tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163590732024-03-07T20:10:48.497+00:00Temporary.Moderate Opinions, Immoderately Put.Jackarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04477130724830922566noreply@blogger.comBlogger526125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16359073.post-79439936469787938962017-06-08T12:12:00.000+01:002017-06-08T12:38:34.983+01:00Montgomery Brewster's 'None of the Above' would walk this election.<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's actually quite liberating to follow politics without a team to shout for. I remain a Conservative by inclination. I like free markets, economic liberalism and so forth even if the Conservative manifesto doesn't seem to all that much, Tories, if not their leadership, are mainly for these things. I am also a social liberal, I remain committed to an open and tolerant society. However the Liberal Democrats risk becoming the Church of England does Politics, being stuffed with the kind of dry, shabby inadequate who can't quite get over his (self) loathing of homosexuality. I dislike May. I think she's a narrow-minded provincial bigot who's been promoted way, way above her level of competence. She is however the best of the two candidates for Prime Minister. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let's not pretend Corbyn was doing other than palling around with the IRA in the 1980s because the glamour of "anti-imperialist" terrorists excited him. He has always supported whoever was fighting the UK at the time, and doesn't deserve to be an MP, let alone to reverse those letters. Labour's clown-car economics is only marginally less risible than the Tories offer, this time round. The difference is Labour actually believe their silliness, and they're led by a traitor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you live in Scotland, this election is about independence. If you live in NI, then this election is about the tribal headcount. If you live elsewhere this election is whether you want an incompetent nanny-state provincial Tory or an antediluvian Socialist to deliver Brexit. It's a shabby, and dispiriting affair. If you can't work out how to vote, you can always vote for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_film)">Montgomery Brewster</a>. None of the above is appealing. But if you feel you MUST vote, then I have prepared a handy flow-chart to help you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you despise politicians, you get despicable politicians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This shabby parade of also-rans from which we have to choose on today (without any actual choice on the main, nay only, issue of the day) is the logic of calling decent, capable people like Blair, Cameron and Major "war criminals" and "Traitors", for decades. It pollutes the language for when you actually get some of these things on the offer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No worthwhile people will put up with the scrutiny and abuse heaped daily on politicians. So you get the kind of bore for whom the scrutiny isn't an issue. They've never done anyt<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">hing interesting in the their lives. At least David Cameron dropped some E and went to a rave or two as a youth. What does Theresa May, who spent her twenties <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/06/06/this-quote-about-theresa-may-curbing-lesbianism-has-gone-viral-but-is-it-true/">complaining about the promotion of lesbianism in schools</a>, know of fun? As for Corbyn, he looks like the kind of man for whom a perfect saturday night is treatise on Marx (so long as it contains nothing he doesn't already know and agree with) with some lovely mineral water. He is the Labour man Orwell warned you about.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'll be voting Tory. Why? My local headbanging Leadsomite hard-brexiter has stood down after his colossal act of vandalism, to be replaced by a man with whom I seem to agree.</span></div>
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My expectations are of a Tory majority around 75, on a low turnout, and they will have half a dozen seats in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats will take Vauxhall and Twickenham, losing in Sheffield Hallam (the "were you up for...?" moment as Clegg loses his seat), but holding Orkney and Shetland against the SNP, remaining about where they are now overall. Or that's where my betting is at the moment.</div>
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What do I want to see happen? I'd like to see May remain PM but in a hung parliament, reliant on Northern Irish politicians for her majority because let's face it, she deserves nothing better.</div>
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A rubbish show all round but at least I can enjoy it, whoever loses.</div>
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<p dir="ltr">Next to the steady decline in carbon emissions from the west, is set the Vast increase in emissions in recent decades from Asia. But this represents billions of people using no net carbon energy, tending crops using animal muscle and burning biomass (and occasionally starving to death) Just a few decades ago, to my meeting an indian chap on Holiday in Stockholm with his family and chatting about cricket while we tried to decipher the train times. The rise of the middle class in India and China is a huge flowering of human potential, even if it comes with soluble environmental problems.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Anyway, the level of Co2 in the atmosphere is rising, and this is changing the climate. Reducing emissions is a noble aim, but it must not get in the way of developing economies' economic growth. Fortunately, the solution is already with us. Renewable technology is improving. Cars are getting more efficient, and perhaps moving away from fossil fuel (at least directly). And this process will happen in india and China more quickly than in the west beacaue adopting what will be soon proven and cheap technology will enable them to miss whole generations of poluting technologies.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Which brings us to the great cetaceans. The southern ocean is the world's biggest habitat, with the world's shortest food chain, at the top of which sits the largest animal that has ever existed on earth. Phytoplancton bloom, and are eaten by zooplankton, which are eaten by fish larvae and Krill, which are eaten buy just about everything else. The biggest eaters of Krill are the baleen whales which turn five tons of Krill into Iron-rich shit every day. Sperm whales meanwhile are diving to the abysal deep turning several tons of squid into Iron-rich scat, moving nutrients from the deep to the surface. The limiting nutrient at the bottom of the food-chain is iron, so whale faeces fertilise the ocean, and enable more phytoplanckton to grow which absorb Co2 from  the air, much of which falls to the bottom of the ocean as marine snow, and eventually become rock.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But we killed the whales, and when we stopped doing so, they didn't recover as quickly as we hoped. We didn't just kill the Apex predators, in doing so, humanity reduced the Southern ocean's ecosystem's capacity to create life, and absorb Carbon. The southerm ocean may have settled at a lower equilibrium of Iron circulation. The Atlantic on the other hand, which gets tons of Iron from the african deserts every time the wind blows, has seen whale stocks recover better.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Which is why I want to see more <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16390-climate-fix-ship-sets-sail-with-plan-to-dump-iron/">research</a> into Iron seeding the ocean, which may give a leg up to <i>Balaenoptera musculus</i>, as well as possibly solving climate change. Climate change is a problem. But while Trump's petulent gesture doesn't help us solve it, nor does it make the problem any harder. Politicians simply matter less than a whale taking a dump.</p>
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Wednesday saw my 40th Birthday, and to celebrate I went to see Tom Stoppard's brilliant Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Old Vic with a <a href="http://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2017/rosencrantz-and-guildenstern/">C</a>hum. While Daniel Radcliffe & Joshua Maguire lead, the show is stolen by a magisterial performance by David Haig as The Player, a sort of luvvie-pimp-cum-impresario who holds the whole play, in its absurdity, together.<br />
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The play is Hamlet, seen from the point of view of two minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, old friends of Hamlet's. The hapless pair spend the play wondering what they're doing and why, having been recalled to Elsinore by Claudius to find out why Hamlet's being such a dick, moping about and talking gibberish to himself ("to be, or not to be..." etc). They are eventually betrayed by their friend, who suspects them of working for his uncle which they are, sort of.<br />
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The play is therefore a meditation on the futility of existence, and the limitations of people's personal agency. Most people get on with their lives, as bit parts in a greater drama, not really sure as to the direction of events, or even of the past. After all, what have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got to go on, but what can be gleaned from a few words of Shakespeare's, as metaphor for everyone's flawed and self-serving memory. Any interrogator or detective will tell you about the reliability of eye-witnesses and the difficulty of establishing the truth.<br />
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From everyone's point of view then, even when we're at the centre of events, most of the action is happening offstage. There will have been some point at which you could have said "no", but you missed it. Then you die.<br />
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If you can get <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/mar/08/rosencrantz-and-guildenstern-are-dead-review-daniel-radcliffe-stoppard-old-vic-london">tickets</a>, do so.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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In general the view I've taken over the years is that minimum wages are a bad thing, arguing that they are mainly paid for by the people who otherwise wouldn't get a job at all. Only a job can lead to a better job, and if people are unemployed for a long time, they often become unemployable. So by this logic, keeping unemployment down should in the long-run be better for the poorest.<br />
