much funnier to read than optimistic Dunt.

 

Quote

But imagine for a moment that May succeeds, which - who knows? - might still happen. We put a man on the moon, after all. Perhaps the great scientific accomplishments of mankind could extend to the prime minister not making a catastrophic mess of things. What happens then?

If she succeeds by May 22nd, as originally planned, we will have held an election campaign for the European parliament, selected candidates, seen them tour the country and then, at the very last minute, they'll be pulled out and the EU will be forced to initiate back-up plans for those seats.

What a stain on our national reputation for us to be treating a democratic institution with such little respect. And this, of course, is being instigated by Brexiters whose entire argument rested on the absence of democracy in Europe. That democracy always existed and now we smear and sabotage it for our own grubby self-interest without even a flicker of recognition about the hypocrisy and shamefulness it involves.

Or perhaps she will succeed in her plan by June 30th, as she specifies in the letter - the date just before new MEPs take their seats. So in this scenario candidates would have been selected, campaigns conducted, constituencies toured, elections held, and then, the moment that the men and women selected by voters to represent them were about to take their seats, they would be whisked away like it was all a dream.

That is May's plan. That is literally what she is proposing. The fact she is so bad at her job that it won't happen is irrelevant. This is her intention.

What a limitless disgrace this is as a political proposition. What a full-time, 24/7, every-day-including-Christmas moral abyss she is. The prime minister has spent the last three years insisting that holding a second referendum would destroy people's trust in the democratic process. And this is how she behaves. This is how she treats elections. As something to be dismissively engaged in and then cast aside, like a bogey you can't flick off your fingers.

She really is absolutely shameless. There is no competition anymore, there is no question: She is, quite simply, the worst British prime minister of our lifetime, and quite possibly of anyone else's.

 

[Chaircat Meow]

39 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Meanwhile we have angry Dunt back, who is so much funnier to read than optimistic Dunt.

 

 

Meh, this is a bit poor from Dunt tbh. I mean, I like the guy, but you're not going to get plaudits for quoting him endlessly as you do. May obviously doesn't want to hold the elections - she's being forced to by Parliament. Parliament is being sensible, by the way, but still there is no reason to accuse of her of all the things Dunt does. He gets himself quite excited. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

You are right, I refer to Dunt a wee bit excessively.  He is usually my primary source for Brexit shenanigans, as he knows what he is talking about, and I am usually in agreement with his assessments (yes, confirmation bias, echo chamber and so on and so forth). But point taken.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Ditto, Americans who were aged 18-30 in 1972 and backed McGovern, but backed Trump 44 years on.

Except this isn't true.  According to exit polls, 18-29 year olds in 1972 (so born 1943 to 1954, or basically the first half of the boomers) supported Nixon 52 to 46.  Is that less than the older generations supported Nixon?  Sure, but if you look over how young voters supported each nominee over time in that link, it generally tracks with how each candidate did with all voters - with a bit of a left bias, granted.  This is echoed when breaking down party ID by generation over time.  The fact is Gen X, the Boomers, and even the Silent generation has been pretty split since 1992, and the minor variations within generation match to how popular/unpopular each party is at a given time.  What you could say is that the Silent generation (so 74+ year olds) have become substantially more Republican the past few years.

There is minimal evidence for the cliche within the literature.  One rather consistent thing you'll find is that yes, younger voters are more likely to change their mind than older voters, but how they change their minds is highly dependent on the current political environment/circumstances.  Actually, some the most recent research interestingly reports we weight political experience into our partisan attitudes just as much when we're not even voting - from about the ages 7-17 - as when we are:

Quote

That staying power is suggested graphically by the top line of Fig. 4, which recasts our statistical results from Fig. 3 by showing the estimated weight of partisan experience accumulated before the age of 18, expressed as a proportion of the cumulative weight of all the partisan shocks experienced at each point in the life-cycle. The striking implication is that adolescent political experiences play a substantial role in shaping partisan identities throughout the life-course. The party identification of a typical 38-year-old in the ANES surveys seems to have been shaped as much by what happened before she was 18 as by what happened after she was 18. This implies, for example, that the partisanship of 38-year-olds in 2008 was shaped as much by the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan as by those of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. [17]

Getting back to that pew link, the striking thing about millennials is that they plainly lean left more than Gen Xers or even Boomers did when they were young.  Will that dissipate some as millennials age?  Sure, but you could almost call that regression to the mean.  That leftist advantage will continue to be very important to the American political landscape for a long time to come.  And while I'm not an expert on behavior in the UK or Europe, if memory serves from seminars a few years ago this trend can be seen in most stable democracies.

