The Labour Government

[Earlyriser]

Interesting dilemma coming up for the Govt. Apparently the private sector interested parties for the rescue of Thames Water want an immunity clause protecting them from prosecution for serious environmental crimes ie polluting the seas and rivers. If the package is not accepted it might be Govt supervised administration. Another success of private ownership of a monopoly

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

Interesting dilemma coming up for the Govt. Apparently the private sector interested parties for the rescue of Thames Water want an immunity clause protecting them from prosecution for serious environmental crimes ie polluting the seas and rivers. If the package is not accepted it might be Govt supervised administration. Another success of private ownership of a monopoly

I didn’t realise that the privatisation contracts for water companies were completely different to what I thought they’d be. You’d think that there’s a straight forward get-out clause for the government to bring rogue companies under public ownership. Turns out that they set the bar so high, it’s basically down to the operator to hand the business over.

For me, I think the government are playing the long game and will push operators to the point where they have no choice to give it back, or forcing them to operate in a viable way that looks after the people that they serve.

 

[NPBlue]

I miss Robin Williams.

Rose Network – The Labour Party

Our Rose Network is a nationwide network of like-minded Labour supporters committed to supporting our Labour government.

labour.org.uk

Anyhow I do wonder with politicians if they just lack any self awareness, have an inflated opinion of oneself or are having a joke at peoples expense.

Let's have a look at those circles

1945 circle Atlee gave us the NHS, top socialist. He's the cheapest version

1964 circle Wilson expanding welfare state, improving inequality, second cheapest version

1997 circle Blair now its open to the more loaded individual in the new Labour version. I mean who doesn't like a bit of Socialism but business need a little love.

2024 circle Starmer now you need to be super loaded for new Labour 2.0 and joining the main titled leader, yes lawyer Sir Keir Starmer. How much? Well we can't say you need to contact us to discuss all the wonderful opportunities for a person of your wealth.

I mean its hard to imagine someone not seeing the hilarious irony of it all.

I'm going fake website surely?

It's genuine.

I wouldn't donate a penny to any political party myself, but some people do.

It's up to the individual if they think they can buy influence with a donation, and as it's been part of politics in this country for decades, it probably works to an extent. They wouldn't do it otherwise.

That cause may be left wing or right wing, it doesn't matter, but every political party needs funds to operate.

Yeah, it may be a bit cringeworthy, but I don't see any hilarious irony in it from my perspective.

It does, in it's rounded way, point out that lots of social reforms we have all been beneficiaries of have been introduced by Labour governments over the years, and I don't have a problem with that.

What's wrong with a political party asking for money? They all do it because they need to.

 

[Vic]

That's the only plan I know of. I don't understand all the rejoicing. Apart from people living near a couple of new stations between East Didsbury and Stockport (Heaton Mersey and Cheadle Heath?) why would anyone use it to commute to Manchester? 40 minutes by tram from Mersey Square to St Peter's Square or 8 minutes by train from Edgeley to Piccadilly...

View attachment 159006

That was in reply to

Seems like the current idea is to extend out from East Didsbury and use an old, dormant train line to Heaton Mersey and then a new spur would need to be built to go over the M60 and into Stockport centre.

The trouble is (after a bit of research) the line east of East Didsbury was used for landfill and other bits have been built on.

I assume someone at GM has some idea where a tram line would go...

 

[hilts]

It's genuine.

I wouldn't donate a penny to any political party myself, but some people do.

It's up to the individual if they think they can buy influence with a donation, and as it's been part of politics in this country for decades, it probably works to an extent. They wouldn't do it otherwise.

That cause may be left wing or right wing, it doesn't matter, but every political party needs funds to operate.

Yeah, it may be a bit cringeworthy, but I don't see any hilarious irony in it from my perspective.

It does, in it's rounded way, point out that lots of social reforms we have all been beneficiaries of have been introduced by Labour governments over the years, and I don't have a problem with that.

What's wrong with a political party asking for money? They all do it because they need to.