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But, there is a trade off. When I grew up, late '80s and '90s, I cannot recall seeing cars washed by hand. When my father wasn't exploiting child labour by getting me and my brother to do a rubbish, half-arsed job for which we expected to be paid handsomely, we went to see the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Roundabout#Characters">blue Dougals</a>" at the petrol station. The UK as a wealthy country, had substituted Capital for Labour, and cars were washed by big machines at every petrol station. But a team of a dozen hard-working and cheerful eastern Europeans can set up a car-wash, do inside and out for very little capital outlay - a jet washer, and some sponges, so when the EU accession countries citizens moved to seek work, this is what many did. The car wash machines were gradually removed and replaced by people. <a href="http://brackenworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/manufacturing-jobs-wibble.html">This is the opposite of progress</a>.<br />
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Let's take a step back and look at the big picture.<br />
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Europe's wealth, it's vitality, its progress didn't spring from European individual or cultural superiority. It started when half the population was wiped out by <i>Yersinia pestis</i> in the 14th Century. There was a certain amount of luck - the same event increased the power of the landowner in Rice states and in pre-feudal societies farther East, but in Northwestern Europe, this created a shortage of Labour, and the peasants rose up a generation afterwards to demand higher wages from their lords. When this happened in Italy, the energy was put into sculpture of the nude male form, and was called "the Renaissance". When wages rise, it makes sense to build machines rather than employ labour, which has a virtuous feedback loop: skilled people running the machines drive up production, and become richer, which creates an incentive for further innovation. More widespread desire for, and access to education is grease in the wheels of this, the motor of progress that led to the industrial revolution.<br />
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The opening up of America, a nation with a perpetual and long-lasting shortage of labour not only added another motor to that European culture of innovation which grew up after the Black Death, but also absorbed the excess labour of Europe. While there is a labour shortage, immigration can be managed, though immigrants in large numbers have nowhere, ever been welcomed by the people they move to. Even when the people are kith and kin, the 'Scots Irish' (in reality, families originally from Northern England and the Scottish Borders) were moved on by the Germans and English who'd already settled the East coast. They ended up in Appalachia.<br />
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It's clear, then in the short run and in aggregate, wages aren't "driven down" by migration in a market economy. Part of that, in modern times may be due to the minimum wage, which protects some of the people most vulnerable to substitution, but also the 'lump of Labour fallacy'. Immigrants, especially young workers with families bring demand as well as supply and these things more-or-less balance. They aren't "taking our jobs" but they are changing the nature of jobs available. And the vast supply of excess labour from the subcontinent, africa and the poorer bits of Europe is not exactly an incentive to invest in productivity-enhancing machines, as the car-wash example shows. The mass immigration from the poor world has the potential to stall the western motor of innovation and may contribute to wages not rising as far as they might, especially for the lowest skilled workers.<br />
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The UK has a problem with productivity. UK employers have got good at employing the excess Labour of a serious chunk of the world, UK wages have been flat for a decade, and these things are linked. So the Chancellor is <a href="https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/7908">hiking the minimum wage</a> in the hope of good headlines, and to incentivise investment to drive productivity. So. What effect will this have on immigration. Will it draw more migrants to the UK hoping for higher wages, like European immigration to the USA, or will it price low-skilled immigration out of the Labour market and allow the motor of progress to continue?<br />
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Splits that used to be geographic - some countries were rich, and others poor and the movement between the two was rare, is moving to one where there are still two countries, it's just the divide is social, educational, and cultural. You have a global, liberal, free market culture, which values education and novelty. And you have national, 'c' conservatives who just want their own culture, don't care about education all that much, won't move to find a job, and expect to be looked after who stay put and resent incomers. And the latter are disproportionately annoyed about foreigners moving into "Their" neighbourhoods while it's the former who have more to fear in the short term from highly skilled competition, minimum wages see to that. And if minimum wages rise far enough, low skilled workers will not be able to get jobs and they will stop coming to the UK. The problem is, the lowest skilled people are often native. The cost of a raised minimum wage will be borne by those least able to cope.<br />
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If we are to avoid society fracturing permanently into Morlocks and Eloi we do need to manage migration, to <a href="http://brackenworld.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/immigration-some-is-good-more-isnt.html">keep that motor humming</a>. <a href="http://brackenworld.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Immigration">We cannot let the world come at will</a>. But there was no need to pull up the drawbridge against EU migrants who always looked like collateral damage to me.<br />
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It's not all about economic self-interest, nor is it wholly naked in-group preference (what educated, open minded people call "bigotry"). It is the interplay between the two. Ultimately the stagnation of UK wages over the last 10 years isn't due to migration, but the recovery from a balance-sheet recession of 2007-9. It's the feeling of ennui caused by a decade of stagnation which has caused the anti-immigration nonsense, the rather blameless Poles have just become a Piñata and for a population that was persuaded to lash out at the EU when they really wanted to lash out at "the Muslims". The tragedy is all this happened just as we were getting back to normal.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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Why does the passport matter?<br />
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For the Tory Brexiter, the underlying issue is Sovereignty. They object violently, strenuously and on principle to ANYTHING that comes "above" the Crown in Parliament. The jurisdiction of the ECJ is for them, an insult to the courts and other institutions of the UK. The idea is offensive that any law-making organisation, especially one that Jacques Delors <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/trade-union-forum/meeting/how-the-tuc-learned-to-love-the-european-union-and-how-the-affair-turned-ou">told the trades unions</a> is basically for stopping the Tories Torying, could be "supreme" over parliament.<br />
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Of course the ECJ mainly deals in trade disputes and represents an international court to settle international issues and ensure consistent interpretation of EU law. It isn't "making the law of the land" and nor is it a "supreme" court in a meaningful way as far as the average citizen is concerned because it doesn't deal with those issues. If you're up in front of the Magistrate for punching a rotter, you're not going to be able to appeal all the way to the ECJ. Criminal law stops with the nation. Appeals of bad people going up to the European court of Human Rights on seemingly spurious grounds get funnelled into this narrative (shhh, I know), so the impression is obtained that "Crazy Euro-Judges" are "over-ruling parliament", and demanding prisoners can vote or should be allowed hacksaws to avoid trampling on "Human Rights" or whatever the tabloid outrage du jour may be. This then reinforces the narrative that the EU is "anti-democratic" and "makes all our laws". And once you have this narrative, flawed as it is, it's jolly easy to amass an awful lot of corroborating "evidence" because the Tabloids spent 30 years deliberately feeding it.<br />
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Sovereignty vs Influence; there is a trade-off. The UK, broadly, wrote the Financial services legislation for the entire continent. In return, the Continent got access to the only truly global city in Europe. The French did this for farming and got the CAP, while the Germans got the Eurozone's interest rates and got to destroy Southern Europe. The EU which contains (<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/29/new-zealand-offers-uk-its-top-trade-negotiators-for-post-brexit/">rather like the UK and trade negotiators</a>) no-one who CAN write decent financial services legislation legislation, because most of those people are British. Thanks to Brexit, the quality of the legislation on financial services will go down, both in the UK which will be compelled to have regulatory equivalence to keep banks' access to the single market and the EU. The UK will have become a <i>rule-taker </i>rather than a <i>rule maker</i>. I fail to see how this reclaims "Sovereignty". The organisational source of the legislation will remain unchanged, but we loose any ability to influence, let alone write it. Multiply this catastrophe across an economy and you see why the "sovereignty" argument against EU law is, on any rational basis, stupid.<br />
