Skip to content

Off-season political poll

124

Comments

  • Barely recovered from 2015, and now this. Fucking hell.

  • Total disaster.

  • Interesting views seeing as the financial markets and currency is not near the lows of 2008. Perhaps the British public have made the correct decision? Only time will tell.

  • Perhaps they have. Isn't the pound at its lowest against the dollar since the 80s?

    Although I don't entirely agree with the argument that market falls mean the public has made a bad decision - they always used to say the market fell when Labour won a general election.

    But I struggle to see what the vote to leave has actually achieved, with Farage saying the £350m a week on the NHS was a lie, Hannan saying immigration won't be reduced, and billions of pounds knocked off the UK economy - far more than the net cost of EU membership. What are the positive outcomes for leave voters?

  • I'm disappointed. But I suspect leave voters will be equally so as time passes. Politics always over promises.

    I remember from my leftish point of view thinking Blair would shake things up for the better and ended up very disappointed on that front!

    Once it becomes clear that we're not heading back to Merrie England, the NHS isn't getting its £350m a week and the foreigners will still be allowed in to keep wages and prices nice and low, a lot of brexiters will feel the much the same.

  • a fall in the price of FTSE shares does not knock billions of pounds off the UK economy, it does reduce the value for holders of those shares. It cannot be compared with the UK's payment to the EU. Like most of the EU debate, facts did not get used correctly, as per the £350m and the threat of war( loss of peace!)and leaving the EU would mean we would need visas to travel to France, etc. In the next two years, the EU will be a different operation. It will either change for the better, or collapse . I am certain the referendum result will have an input to this either way.

  • So Jon Snow (amongst a lot of others) saying the UK economy is now smaller than the French economy is incorrect?

    It doesn't directly affect the deficit (government expenditure less revenue) in the same way that net contributions to the EU do; but the deficit is not at all the same thing as the economy.

  • The UK economy is the same today as it was yesterday, as is the French. It will also be operating with the same rules as France for the next two years. During that time negotiations with other nations will affect our economy, but whether it will be larger or smaller than the French economy then is something I can't Judge, and I doubt that neither can Jon Snow(amongest a lot of others)

  • Sorry, you're wrong.

  • a fall in the price of FTSE shares does not knock billions of pounds off the UK economy

    No, but the currency falling, even against the Zimbabwean dollar, does. What's happened to the stock markets, worldwide, is just the icing on the idiot cake.

  • Perhaps we should decide if we are discussing the "real" economy or the "paper" economy.

  • Either way... the stock market fall is going to have a massive impact on the real economy.

  • Chris, perhaps the UK will now be like WWFC, supporter owed rather than relying on a rich outsider for financial control. COYUK.'s This is my last comment on this Thread, I'm'going to LEAVE.

  • I'm not quite sure that's how it works.

  • @wformation said:
    Chris, perhaps the UK will now be like WWFC, supporter owed rather than relying on a rich outsider for financial control. COYUK.'s This is my last comment on this Thread, I'm'going to LEAVE.

    Think this analogy is spot on. So we can look forward to all our talent buggering off to richer clubs (countries), no cash, life scraping along towards the bottom of the league (of nations), bleeding the disabled dry, no investment. But it's 'ours'. Deep joy.

    (Happy when it is just a football club - less convinced when it's a bleedin' country)

  • The only honest answer to the 'what happens now?' questions is, 'i don't know.'

  • All in all the EU is a negative force on the lot of ordinary people around Europe, inflicting crude monetarism and mandating privatisation of public services (for all the positives that allow people to travel and work in other EU member states, and facilitating cultural exchange), though if you are going to leave it, it has to be for something demonstrably better and different. All we're getting is more of the same but with even more odious snake oil peddlers like Farage and shapeshifting snakes like Johnson.

  • The EU invests in the most deprived areas of the UK (and other members) in a way that the national government is unwilling to do so.

    I'm not sure the mandating privatisation of public services is correct.

  • And three of those poorest regions, Wales, Cornwall and the north-east voted to leave. No wonder the experts were caught out!

  • There was some quirky old voting. Trafford and Harrogate are rare(ish) Tory areas in the north of Englabd and they were some of the few councils in the north that went for remain.

  • The only ones hellbent on privatising our public services were the UK governments we elected, both Tory and Blairite Labour. As has been standard practice over the past decade or so, the EU gets blamed for something our government is responsible for. One of the reasons we are now in this mess.

  • @Chris
    EU forces the breaking up state monopolies of public services, i.e. preventing member states from not hiving off public services. The railways and water have been one of the highest profile examples.

    @Kadoogan You are correct that the right wing governments in place for the past 30+ years have been hellbent on eroding democratic ownership of public utilities, though any EU state government that wanted to reverse any privatisations would face falling foul of EU regulations on 'liberalisation'. With the current nutcases in government it is a moot point, though a future government at least would have more control over this.

  • True the EU has encouraged competition, but that doesn't necessarily mean the model of privatisation favoured by political parties in the UK. For example the biggest train operator in Germany (and the world possibly) is still Deutsche Bahn which is (effectively) state owned.

  • If anyone has not watched Requiem for the American Dream (available on Netflix), I highly recommend it. Noam Chomsky lays out 10 principles for the concentration of wealth, which is essentially the playbook that our current government is working from. The entire thing is designed to move money from the poorest in society to the already rich. We've just watched this played out on an epic scale, wherein the working classes were tricked into voting for something that will fuck them up more than any other social group.

    The elite will end up benefiting hugely from this as the starvation of funds to public services "forces" the government to privatise the lot. The middle classes will just about do OK from it, as the middle ground inevitably does. All the privatisation though will mean public services that are beholden only to shareholders. And when a private company is legally obliged to do everything in the best interest of only its shareholders, wages go down, jobs get "downsized" while others get automated out of existence and the working classes are left to starve and blame the immigrants. Again. And so we become stuck in a cycle.

    The turkeys have voted for Xmas.

  • @drcongo said:

    Why then did Dennis Skinner campaign for the leave vote and George Osborne to remain.

  • You would have to ask them.

  • If I had to guess though, I'd imagine that George Osborne's family business benefiting hugely from European trade, and Skinner's republicanism might have something to do with it.

  • This article, along with all the linked back stories, explains the whole thing better than I can. If you only read one of the back story links, make it Adam Curtis'. Remember, even members of the elite are not immune to manipulation.

  • No need to ask Skinners opinion his is its an undemocratic corrupt rich mans club.
    If you are old enough to remember the first vote that was the traditional socialist view

  • This is what Dennis Skinner thinks https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e4af-Beast-of-Bolsover-Im-voting-out#.V25elfS6mnM

    And here is Owen Jones argument for 'Lexit'
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/14/left-reject-eu-greece-eurosceptic

    although Owen changed his mind and campaigned hard for Remain.

Sign In or Register to comment.