The irony was how the contributions went up depending in which circle you join. And the more you put in the circle you join very much reflects this move to the right of.......

You know what I can't be arsed, thought the irony was pretty obvious I even spelt it out. The ability for people to only see what they want.

 

[threespires]

I am not suggesting for a moment we are in imminent danger of a muslim theocracy, as you say the numbers are of course too small. The point I was making and I think you accept is that a small highly motivated minority can take control of a passive majority and exercise power. Therefore there is no comfort in the numbers that suggest only a minority of UK muslims prefer Sharia law. We saw at the last election in that the muslim vote was being re-organised along more sectarian lines , this will be an opportunity for militant Islam and they will have scant respect for the British liberal values you mention. This will pose a threat to our way of life in regard to tolerance, free speech etc.

As to your second point, I do wonder sometimes if our version of democracy will survive but usually convince myself it will. I am not surprised therefore that some may not reach the same conclusion.
Democracy surely has to be seen to work , the will of the majority should prevail and be seen to prevail. Unfortunately in recent times we have seen the opposite. Whatever your opinion of Brexit, the country voted to leave the EU, yet this democratic vote was undermined at every turn in our own Parliament with the complicity of the Speaker of the House. The establishment conspired to thwart the democratic will of the people.
The majority of the electorate want to see considerably lower immigration, both major political parties know this, they both promise to deliver this yet in government they do the opposite.
At the last election, the Labour Party won 63% of the seats in Parliament with barely 33% of the vote, is their agenda the will of the people? The system does not work.

That said I would suggest that the biggest driver of the anti - democracy sentiment you mention is that the problems of the Country seem intractable. None of the major parties or politicians inspire confidence or have any sense of consensus between them on how to move forward. The country is divided by identity politics, culture wars, generational wealth disparity etc, you could easily be forgiven for feeling it is ungovernable.
In such circumstances, is surprising that some might yearn for an strong authoritarian leader to cut through all the different interest groups and do, on balance what is right for the majority and the country , I don't think so and history tells us we shouldn't be surprised either.

Who are these people ? Nothing sinister ,just ordinary, hard working tax payers, fucked off with paying for everything, not being listened to and being taken for granted. Are they organised and funded - no , they are just taken for granted.

No wonder the CCP are as dismissive of our version of democracy as we are of theirs.

I don't want to derail this thread but I did want to give you the courtesy of a response. There's lots to discuss in what you've said but I'll restrict it to your comment about the 'will of the people' and relate it to your comments re. immigration. The will of the people in a democracy is a complicated thing as is the British people's view of immigration, once you dig into the data. It's rarely clearly binary and once you start unpacking the surveys on immigration you see it's a complicated issue that people are conflicted on. Even where there is a clear majority in a particular area, the reason we teach a specific British Value around tolerance is because in a pluralist society a key part of a democracy is trying avoid the 'tyranny of the majority' , a term City fans are now very familiar with! So as appealing as a reductionist view of the world is to all of us, myself included, I think it's unrealistic to expect it to improve things. I think Brexit was a classic example of that, from well before the referendum it was handled in a cursory and fatuous fashion and we all, on both sides of the argument, ended up unhappy. For my part I think the way out of our seemingly intractable problems is around wide scale reform of the tax system to make sure we are incentivising behaviours than benefit society as a whole, but as appealing as a slogan like "tax wealth, not work is" I have to acknowledge the complexity of putting that into action; and I would be deeply suspicious of anyone who presented it as an easy thing to do.

So though I qualify as an ordinary, pretty stretched tax payer, I think handing the reins of power to a populist authoritarian off any political persuasion is a spectacularly bad idea. I do think we need significant political reform and you'll get no argument from me about PR. Along with that I'd like to see much harder penalties for lying in campaigns, or breaking electoral laws and greater funding transparency overall.

Only a partial response to your post but happy to continue this discussion if there's a better thread somewhere.

 

[inbetween]

I wanted more democracy. I wanted another democratic vote on leaving the EU once the lies about what it would mean were exposed.