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The parliament, the very existence of which takes on the aspect of a supranational government in waiting, rather than a simple means to have democratic oversight of an organisation which employs fewer people than Manchester city council, distributes about 1% of GDP and writes trade law. This unwarranted grandiosity once again suits both the Brussels apparatchiks, and the simian oiks of UKIP whom the British public sent to Brussels as a mark of the National contempt for the institution. The parliament is, to my mind is a risible little potempkin affair, barely worth considering,<br />
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So there's the error. Back to the passport.<br />
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The International Civil Aviation Organisation sets the dimensions, so the writing was on the wall for the old British hardback passport, fabulous though it was, it didn't really fit in the back pocket of your trousers. However once you believe that the EU tentacles are slowly creeping into institutions to turn you into a province of the "EUSSR", then you start to see this everywhere. The EU is foolish to seek the trappings of a national Government before they had built a demos, and absent any desire for it from the people. Symbols matter. The UK doesn't have an ID card. So when Brits talk about nationality they might say "Australian passport-holder" rather than "Australian citizen". I am not sure if any other nationalities use this formulation. The passport is slightly more than a document. No? Try losing one abroad.<br />
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The EU resolution on Passports is<a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A41981X0919"> here</a>. For anyone who thinks the EU "made" the UK have a Maroon passport, here's EU Croatia's. .<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWx4bIkhGPbcrO4-_tkYwV-hknHkOY4-pQz-kHOvsJMmr65ZK-kihbtF03XUoVgV9A-KihDajwFl72X7njBhyphenhyphenCJjN1dPQrA4bcuEXbC3YLFAIiGB3EawH1eVI4MIRZ73fUBqXm/s1600/Croatian+passport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWx4bIkhGPbcrO4-_tkYwV-hknHkOY4-pQz-kHOvsJMmr65ZK-kihbtF03XUoVgV9A-KihDajwFl72X7njBhyphenhyphenCJjN1dPQrA4bcuEXbC3YLFAIiGB3EawH1eVI4MIRZ73fUBqXm/s320/Croatian+passport.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The EU suggested the Colour be harmonised and the words "European Union" be put First. At the top. Above the crown, First. Symbolising, perhaps inadvertently that the EU was more important than the nations. And there you have it. And no-one working on it thought to object. Changing the colour of the passport was a key symbolic gesture that irritated many people, and reinforced an utterly false narrative, to no end or benefit to anyone. There is simply no need for European Union passports to be uniformly coloured. It merely satisfies the bureaucrats' desire for order. And it is my belief that it is this symbolic bureaucratic exercise in territory marking by the EU that revealed, and still reveals, a fundamental disconnect between the Brussels Panjandrums, the people of the EU and the British in particular. The Eurocrats want a Federal Europe with the EU as a Government. The Nations, broadly supported by their governments don't, and have resisted any attempt.<br />
<br />
The EU hasn't made Britain less "sovereign". All EU law, necessary to trade with as little friction as possible, is of the type that by whom it is written doesn't matter. With trading standards does it really matter WHAT they are, just that they're as universal and consistently applied? I don't need to tell you that it was never illegal to display prices of potatoes in Lbs and Oz, just that you HAD to display the price in KG and g too, in case any Frenchmen walking through the market didn't know how many Lbs are in a KG. I don't care who writes the regulations for the import of Duck eggs, just that it's done.<br />
<br />
But there it is. The Brexiters shooting with the accuracy of a semi-trained recruit who's just dropped LSD at every figment of their fevered imagination, egged on by equally deluded fantasists who still think they're creating a Federal United States of Europe. These two groups of lunatics needed each other. And so, the passport, with 'European Union' at the top was barely noticed on the continent, but seemed to some Brits as evidence the EU was after their democracy, their identity and their Freedom. However stupid this belief is, a Blue passport could've been delivered cheaply as a quick Tabloid-Friendly win for Cameron and such was the narrow margin, it would have probably been enough.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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<br />
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<br />
To call this "sexism" is to miss the point. This isn't about women being held down by sexist male tittle tattle. Clearly, two of the most powerful people in the country haven't been held down in any meaningful way. Any executive head of Government is fair game for any and all criticism. What these women have done is rise above the level at which society normally seeks to protect women from abuse.<br />
<br />
Male politicians are made fun of for their appearance and clothing all the time. <a href="http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2017/03/28/remember-when-the-bbcs-womans-hour-asked-david-cameron-and-david-davis-what-sort-of-underpants-they-preferred/">It's the sea men swim in</a>. Whether it's Donald Trump's expensive, but ill-fitting suits and too-long ties like he's stepped out of a 1980s pop video caricature of a businessman, or Cameron's forehead, or the fact that middle-aged men are always assumed to be repulsive, this abuse is normal. The ridicule a male politician faces when he's seen in public wearing anything other than a blue suit is extraordinary. From Tony Blair wearing a clean barbour, to William Hague's baseball cap or Cameron's beachwear, there's a reason male politicians dress identically. When women's clothing (far more interesting by the way, than the sober suits of most male politicians) is commented on, it enables a personal brand to be created that much easier. Theresa May's shoes are like Margaret Thatcher's handbag. True, women do have to think harder about their clothing - too much leg, cleavage etc... and you immediately invite scorn (of other women, mainly), but the fact the female wardrobe stands out against the endless blue/grey suits and red or blue ties of the male is as much an opportunity as it is a minefield.<br />
<br />
Any comment about May's shoes, for example is part of her deliberately curated brand, and shoe-designers are falling over themselves to get their products onto her feet. This isn't sexist. Women like shoes, and there's no reason why Theresa May shouldn't have fun with them.<br />
<br />
Lower down the pecking order there's a taboo against men commenting negatively on a woman's appearance, lest you hurt the poor dear's feelings. Yes male 'locker room' banter will discuss who's attractive, but it's rude to do so in front of women and by and large, gentlemen don't. Women don't typically have these conversations about men in earshot of men either, but describing men as "revolting" or "creepy" is so normal as to be unworthy of comment, and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4a7411f2-13af-11e7-80f4-13e067d5072c">completely unnoticed</a>. May and Sturgeon have risen above this social protection, and are subject to the same rules of engagement as men are. i.e that if we have feelings, tough.<br />
<br />
These women are grown-ups doing important jobs. If you think the Mail's light-hearted front page is an insult to them, you're an idiot. Of course Sarah Vine who wrote the thing, knows exactly the response it would get, howls of idiot outrage from the usual suspects on Twitter, and from Sturgeon herself. This allows the paper to swat the complaints aside with contempt. This signals to their readership that the Mail is on their side against the bien-pensant left with their idiotic & totalitarian outrage about human trivialities. May by rising above it, does the same. The Mail is one of the Best-selling papers in the UK, and one of the world's most visited "news" (ish) websites. Who won that exchange?<br />
<br />
The po-mo left, obsessed with identity politics, used to being able to bully dissenting opinion down STILL hasn't got the new rules of the game. Someone's pointed out the Emperor's naked, but he's still acting like he's in charge and hasn't noticed the mood's changed. Yet.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Completely unrelated, but thank you to the Anonymous commenter who wrote <a href="http://brackenworld.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/tories-have-profoundly-damaged-uk-you.html?showComment=1487775482957#c1453710124369294841">this</a>. It cheered me up.</i><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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The two tribes of politics, broadly the Tory and Labour parties divided over the 20th Century principally on the matter of economics. Simplifying: Tories preferred market solutions to state planning, and preferred lower taxes and less generous state spending.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
The Labour party, which when it abandoned clause IV, surrendered on the economic question, not coincidentally a few years after the Berlin wall came down. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
As a result, the great battles since then have been essentially cultural. Gay rights, racial integration etc. The confusion stems from there being no consensus within the Tory or Labour tribes on these issues. Plenty of Tories are happily socially liberal, many of the Labour tribe are socially conservative, especially when you look at voters rather than representatives.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
Which brings us to the tribal division of Britain: class. The middle class: liberal, internationalist, universalists; vs a working class: authoritarian, insular and particular world view. The former is comfortable with diversity and immigration. The latter isn't. The former's kids live a long way from home, and move for work, the latters kids live in the same town and expect the work to come to them. The former don't speak to their neighbours, the latter care what their neighbours do and think. These labels are correlated roughly with, but independent of, economic status. It's possible to be middle class, in a local-authority home living on benefits, and working class, earning seven figures and living in a manor house. (Though it's likely these people's kids will change tribes)</div>