[redriver]

6 hours ago, Spockydog said:

*note to self* Don't become a hateful old cunt in your dotage.

Good luck with that bud.

[Gorn]

11 hours ago, SeanF said:

It's a cliche, but one there is quite a lot of evidence for.  For example,  the Conservatives finished third behind the Liberals in February 1974, among 18-24 year olds, but as that age cohort grew older, so it increasingly voted Conservative.  By 2015, the Conservatives were in clear first place among them.  Ditto, Americans who were aged 18-30 in 1972 and backed McGovern, but backed Trump 44 years on.

The franchise that was used for the EU referendum was the normal franchise for Parliamentary elections.  

Your analysis ignores non-voters, which are both a huge section of the populace and disproportionately young. The evidence might just as easily show a conversion from non-voters to Conservatives, since a lot of people only start casting votes and paying attention to politics in their 30s and 40s.

[Which Tyler]

7 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Your analysis ignores non-voters, which are both a huge section of the populace and disproportionately young. The evidence might just as easily show a conversion from non-voters to Conservatives, since a lot of people only start casting votes and paying attention to politics in their 30s and 40s.

Not to mention that the policies of each party change a little over the course of 40-50 years - especially social policies.

Socially, what the left were standing for 40 years ago, has become mainstream, with the right enacting plenty of laws that those same people would very much approve of.

Does that mean that those leftist voters in the 70s who are now voting rightist have changed their views? or that the social aspect of policy that they were passionate about have now become conservative policy?

 

Campagining for gay rights was pretty out there leftist in the 70s and 80s. Gay marriage passed by conservatives.

Campaigning for a national minimum wage was very much peftist in the 80s. Introduced by labour '98, but "claimed" by conservatives 2016 (by the cunning ruse of changing its name and excluding young adults).

Death penalty a pretty mainstream conservative view; would now e electoral suicide.

Parental leave; holiday entitlement; racism, sexism, marital rape etc etc

[Spockydog]

4 hours ago, redriver said:

Good luck with that bud.

Thanks pal. And I'll do my best to continue treating moronic fucking dunderheads with the contempt they deserve.

[Which Tyler]

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2019/04/05/an-epic-twitter-thread-destroys-piers-morgans-claim-that-17-million-people-voted-for-no-deal/?

[BigFatCoward]

20 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2019/04/05/an-epic-twitter-thread-destroys-piers-morgans-claim-that-17-million-people-voted-for-no-deal/?

His pathetic response says everything you need to say about Piers fucking Morgan. 

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

Not to mention that the policies of each party change a little over the course of 40-50 years - especially social policies.

Socially, what the left were standing for 40 years ago, has become mainstream, with the right enacting plenty of laws that those same people would very much approve of.

Does that mean that those leftist voters in the 70s who are now voting rightist have changed their views? or that the social aspect of policy that they were passionate about have now become conservative policy?

 

Campagining for gay rights was pretty out there leftist in the 70s and 80s. Gay marriage passed by conservatives.

Campaigning for a national minimum wage was very much peftist in the 80s. Introduced by labour '98, but "claimed" by conservatives 2016 (by the cunning ruse of changing its name and excluding young adults).

Death penalty a pretty mainstream conservative view; would now e electoral suicide.

Parental leave; holiday entitlement; racism, sexism, marital rape etc etc

Quite so, but some things that would have been considered very right wing forty years ago have also become more mainstream.  

Or indeed, a project which would have been considered left wing 40 years ago (leaving the EU) is now considered right wing.

[Ser Hedge]

Hammond "No red lines in talks with Labour"

Labour "Whaaaaa?"

This is just getting so tiresome.

Can the Tories just please hurry up and split? 

I think we are a point where everyone except the hardest Brexiteers have probably come around to Remain (via final say), but unfortunately neither of the two parties can be seen to officially call for it.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

First: Let's get back to Piers Morgan.

That guy makes me cheer for prostate cancer. So why are we talking about him again in any shape or form? The entire point of being alive is to entertain with his twitter meltdowns when Arsenal gets a spanking. That's about all he is good for.

 

Having that said.

Gonna share two things. Well, two Spiegel links.

Article about Brexit, Entryism and the Imploding Tory Party.