Would you have allowed a referendum in the first place? If not then you can't really say that you wanted more democracy. I'm sure you're of the view that the majority of the electorate are too stupid to be allowed to vote at all.

The referendum simply asked do you want to leave the EU and that's it. If somebody wanted to leave the EU and they voted to leave the EU and then we left the EU then that referendum has been satisfied. Their reasons for wanting to leave are far too complex to be reduced down to lies. My father in law was a hard line Brexiter and his mind was made up long before the referendum was even held.

It was also impossible that anybody could have voted for a realistic Brexit because the EU would not allow any pre-negotiations so a well-defined version to vote for could never exist. So for those who wanted to consider a serious Brexit then what were they going to vote for other than an optimistic view?

The definition of Brexit, ie the negotiated version only began once we triggered Article 50 but unfortunately the Tory government did that without any knowledge of what it wanted to negotiate. They then LOST all authority in Parliament and our position was compromised to essentially salvage anything that could be salvaged.

I don't see why any of this is the fault of the people who voted for it. It's the fault of politicians, Parliament and the political system which gave us this end result. And what sums up this awful end result? Theresa May was given a peerage!

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

Doesn't matter she is not up to the job

What an idiotic comment.

 

[BobKowalski]

Would you have allowed a referendum in the first place? If not then you can't really say that you wanted more democracy. I'm sure you're of the view that the majority of the electorate are too stupid to be allowed to vote at all.

The referendum simply asked do you want to leave the EU and that's it. If somebody wanted to leave the EU and they voted to leave the EU and then we left the EU then that referendum has been satisfied. Their reasons for wanting to leave are far too complex to be reduced down to lies. My father in law was a hard line Brexiter and his mind was made up long before the referendum was even held.

It was also impossible that anybody could have voted for a realistic Brexit because the EU would not allow any pre-negotiations so a well-defined version to vote for could never exist. So for those who wanted to consider a serious Brexit then what were they going to vote for other than an optimistic view?

The definition of Brexit, ie the negotiated version only began once we triggered Article 50 but unfortunately the Tory government did that without any knowledge of what it wanted to negotiate. They then LOST all authority in Parliament and our position was compromised to essentially salvage anything that could be salvaged.

I don't see why any of this is the fault of the people who voted for it. It's the fault of politicians, Parliament and the political system which gave us this end result. And what sums up this awful end result? Theresa May was given a peerage!

The post Brexit vision was that we would have exactly the same benefits or better without having to accept Europeans coming here to live or work.

It was an article of faith that German carmakers (or whoever) would not want to lose the UK as a market and the EU would cave. Spoiler. It didn’t.

In the end Johnson would have signed any old tat just to get an agreement even imposing a trade border between countries of our own Union.

Hubris is what did for us. And it has decimated the Tory party as a consequence. I agree that May had no clue as to what leaving the EU meant or even how the Single Market worked and if our political (and media) elites had no idea then why the hell we thought Joe Public would have a better understanding is beyond me.

Brexit brought political chaos and a PM having it out with a lettuce. Economically it disproportionately harmed small to medium business enterprises with zero upside and removed legal freedoms from ourselves - which has to be a first.

You are right, the referendum was about leaving the EU. Which we have done. What happens after that will inexorably follow the path of least economic pain which means a Switzerland or Norway type of relationship. Subject to the EU rules, but limited or no say in formulating these rules. Which I’m pretty happy with. It’s just a shame we will have wasted a decade or so before bowing to economic reality.

 

[Vic]

Would you have allowed a referendum in the first place? If not then you can't really say that you wanted more democracy. I'm sure you're of the view that the majority of the electorate are too stupid to be allowed to vote at all.

The referendum simply asked do you want to leave the EU and that's it. If somebody wanted to leave the EU and they voted to leave the EU and then we left the EU then that referendum has been satisfied. Their reasons for wanting to leave are far too complex to be reduced down to lies. My father in law was a hard line Brexiter and his mind was made up long before the referendum was even held.