<div dir="ltr">
There are elements of these cultures in all major parties in the UK, but the rest of us rarely communicate with people from the other tribe. The people you have round for dinner will most probably be from your tribe. Half the country holds its knife like a pen, yet none have sat round my table. When the two tribes meet, it's awkward. Those difficult bottom-sniffing conversations seeking common ground are easy to conclude when two members of the same tribe meet, and difficult when you meet the other half.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
There have always been working class Tories, because much of the working class is as comfortable with the certainties of heirarchy as a shire Tory, and doesn't much care for this freedom and opportunity nonsense, preferring a better boss instead. And it's interesting to watch the Tories dangle the protectionism and insularity the working class has long demanded. Middle class labour fabians and the working class methodists have always sat uncomfortably together. Brexit has shattered that coalition, the labour party has been handed to the idiot socialists and will die, unless somehow moderates can oust corbyn before 2020.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
Which brings us to the Tory coalition. The high-Tory have promised the old certainties back to the white working class. Meanwhile, middle-class liberals who make up most of the parliamentary party are distinctly uncomfortable with much of what is being done in Brexit's name, but will stick with the Tories, because they offer the promise of power, and however dreadful Brexit is, Jeremy Corbyn is worse. A new coalition is being forged between the Tory squirearchy, and the Working class based on nationalism, social conservatism and heirarchy, directly taking Labour's core vote. This is why UKIP, a working class movement that thinks it *is* the conservative party, apes the style of a country gent. The working class have always got on well with the Gentry, sharing sociailly conservative values. Both despise the middle class. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
Brexit split the country down a line more on class values, split the country and handed it to the socially authoritarian party. Whether this is the new politics, with the Tories moving from being the middle-class party to the working class party, as the Republicans did after the war in the USA, or whether the middle-class will wrest back control over both parties in time waits to be seen. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
I suspect unless May softens her tone, and thows some bones to the liberals, her coalition will only survive until there's a credible opposition. A more appropriate division of politics would be a ConservaKIP'ish alliance of WWC and high-tory squires, vs LibLabCon middle-class liberals. Therea May seems to be actively seeking it.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
Over the Channel, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen exemplify this split. The candidates of the parties of left, Socialists; and right, RPR are likely to be eliminated in the first round. Macron is likely to win comfortably. His movement 'En Marche!' was only formed a year ago. There's a lesson for British liberals there.</div>
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2016 happened because decent people don't join political parties, leaving the business of Government to socially inadequate, physically repellent gits with an axe to grind*. In normal circumstances, this makes politics easier for genuinely impressive people to progress through the flotsam of monomaniacs. To be a Grown-up in the Tory Party 1997-2010 was to be able to consider an issue beyond the EU. For Labour it's all about not dreaming of Strike Action by "the workers". Thus the Liberal Centre consolidated a hold on the country, but became complacent to the poison seeping into parties even as the Smug centrist consensus made everyone fat and rich.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
There has been a steady, and persistent hollowing out of the political parties. Labour used to be allied to a Trades Union movement that delivered services - health insurance, education and so forth to its members. The Trades Unions of Pre-War Britain where an overwhelming force for good. Atlee's welfare state nationalised all the good the Trades Unions used to do, and so corrupted both the principle of welfare (now far, far from Beveridge's original vision of low, universal payments like Child benefit, topped up with contributory elements) and the Trades unions which became a mere tub-thumper for more state spending. This left the Labour party with the sole purpose of defending a welfare settlement that is not under threat, and a Trades Union movement whose purpose had been nationalised so simply became resistant to all and any reform which might make the system as is function better; unions a mere vested interest of public-sector workers. This isn't a place where people capable of holding more than one idea at a time feel comfortable, and so the Labour party was colonised by people who think not shaving is a political act.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
This malodorous and poorly groomed cancer has destroyed the Labour party. It's over, there's no point being in Labour unless you're a Identity politics obsessed Corbynite who laments the end of the Soviet Union. </div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2K6RV1UoFuM/WHy5CLQrH2I/AAAAAAAAJNs/be6V--5ddooN8tlVUX9QgAdbTVFTmEUsQCLcB/s1600/MillieTant.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2K6RV1UoFuM/WHy5CLQrH2I/AAAAAAAAJNs/be6V--5ddooN8tlVUX9QgAdbTVFTmEUsQCLcB/s1600/MillieTant.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Labour, 2010-Present</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
The Tories at least had the sense to try to vomit the most toxic of their nutters into a bucket marked UKIP, a bucket the dog is unfortunately returning to. The Conservative party my Grandfather joined (from CPGB, as it happens, Labour even back then were cliquey dick-heads) used to be a forum for the upper middle class (and anyone who aspired to join them) to meet, mate and do business. But the horrible young Tories of the '80s, and the Euro-nutters of the '90s meant that by 1997, the Tories were only really suitable for people who were prepared to discuss "Europe" endlessly in ever-more foaming tones, persuading themselves that the EU is a historic enemy like Napoleon, the Kaisar, Hitler or the USSR. To their credit, the Tory Leadership has long known what to do. All David Cameron ever asked of his party was to "stop banging on about Europe". They couldn't stop picking at the scab, and the result is a catastrophe that has already crashed the Pound, weakened the UK (perhaps fatally) and may yet cause a political crisis in Europe and embolden Putin to start rebuilding the USSR.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NKfaecHMvPu0RqM1ThZGQt8ZWoF80BX_orDzw9LhI4TXC4HF7CPgfJEO0pp8QLd3nb_RiUQxJigC98biEPxsW_E6fSpWserJoutZC1OpXBcfB2m2mp2orJ_ejJuTjyjBDXGu/s1600/ToryBoy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NKfaecHMvPu0RqM1ThZGQt8ZWoF80BX_orDzw9LhI4TXC4HF7CPgfJEO0pp8QLd3nb_RiUQxJigC98biEPxsW_E6fSpWserJoutZC1OpXBcfB2m2mp2orJ_ejJuTjyjBDXGu/s320/ToryBoy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tories, 1997-2010</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
The more say over policy and leadership given to the membership, the more the membership has dwindled (unless, like Labour, the membership criteria are designed to invite entryism for the purposes of choosing a leader - by people who've been quietly loyal to the Bennite project for decades). Giving members a say in who leads the party is absurd. Who the prime minister is, should be a matter for MPs, and MPs alone. It is they who must give the Prime Minister a majority and internal party democracy risks, well, exactly what has happened to Labour. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
However, that Rubicon has been crossed. Party members now expect a vote on the Leader. The question is what to do about this, and the answer is to choose to be a member of a party at all times, hold your nose if necessary. Do NOT identify with the party, but consider which is best placed to advance your objectives. At the moment, the foul bigots, monomaniacs and morons of UKIP are being re-absorbed from a position where they can do little harm beyond foaming at the mouth and masturbating to Daily Express editorials, to one where they can choose the next prime minister, and Mrs May isn't a healthy specimen. The ex-'KIPpers chance may come to choose their PM sooner than expected.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
I'm often asked "How come you're still a Tory?" </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Were the Liberal Democrats stronger, I'd be considering them, but I don't trust them on electoral reform (about which they're as silly as Tories are about Europe). But as the Lib-Dems are so far from power, I don't see the tactical benefit of leaving the Tories in a huff, and I broadly agree with the Tories on everything except Brexit. What I'm worried about is the 'KIPpers who're returning to the fold. Unless you want a foul, divisive and ignorant Brexit headbanger to replace May in 2023 or so (Gove for example), Join the Tories, because thanks to Labour's meltdown, Tories and Tories alone will choose the next PM. All not joining a party does is strengthen those (*we) weirdos who still do. Labour moderates, disgusted by Corbyn should cross the floor to the Tories or Liberal democrats, instead of flouncing off <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38608825">to the V&A </a>and opening the way for UKIPish Brexit-o-twats to fight and win a by-elections under Tory colours. Were Tristram hunt now a Tory, not only we could soften this brexit idiocy but also signal just how broad a church the Tories are. 40% of Tory members voted Remain. The tribe that needs to understand the value of a bit of entryism is the liberal centre, who need to abandon any loyalty to their Parties and go to where the power is. The Liberal Centre is complacent because they have for so long occupied the ground sought by all parties, they've not really had to compromise. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