Bercow gives an interview.

[Seli]

18 hours ago, SeanF said:

It's a cliche, but one there is quite a lot of evidence for.  For example,  the Conservatives finished third behind the Liberals in February 1974, among 18-24 year olds, but as that age cohort grew older, so it increasingly voted Conservative.  By 2015, the Conservatives were in clear first place among them.  Ditto, Americans who were aged 18-30 in 1972 and backed McGovern, but backed Trump 44 years on.

The franchise that was used for the EU referendum was the normal franchise for Parliamentary elections.  

Poor people die younger. That is apparently part of the reason generations can vote more conservative when they get older.

eg http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/05/poor-people-often-dont-survive-to-become-seniors-who-vote.html

 

[Ser Hedge]

 

 

"Any state that voted down a further Brexit extension would not be forgiven by other member states, Leo Varadkar declared, going on to suggest that his own preference was for a longer extension than the 30 June date proposed by the UK."

Phew!

 

 

Quote

 

He said the UK and Ireland would find themselves in a “dilemma” in the event of a no-deal because they would have to balance obligations under trade rules to check goods and obligations under the Good Friday agreement to keep the Irish border open.

“It would be up to us to protect the single market and it would be up to the United Kingdom to enforce [World Trade Organization] rules,” he said. “We would both find ourselves in a dilemma because, on the one hand, we would have obligations under the European treaties, they would have obligations under the World Trade Organization.

<snip>

“The reason we came up with the backstop is because it is the solution and, even in the event of a no-deal, we will be saying to the UK: ‘You still have obligations under the Good Friday agreement, you still committed to full regulatory alignment back in December 2017, and we still want the arrangements that are in the backstop to apply,’” he said.“The reason we came up with the backstop is because it is the solution and, even in the event of a no-deal, we will be saying to the UK: ‘You still have obligations under the Good Friday agreement, you still committed to full regulatory alignment back in December 2017, and we still want the arrangements that are in the backstop to apply,’” he said.

-From the Guardian

 

 

(Sorry for the copy and paste, but I thought it captures the issue concisely)

---------

Hard Brexiteers: Your best option is to Remain as a full member of the EU until this conundrum is resolved through technology or amendments to the treaties involved. Unless you want to be international law-breakers. Otherwise, take the WA, slide into the back-stop, until above is resolved.

There is just no other option, so stop pretending like there is, getting the yellow vests worked up.

[Ser Hedge]

Sorry for the rich text mess-up above.

[Chaircat Meow]

1 hour ago, Ser Hedge said:

 

 

"Any state that voted down a further Brexit extension would not be forgiven by other member states, Leo Varadkar declared, going on to suggest that his own preference was for a longer extension than the 30 June date proposed by the UK."

Phew!

 

 

 

(Sorry for the copy and paste, but I thought it captures the issue concisely)

---------

Hard Brexiteers: Your best option is to Remain as a full member of the EU until this conundrum is resolved through technology or amendments to the treaties involved. Unless you want to be international law-breakers. Otherwise, take the WA, slide into the back-stop, until above is resolved.

There is just no other option, so stop pretending like there is, getting the yellow vests worked up.

Questions; what if Leo Varadkar is wrong about a vetoing member not being forgiven - he would like an extension himself but he cannot control what Macron does. Also, when did it become the case that no customs posts/animal health checks were forbidden from the Irish border under the GFA? The idea they are is the Irish/EU view of the GFA but that does not mean it is correct. Afaik the GFA does not mention these things. 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Ser Hedge said:

Sorry for the rich text mess-up above.

One day we may extend the human lifespan, travel faster than light and create true artificial intelligence, but we will never, ever figure out how the hell Westeros.org handles quoting rich text.

Quote

 

what if Leo Varadkar is wrong about a vetoing member not being forgiven - he would like an extension himself but he cannot control what Macron does.

 

The EU is using Ireland and the border as their cover for taking a stricter stance on Brexit, so Varadkar is wielding a tremendous amount of power in this field, completely disproportionate to Ireland's size and influence if it was about an event happening, say, on the other side of the EU. It becomes difficult for the EU to maintain its robust consensus if member states start arguing with one another over their position, so France will find it tricky to publicly break with Ireland over the issue. Macron wants to appear tough and decisive, but he also doesn't want to appear out on a limb by himself trying to screw over Britain when other states are trying to be more flexible. Germany certainly appears much more minded to follow Ireland's position.