It was also impossible that anybody could have voted for a realistic Brexit because the EU would not allow any pre-negotiations so a well-defined version to vote for could never exist. So for those who wanted to consider a serious Brexit then what were they going to vote for other than an optimistic view?

The definition of Brexit, ie the negotiated version only began once we triggered Article 50 but unfortunately the Tory government did that without any knowledge of what it wanted to negotiate. They then LOST all authority in Parliament and our position was compromised to essentially salvage anything that could be salvaged.

I don't see why any of this is the fault of the people who voted for it. It's the fault of politicians, Parliament and the political system which gave us this end result. And what sums up this awful end result? Theresa May was given a peerage!

Gosh, I didn't really want an argument from 2017.

 

[inbetween]

The post Brexit vision was that we would have exactly the same benefits or better without having to accept Europeans coming here to live or work.

It was an article of faith that German carmakers (or whoever) would not want to lose the UK as a market and the EU would cave. Spoiler. It didn’t.

In the end Johnson would have signed any old tat just to get an agreement even imposing a trade border between countries of our own Union.

Hubris is what did for us. And it has decimated the Tory party as a consequence. I agree that May had no clue as to what leaving the EU meant or even how the Single Market worked and if our political (and media) elites had no idea then why the hell we thought Joe Public would have a better understanding is beyond me.

Brexit brought political chaos and a PM having it out with a lettuce. Economically it disproportionately harmed small to medium business enterprises with zero upside and removed legal freedoms from ourselves - which has to be a first.

You are right, the referendum was about leaving the EU. Which we have done. What happens after that will inexorably follow the path of least economic pain which means a Switzerland or Norway type of relationship. Subject to the EU rules, but limited or no say in formulating these rules. Which I’m pretty happy with. It’s just a shame we will have wasted a decade or so before bowing to economic reality.

I agree, the realities of Brexit are problematic but I don't think they're really THAT impactful except for oddities such as having to pay 10 Euros to travel into Europe and then show your passport to get in (something we had to do anyway). We'll never know what mitigations could have existed with better negotiation and policy but the government wrongly ploughed on without that.

I still think that we are where we are because of a sequence of events as opposed to the actual decision itself. There is making a decision and then there is enacting the decision, the latter was a calamity so it's just logical to say that the end result would also be a calamity and here we are.

Either way, the economic realities are a little trickier. The end deal was heralded as awful by most and yet nobody can point out to me on an economic graph where specifically Brexit is seriously hurting us.

People were celebrating the growth in the economy thanks to Labour recently but they also say that Brexit is causing it to fail catastrophically.... It can't be both.

Are we saying that GDP would be 1-2-3x higher had we been in the EU? That seems very unlikely given the state of the European economy. Had the UK been in the EU then it would have been one of the fastest growing countries in the EU but we're doing that today with Brexit! It makes zero sense.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

Gosh, I didn't really want an argument from 2017.

Unless we get a chance to change the outcome?

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

The post Brexit vision was that we would have exactly the same benefits or better without having to accept Europeans coming here to live or work.

It was an article of faith that German carmakers (or whoever) would not want to lose the UK as a market and the EU would cave. Spoiler. It didn’t.

In the end Johnson would have signed any old tat just to get an agreement even imposing a trade border between countries of our own Union.

Hubris is what did for us. And it has decimated the Tory party as a consequence. I agree that May had no clue as to what leaving the EU meant or even how the Single Market worked and if our political (and media) elites had no idea then why the hell we thought Joe Public would have a better understanding is beyond me.

Brexit brought political chaos and a PM having it out with a lettuce. Economically it disproportionately harmed small to medium business enterprises with zero upside and removed legal freedoms from ourselves - which has to be a first.

You are right, the referendum was about leaving the EU. Which we have done. What happens after that will inexorably follow the path of least economic pain which means a Switzerland or Norway type of relationship. Subject to the EU rules, but limited or no say in formulating these rules. Which I’m pretty happy with. It’s just a shame we will have wasted a decade or so before bowing to economic reality.