At the moment the business of Government is, and will be for the foreseeable future, a Tory-only affair. That need not look like Nigel Farage, but it will, if Remainers abandon the Tories entirely.</div>
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<br />
In the evolutionary past, such a question was a matter of life and death. People only really had to trust those with whom they shared a close genetic relationship. Since the development of agriculture, we've been steadily widening that circle of trust. The wider you spread that circle of trust, the richer your society will be. Even before it had a name, Free market economics allowed people to become blacksmiths, knowing others have water, food, shelter and so forth covered in return. More specialisation, greater productivity, means greater wealth.<br />
<br />
Eventually, this requires trust in people we've not met. Towns' food supplies require that farmers unknown and distant supply the basics of existence. Nowadays, It's unlikely the west could quickly supply all available plenty currently manufactured in China. Nor could China supply quickly the complex components and tools shipped from Japan, Europe and USA. Both China, and "the west" are richer from the exchange. And yet, we still don't trust "globalisation".<br />
<br />
Most persistent fallacies in political economics are the result of simple policies that appeal to some base heuristics, but which when applied to the larger and wider society, fail catastrophically. Thus egalitarianism in one form or another pops up every 3 generations or so and succeeds in making everyone equal, but some more equal than others, and even more, dead. Then nationalism comes along, and says it's all [another, arbitrarily defined group of humans with slightly different modes of speech] fault, leading to more waste and piles of corpses. And even when the results aren't catastrophic, we seek out the views of those who agree with us on say, Nationalism to inform our opinion on, say, whether or not people are responsible for climate change.<br />
<br />
Which political tribes stumble into being right or wrong on any given issue appears arbitrary, because no-one's asking for the evidence before they decide on the policy. Instead of asking "what's right", we're asking what's popular (amongst the coalition of tribes that voted for me) right now. That an opponent comes out with an identical policy, for different reasons is reason enough to oppose something, forgetting completely prior support for it. After all, whatever [another political tribe] thinks must be wrong, right.<br />
<br />
Thus <br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Remarkable to see Labour people oppose ID at polling stations when they wanted to introduce ID cards 10 years ago</div>
— Ben McCabe (@bernardmccabe) <a href="https://twitter.com/bernardmccabe/status/814057418191732737">December 28, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> The Labour party opposes ID cards. The Labour party has always opposed ID cards. The Tory party is for the Free market and was never in favour of the Corn Laws. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Perhaps if we could think for ourselves rather than just accepting tribal dogma, we'd get better governance. But none of us have the time. So "Democracy" is merely a means to give temporary permission to one coalition of tribes to push through dogmas over many issues, until either the population notices, or the coalition of tribes breaks up, and the electorate takes a punt on the other tribe's prejudices for a bit, and then gets on with whatever they were doing before.<br />
<br />
Society ultimately advances by eliminating prejudices it's acceptable to hold thus widening the circle of trust, and increasing riches. By falling back on ancient heuristics to answer the wrong question ("<a href="http://brackenworld.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/on-populism-what-do-we-do-vs-who-do-we.html">who's fault?" is the wrong question</a>) 2016 democracy has delivered the worst political outcomes on a broad front, as a result of which, we are poorer, and more likely to start fighting as a result of the collapse in political trust we have seen over this year. The post Cold-War 'Belle Époque', which saw half of humanity, 3 billion people, lifted out of poverty, is over.<br />
<br />
Idiots cheer.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>There may be a world market for maybe five computers</i>"</blockquote>
and get it wrong. In 1943, computers were used for cryptography, and that's it. (At least he knew what a "computer" was, which few did back then). Predictions are hard, especially about the future. But it's probably worth noting here that the famous World Wide What? front page of The Sun, was in fact rather a good a spoof, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/the-byline-is-dot-comme-ffs?utm_term=.nuLVmy7pG#.iukNxnaXy">by The Sun</a>.<br />
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Boston Dynamics makes robots.<br />
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<a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/mic-robots-boston-dynamics-robodeer-MFwT4aWAZI3Di">via GIPHY</a><br />
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Who needs Robots? Well, like computers or the internet or driverless cars, the technology is coming. And it will change people's behaviour in many, unpredictable ways. For example, mobile phones were conceived as portable analogues for the phone on your desk or in your hall. SMS text messaging was added as an afterthought, but became THE dominant means of communication. Calling someone is now rude, often you text first to see if a call would be convenient. Who (apart from mums) leaves voicemail messages any more? Few predicted that change in our behaviour. The smartphone is now ubiquitous, and is more about accessing the internet than calling friends, but wasn't imagined before the internet, Except by Douglas Adams (and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brunner_(novelist)">John Brunner</a> of whom I'd not heard until I discussed the issue <a href="https://twitter.com/MattBrookes3/status/808640023444721664">on Twitter</a>). Driverless cars will be as close to the car, as the car is to a buggy and four. And robots, when they become ubiquitous, will be unlike anything we've considered.<br />
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I look at Boston Dynamics Robots, the <a href="http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_bigdog.html">big dog</a> is conceived as a load carrying mule for soldiers on rough terrain, and I think of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rincewind#The_Luggage">The Luggage</a>, Rincewind's inscrutable companion on the discworld. I suspect everyone will one day have a robot the size of a dog to carry daily necessaries, following them round. You could send your luggage to someone else, by smartphone app to pick something up. Your luggage could take your shopping home and collect it from the store for you. Large luggages could be sent on ahead with bags. Small luggages could replace handbags and briefcases. The labour and time saving would be vast, spawning whole new areas of employment, servicing and modifying your faithful electronic companion and providing for the opportunities they create to effectively be in two places at once. Freed from the ownership of motor vehicles by the fact we'll be taking taxis everywhere, our Robot luggage will perhaps become the next status symbol around which society is built, replacing the car.<br />
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Like cars, I suspect the battery technology will be the limiting step, and like cars, I suspect the fuel cell will be the answer. Small fuel cells will one day power your smart phone too.<br />
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But think about the opportunities for people from smart phone. There are tens of thousands of app designers round the world now, a job that had barely been considered as recently as 2007, when the first iPhone was released, and that is similar to how the jobs which will be taken by the robots, will be replaced. That is why people who fear of a "post-jobs" future were wrong in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite">1816</a> and are still wrong 200 years later. The world's only limitless resource is human ingenuity.<br />
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Anway. I for one welcome our new robot overlords, and this guy should totally be locked up.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="giphy-embed" frameborder="0" height="319" src="//giphy.com/embed/hrhIyMgMnrDQQ?html5=true" width="480"></iframe><br />
<a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/boston-dynamics-hrhIyMgMnrDQQ">via GIPHY</a><br />
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<p dir="ltr">"But he was an anti-imperialist". So why were cuban troops in Africa in support of the USSR, which was by any measure or definition an Empire? Anti-Imperialsim is just the justification leftists give for knee-jerk anti-Americanism. And the flood of people risking death to reach the USA should tell you all you need to know about the relative merits of America's and Cuba's system.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Contrasting the attitudes of the USA to Castro, to their attitude to equally murderous bastards like Pinochet misses the point. The US embargo on Cuba is one of the legacies of the Cold war, kept bubbling by the politics of Florida, home to so many Cuban-Americans. There is no Doubt that the US blocade has impoverished Cubans, and that with the fall in the Berlin wall and the collapse of the USSR, such an embargo was no longer justified. However politics are what they are. Fidel Castro's death provides an opportunity for further thawing in relations.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The USA supported "our son of a bitch" all over the world, turning a blind-eye to horrific human rights abuses, though often (albeit less often than we should) working behind the scenes to try and mitigate the worst behaviour. Thatcher is rarely credited with preventing the execution of Nelson Mandela, but she consistently urged Mandela's release, even as she argued against sanctions and branding the ANC "Terrorists". This is one reason why the cold-war piles of dead of Nasty fascist bastards are usually lower than those of nasty communist bastards. I also think the point made by CS Lewis holds. Right wing dictators rarely pretend to be GOOD, making their appeal more on effectiveness. <br>
<i>"The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."</i> <br>
And one by one, following the collapse of Communism, the support from the USA and its allies for these disgusting regimes was withdrawn. Apartheid South Africa, much of South and Central America saw right authoritarian regimes fall. Genuine democracies were often created in the rubble. The USA didn't support dictators because the USA is an imperialist power, but because it IS a power, and with that comes responsibility. They judged at the time the alternative, Communism, was worse, and represented a genuine existential threat to the USA and its core allies. </p>
<p dir="ltr">This is why for example the USA and its allies mostly support the Regime in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime is repellent, but given the probable alternatives wouldn't be nice, liberal, democratic-minded progressives, they'd be salafist nutcases who'd have access to billions of dollars of oil revenues and the legitimacy of being the Guardians of the Two Mosques. The House of Saud is all that stands between the West and a plausible salafist caliphate with sufficient legitimacy and money to one day threaten the west. We'd rather do business with nice, stable democracies under the rule of law. But seeing as we cannot do to every country on earth what we did to Germany in the late 40s and 50s, we make the best of the options given.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Castro appeared to be a true beleiver in Socialism, so he refused to recognise his philosophy had failed, and his island limped on, a socialist throwback in the age of globalisation. The current poverty of Cuba is partly America's doing, but mostly due to decisions made by Castro himself, policies which set him and the Cuban people at odds with the regional hegemon, in persuit of an evil idealogy. Fidel Castro was on the wrong side of history, and his people suffered because of his stubborness. Now he's dead, it's Cubans turn to make the most of the positive legacy - Cubans are the best-educated poor people on earth, and the mighty economy of the USA is right on their doorstep. There is going to be a lot of money to be made there, and this time, for the first time, Cubans will share in it. </p>
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And Let's be honest, he's ghastly and despite brown-nosing by Nigel Farage, he's no friend of the UK's, because he doesn't value anything the UK brings to the table. Rumour has it, he asked Farage to intervene in an offshore windfarm decision affecting his Scottish interests, which suggests he doesn't understand the concept of 'conflicts of interests' when in elected office.</div>
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This further suggests Trump will attempt to use the office of President to enrich himself, rather than doing so after leaving office, as is accepted. All this is rather feudal; the office holder as gold-giver, distributing patronage and receiving tribute. He's an entertainer and showman, which hails to an even older tradition of politics: that of Imperial Rome, where emperors used state coffers to enrich themselves and their clients,while keeping the mob quiet with bread and circuses.</div>
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Donald J. Trump is psychologically unsuited to office in a mature democracy. He is thin-skinned, autocratic, insecure, ignorant, and completely without any understanding of the levers of power he now wields. Much like (later caricatures of?) Nero, Commodus or Caligula.</div>
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Despite (or perhaps because of) this, the adolescent losers of Alt.Right see Trump as a God-Emperor (no, really they do. Video surfaced today of people making <a href="https://youtu.be/1o6-bi3jlxk">Roman Salutes</a>, saying "Hail Trump", and distribute Memes based on Games Workshop's futuristic figure-based tabletop wargame, Warhammer 40,000 where humanity is defended from Chaos by a psychic God Emperor). If Trump is Imperator, then the Secret Service is a Praetorian Guard. And how did the Praetorian serve Commodus, to pick one example?</div>
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Trump might, were he capable of reading a book, muse on the fact he's surrounded by armed men sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, and defend it from Enemies DOMESTIC and foreign. Thankfully, the USA is a mature democracy. Where once armed men acted as kingmaker, courts now do. For the simple reason Ignorance is no defence, and the fact that Trump's loathing of 'Washington' is fully reciprocated, I find it unlikely that Trump will survive his term alive and unimpeached. Unfortunately I cannot find odds on a Trump impeachment before 2020. Perhaps it's a racing certainty.</div>
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Men are more accepting of risk, and will prioritise pay over flexibility. So you'd expect men to make up the majority of soldiers and miners and race car drivers. It also means you'd expect to see more men make up corporate boards, everything being equal. More men are more drawn to the cut and thrust of business, and are more likely to prioritise work over other commitments. Women value stability and flexibility more highly than men. This means women, on average don't choose to make the effort necessary to climb the greasy pole. Women (sensibly, in my view as I have done the same) are more likely to think other things more important.</div>
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Thus, the brute fanny-counting of media analysis of sexism and the "gender pay gap" ignores female choices and attributes, thus denigrating both women and men for the choices they make. Women for their part see their contribution to society in caring professions such as medicine (more doctors are now women, as well as nurses) and teaching denigrated because these women aren't seeking to be at the top of BAE systems, or whatever. Likewise men, when they see women are going to hired so they form 50% of the workforce of a mining company feel devalued for their skills and attributes because the only way <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/77adefb2-96b9-11e6-a80e-bcd69f323a8b?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fhome_uk%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct">BHP Billiton could make 50% of its employees women</a> is by discriminating against the larger number of men who will apply to drive a bloody great truck miles from nowhere in a bloody great hole in the ground in the middle of a bloody great desert surrounded by nothingness, and live in towns whose bars serve tinnies through wire grilles, and where kicking each others' heads in represents the primary saturday night entertainment.</div>
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But worse, by forcing women into traditionally working class men's jobs, you further alienate and disorientate a bit of society which already feels put upon, neglected, belittled and scorned. This is why they voted for Brexit in the UK, and in the USA, will vote for Trump. Working class men are lashing out, because their raison d'etre, to provide for their offspring, has been nationalised, and no other opportunity for them has been provided and they as individuals have too often been thrown on the scrap heap, derided as workshy deadbeats. The working class used to have pride in providing for their family and often doing dangerous, dirty jobs to do so. Opportunity isn't "equal access to university", for which working class men is a middle-class rite of passage, but decent jobs that will allow them to support their family, but which is blocked by the petty credentialism that values paper qualifications over experience and dumb diligence over inspiration.</div>
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That loss of pride is agonising. And people mourn loss far more than they celebrate gain. The aim of this post-modern obsession with equality of outcome therefore might as well be to make men despise themselves and women feel inadequate for the inclinations their biology and society has fitted them. Men become 2nd rate women, and women become 2nd rate men. By all means allow everyone to seek their own path, but to imagine men and women will sort 50/50 everywhere is totalitarian in its foolishness and cruelty.</div>
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Far from Remainers "talking the UK down", Brexiters have been doing so for decades - talking down the UK's influence in the EU to the extent we're actually thinking of walking out of the UK's proudest creation: the single market. It is now a shibboleth that the UK has "no influence in the EU", whereas the UK drove the single market, kept half the continent out of the poisonous grip of the Euro and pioneered enlargement to the east following the end of the cold war. The UK drove Russian sanctions to this day. The UK was one of the Big three and on many issues, more influential than France. The UK largely writes EU financial regulation for example (as is meet and proper).<br />
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But the EU over-reached. Voters, especially in the UK resented the EU's usurpation of the trappings of National sovereignty far more than the reality of "the laws made in Brussels" which was really just code for an underlying vision they (and I) don't like. And what is true of the UK is true of France and the Netherlands and everywhere else. Remainers like to mock the Be.Leaver's joy over the anticipated return of the blue passport. I however have long resented the words "European Union" above (ABOVE!) the crown on the front. It's like the bureaucrats are trying to rub the British People's nose in it. It's a symbol of something burning in the EU's core, which the average voter neither desires, nor trusts.<br />
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The ridiculous and unnecessary potemkin parliament with its farcical shuttle from Brussels to Strasbourg focusses the voters minds on the EU, without giving them any outlet to do anything about it. The EU looms much larger than it ought as a result of the charade of Euro elections. Democracy without a demos is pointless - what commonality do Socialist members from spain and the UK have?:<br />