Economic reality where we have still outperformed our EU G7 neighbours when it comes to GDP growth.

 

[BobKowalski]

I agree, the realities of Brexit are problematic but I don't think they're really THAT impactful except for oddities such as having to pay 10 Euros to travel into Europe and then show your passport to get in (something we had to do anyway). We'll never know what mitigations could have existed with better negotiation and policy but the government wrongly ploughed on without that.

I still think that we are where we are because of a sequence of events as opposed to the actual decision itself. There is making a decision and then there is enacting the decision, the latter was a calamity so it's just logical to say that the end result would also be a calamity and here we are.

Either way, the economic realities are a little trickier. The end deal was heralded as awful by most and yet nobody can point out to me on an economic graph where specifically Brexit is seriously hurting us.

People were celebrating the growth in the economy thanks to Labour recently but they also say that Brexit is causing it to fail catastrophically.... It can't be both.

Are we saying that GDP would be 1-2-3x higher had we been in the EU? That seems very unlikely given the state of the European economy. Had the UK been in the EU then it would have been one of the fastest growing countries in the EU but we're doing that today with Brexit! It makes zero sense.

I am certainly saying our growth would have been better within the EU. It isn’t a difficult equation. If you erect trade barriers then trade becomes more difficult and expensive. If Trump imposes a tariff (a trade barrier) then goods become more expensive for US consumers and more costly for firms in the exporting country.

Tariffs are a crude trade barrier. Non-tariff barriers are more sophisticated as to eliminate the cost of these barriers you need to harmonise standards, rules and regulations which is in essence what the EU does across member countries. This brings down cost for firms ie not having to meet different standards for different countries

The EU is 28 countries. Poland’s growth was just under 3% in 2024. Germany contracted its economy in part from having to transition from cheap energy from Russia. Spain 3.2%. France 1.07%, Sweden 1% and UK 1.1%. EU membership is primarily about minimising trade friction. If you put yourself outside of it then you cease to have the benefits of minimised trade friction.

Are we doing better than Germany? Yes. Are we doing better than Poland and Spain? No. A country’s individual circumstances also plays a part, but it makes zero sense to argue higher trade barriers are better for Britain. They aren’t and never will be because logic dictates otherwise.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

Gosh, I didn't really want an argument from 2017.

You started it, you invaded Poland.

 

[bluethrunthru]

so Labour make changes to the WFA and the same news outlets response................. can the country afford it? " That the same outlets that berated Labour for reducing it in the first place. They can't win so if I was Starmer I'd just press on, govern and do my thing and fuck them. When pensioners are getting the WFA and school kids are getting fed come the time of the next GE lets see what the press darlings can do to boost reform.

 

[TinFoilHat]

so Labour make changes to the WFA and the same news outlets response................. can the country afford it? " That the same outlets that berated Labour for reducing it in the first place. They can't win so if I was Starmer I'd just press on, govern and do my thing and fuck them. When pensioners are getting the WFA and school kids are getting fed come the time of the next GE lets see what the press darlings can do to boost reform.

And Farage is taking credit for it on BBC/Sky.

 

[west didsblue]

People were celebrating the growth in the economy thanks to Labour recently but they also say that Brexit is causing it to fail catastrophically.... It can't be both.

Can easily be both. We can be doing better from outside the EU than some EU countries who were more dependent on Russian energy (eg Germany), however we would be doing even better if we didn’t have the trade barriers imposed by the Brexit deal. It’s not rocket science.

 

[west didsblue]

And Farage is taking credit for it on BBC/Sky.

Of course he is.
What matters for his future electoral prospects is where we are in 4 years not now.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

Can easily be both. We can be doing better from outside the EU than some EU countries who were more dependent on Russian energy (eg Germany), however we would be doing even better if we didn’t have the trade barriers imposed by the Brexit deal. It’s not rocket science.

We were doing better than France and Germany before the gas issues.

And the EU including Germany is still importing large amounts of Russian gas, just not directly. LPG now comes in via tanker.