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The EU was flawed, Thanks to the UK some of its worst excesses - the Euro for example were limited to countries that really wanted it. And now without a powerful country holding the reins and steering away from "ever closer union" the Brake that was put on at Maastrict and beyond will be removed. The EU will integrate itself to death, there will be chaos when the voters of Europe can take the tin-eared arrogance of Brussels no more. There was no need for all those millions of lives to be attenuated during that process. While leave voters will say "I told you so", a better analogy would be jumping out of a moving car suffering broken bones and extensive skin abrasions, but saying "it would have been worse" because the lunatic who grabbed the wheel when you bailed steered it directly into a tree.<br />
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Spending 1% of GDP to write trade and some business law could much more easily be done intragovernmentally, with a humble and small central bureaucracy. There is no need for "Presidents" and parliaments which lead to grandiose visions; visions which slam painfully, like the Euro, into the unyielding wall of reality. Unobtrusively aligning business regulation and deepening economic integration is necessary. A parliament, a flag, an anthem and a head of "state" are not. The EU has paid the price for this arrogant and pompous grandiosity.<br />
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Both the EU and UK are and will be significantly worse off as a result of Brexit. And now, just as Brexit is a bad idea that will be tested, so too will European integration. Both Brussels panjandrums and the brexiters fed off each others' fantasies. Both needed to believe integration was happening, even if it wasn't. Ultimately, the costs will become apparent to the UK pretty rapidly. The EU will suffer much more slowly. It's almost like co-operation is a non-zero-sum game, or something.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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"Populism" is, like pornography, hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Wikipedia defines it thus<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"a political ideology that holds that virtuous citizens are mistreated by a small circle of elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. Populism depicts elites as trampling on the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people"</i></blockquote>
It's clear Farage's lauding of a victory for "<strike>mediocre</strike> ordinary, decent <strike>scum</strike> people" he was speaking in this vein. But I don't think this captures the essence of populism. Mainstream politicians "Managerialists" in the Populists' vernacular ask "how do we solve this problem". You can be a capitalist, or a socialist, believing in different answers, but at least you agree on the question. Populists aren't asking this question, but instead "who do we blame?". The answer given by Momentum and UKIP may differ: Bosses vs Immigrants, Capitalists vs the EU but the question is the same.<br />
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There's also the populists view that MPs rather than being representatives paid to exercise judgement, are delegates paid to vote on someone else's behalf. In this, Paul Mason and Douglas Carswell are in agreement. But this is simply mob rule and behind it is a fear that legislators may Go Native, if they're allowed thanks to the corrosive influence of "[insert boogeyman]" in their long-running campaign to keep the "real" people down. But perhaps legislators know best; they have exposure and access to what passes for facts in this field, and are paid to study it, maybe there's something in the idea of representative democracy after all.<br />
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It's always easier to imagine you're the victim of an elite conspiracy, subject to "discrimination" on the grounds of class or race, or at risk from being "flooded" by immigrants, than it is to answer the question "what to I do?". Whether you're running your own life, or that of a nation, what to do is hard, and one of the stresses of modern life is the extent to which people are free, which means they have to make choices. No longer can you just follow dad into the Factory. Because many suffer from crippling loss aversion, these choices are scary, which is why stupid people yearn to be led. They look for leaders who offer answers which fit their prior prejudices and make sense of a complicated world. Corbyn and Farage have made careers finding and stroking a tribe's prejudices, soothing their people's indignation against a world they feel is against them.<br />
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The reason populism is so toxic to political discourse is that in apportioning blame, they create a slipway for the launching of vastly damaging ideas. "It's all the EU's fault" leads to Brexit*. "It's all the Fat Cats' fault" and you have a country that looks like Venezuela. If you start blaming immigrants or minorities, well we saw where that went in the last century. It's also why the Brexiteers ran from office at the moment of victory. Delivery isn't in the populists' skillset. The permanent masturbatory pleasures of opposition are what they crave, always losing so they can keep telling their people the game's rigged against them. If they win, then all those inadequate people will have to start making choices and they feel completely lost again. Much easier to simmer in resentment against an immovable object which allows you to blame it, rather than yourself for your failings.<br />
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*<i>This isn't a place for a debate on the merits or otherwise of Brexit. Any comments on that subject will be deleted.</i><br />
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One of the reasons for the Populist's success (please note the "one of" at the start of this sentence) is Russia on the internet. The internet allows people to form much denser ideological defences against reality. And into the internet, there is a wounded superpower, pouring poison, poison which people use as ammunition in the defence of their ideological redoubt. Putin's toxic little propaganda swamps like RT and Sputnik are manufacturing and promoting stories which appeal to the populist mindset. Notice how Racists will share RT stories about Immigrants raping white women while members of the Green party will share horror stories about fracking from the same source. Some of these stories will be true. But many are manufactured, exaggerated and twisted specifically to support any party or idea that causes problems to the democratic governments of the west. This is not a random process. It is directed and controlled by the intelligence agency which has captured Russia. Maskirovka raised to a governing principle.<br />
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One of the reasons for the UK's relative success as a nation is that up until now, we have been mostly immune from the allure of the populist demagogue. We simply don't have it in us to put too much belief in one man, whether as protagonist or antagonist. Let's hope Brexit is a flash in the pan, and not part of a widespread descent of mature democracies into populist demagoguery. We'll know in 12 months whether democracy can survive or whether, thanks to Trump, Farage and Le Pen, we're going back to pogroms and a summer "campaigning season".<br />
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Please let's stop listening to Putin' useful idiots pedalling fallacious simplicity, and start listening to fallible and all-too-human experts again. At least the experts are asking the right question.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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There's the hypocrisy too: Pictures of armed french police demanding a woman disrobe are uncomfortable. I thought we in the west were about female emancipation?<br />
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Nuns, bathing in even less revealing clothing inspired ultimately by the same abrahamic exhortation to female modesty, will, I presume remain unmolested.</div>
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This isn't about the Burkini, of course, but about muslim integration. There's no doubt muslim immigration has unsettled large swaths of the population of Europe. It's not about terrorism. It's about feeling a stranger in your own country, surrounded in some areas by people who speak a different language, wear different clothes and do not mix or integrate with the native population, and it's these feelings that are driving people to le Front National, Brexit, Swedish Democrats and so forth. </div>
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A Burka ban is clearly silly, unenforceable but eye-catching. A symptom of something we have to address. Perhaps Islam IS incompatible with western ideas, especially where the immigrants are poor and in large numbers. But I don't think this to be the case. The USA, with far fewer, better-educated muslims has done a much better job of integrating than Europe or the UK, where ghettos have been allowed to form, and the 2nd and 3rd generation are, in contrast to previous waves of immigration, no better integrated than their parents and grandparents. If anything in places like Bradford, or the poor areas of Brussels some muslims are becoming increasingly radicalised as immigrant communities and the native population reject each other.</div>
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What the people voted for in Austria when they nearly elected Norbert Hoffer, In France when they nearly elected Le Pen, in the UK when they voted for Brexit is an end to immigration, especially of people who don't share our values. And Muslims far too often don't share our values (nor, brexiteers, do they come from the EU...).</div>
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In wearing a Burkini on the beach, or the Niqab in town, a woman (or her husband...) is visibly making a statement rejecting French culture. A man in a Shalwar Kameez makes the same statement. If he's in a local majority, these clothes subconsciously say "this place is ours now, not yours" and this can feel profoundly threatening. Especially when combined with a wave of Islamist-inspired terrorist outrages. The difference between me wearing a rash suit on a beach, and a woman wearing a burkini is one of intent. The only statement I am making is "I have very pale skin".</div>
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These feelings are inchoate, but they are real. The rejection of western society represented by the people wearing these clothes is real. I don't like seeing a woman in Niqab, which makes me profoundly uncomfortable with the alien creed behind that outfit. Clearly I don't think I should have a right to do anything about it, and the problem is mine more than theirs. The state controlling how people dress is clearly absurd and illiberal. There's little that can be done beyond an exhortation to the locals to exercise a bit of tolerance, and to the Muslim population of Europe to make an effort to fit in. Blaming "islamophobia" will just make matters worse because radical Islamism as practiced by a small minority is the main terrorist threat and the isolated, unintegrated communities of overwhelmingly decent muslims is the water in which the islamist sharks swim. Fear of unintegrated muslims isn't irrational. Multiculturalism doesn't work. We all need to share the same values, and isolated, inward-looking communities which reject mainstream society don't work for anyone.</div>
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Integration is as much about appearance as behaviour. So, yes, in France, 'making an effort' probably does mean getting the girls out on the beach. And Muslim chaps: perhaps save the Shalwar Kameez for the Mosque on Friday, try to look like a Frenchman the rest of the time? That way the locals will feel less threatened, and muslims will be less isolated. Ultimately a law banning Burkinis represents a failure of European society to persuade immigrant communities our society is better. Do we even still believe it is? And Finally, les Gendarmes: have a look at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles">Peelian principles</a> and leave innocent women on the beach alone, whatever they choose to wear. This sort of thing is about persuasion, cultural change and shouldn't be enforced by men with guns.</div>
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Now, where's my leopard print thong, and the factor 50?</div>
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There has been a significant rally in markets, if not yet in business sentiment since the Brexit referendum. Much of this rally is down to currency, as the UK local (stocks with >60% UK earnings) remains down, especially if you measure it in $ terms. But there has been significant relief that the chaos of the first few days didn't last. A remainer with a safe pair of hands promised to deliver. "Brexit is Brexit" became the mantra of the prime-minister after she won in a contest which reinforced the Conservatives' reputation for ruthless efficiency. I doubt May wants to go down in history as the PM who ended the UK by triggering article 50 and precipitating Scottish independence, but nor does she want to go down in history as the PM who "stabbed UK in the back" and split the Tory party for good by refusing to deliver on the referendum result. So she's done, skillfully, what all good politicians do in a tricky spot: Act like a Rugby full-back: take a sidestep and boot the ball into touch.<br />
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To this end, David Davis and Liam Fox, two prominent campaigners for Brexit have been given their own Brexit playpens to try and thrash out what they want. They are, of course learning on the job. Brexiteers are <a href="https://www.opencanada.org/features/brexit-post-mortem-17-takeaways-fallen-david-cameron/">the dog that caught the bus</a>: they don't know what to do with it and many of them, like Michael Gove are being scraped out of the tyre treads as we speak. It's clear neither Davis nor Fox have any clear idea what "trade deals" can deliver, or what the single market is, or why it's valuable. But they've been barking their half understood points now for so long, that when asked by grown-ups "what do you mean?" they blink stupidly and repeat the same turgid tropes as if that will solve the many manifest problems that were pointed out at such length two months ago.<br />
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Brexit is, remains and was always going to be a terrible idea. This will slowly dawn on the people charged with delivering it. It's going to be very very hard, will require the total commitment of the entire UK state to deliver a good outcome, as well as skilful diplomacy and the goodwill of our European partners. The Brexit Referendum was not binding, it was explicitly advisory. The apparatus of the UK state has little enthusiasm for Brexit: not the civil service, not the PM, not the diplomatic corps and there's little goodwill towards the UK in European capitals. There are a great many who will try to overturn the result. And there is more than an outside chance they (we) will be able to do so. "Brexit" may mean Brexit for now, but no-one's defined Brexit or our post-brexit relationship with the EU. Because "no relationship" isn't an option. </div>
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Several things are already clear: Article 50 is not adequate for the task. Greenland (population: several polar bears) had one issue, fish, and leaving the EU <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/greenland-exit-warning-to-britain-brexit-eu-referendum-europe-vote-news-denmark/">took three years</a>. Do you think the world's 5th largest economy can successfully extricate itself in two after 40 years in the club? No. Article 50 was inserted into the lisbon treaty in order to appease UK brexiteers, and was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-referendum-britain-theresa-may-article-50-not-supposed-meant-to-be-used-trigger-giuliano-a7156656.html">never intended to be used</a>. (The moral of the story: never try to appease the unappeasable),</div>
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Every month, the triggering of article 50 gets pushed back, from "by the end of the year" when May came to power to "some time in 2017". As 2017 draws nearer, and the UK is still no closer to working out what it wants from Brexit, people will realise that the French and German elections will enable the UK to *start* pre-article 50 negotiations with the new Governments in late 2017. This pushes article 50 back to 2018 at the earliest. This is the Head-Banger position: "Article 50, come what may and to hell with the cost".<br />
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But once you get into 2018, the UK general election is hoving into view. As should be clear, Triggering article 50 is likely to provoke a recession, and if you want a discretionary recession, it's probably best to get it out of the way early in the parliament. Few parliamentarians want to lose their seats because of an angry electorate being given what they asked for. The electorate's memory is short, and you can take credit for the recovery afterwards. So it is more likely that the Conservatives will go into the 2020 election (which they will probably win comfortably) with a manifesto commitment to trigger article 50 (or leave in some other way) in that parliament. Ironic really, because the person who made the party electable after 13 years in the wilderness asked one thing of his party: to "stop banging on about Europe". His legacy: a decade of talking about nothing but.<br />
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And by this point the rest of Europe will really rather want us to shit, or get off the pot rather than having Brexit clog up the machinery of EU governance for another decade. Anger at the UK for having the temerity to leave will have faded, and cooler heads who see a mutually beneficial solution will be best all round, will prevail. Already Germany is making friendly noises about a <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/germany-suggests-brexit-britain-get-special-status/">special UK deal</a>. Martin Roth:</div>
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<i>‘Given Britain’s size, significance and its long membership of the European Union, there will probably be a special status which only bears limited comparison to that of countries that have never belonged to the European Union’
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This seems reasonable. But it won't be delivered quickly, nor will it be easy to deliver it via article 50. More likely it will be delivered via a new treaty with the EU some time in the next parliament.<br />
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By which time the deal we're likely to get is taking shape. And It's looking likely that the best deal on offer was the one we already enjoyed, perhaps with some bone thrown to the UK on freedom of movement. But remember we're talking about a situation in which a New Parliament, unbound by any constitutional obligation to trigger article 50 beyond the manifesto, has negotiated a new deal within the EU. The 2016 Referendum would be ancient history, and there will be calls for the new deal to be put to a referendum because "a mandate is needed". And the <a href="http://brackenworld.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/the-madness-stalking-democracy-will-pass.html">madness stalking democracy</a> will have passed. And so if there is a second referendum, this time, remain will probably win. But that happy outcome remains an outside chance.<br />
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Article 50 delivered some time this parliament: 20% (& falling)<br />
Article 50 triggered early next parliament: 30%<br />
Leaving the EU, but not by article 50, possibly following 2nd ref on "the deal": 20%<br />
Second referendum on "the deal", remain wins: Article 50 not triggered at all: 30% (and rising).<br />
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The longer we wait for article 50, the less likely it will be triggered, the less likely we leave, and the greater the likelihood, if we do leave of a good deal, mutually beneficial to all concerned. Those clamouring for "Hard Brexit", now are mainly <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/david-cameron-warns-turnip-taliban-they-could-damage-whole-party-6747513.html">Turnip Taliban</a>, obsessed by immigration and unconcerned by the economy. Thankfully, May seems to be in no hurry, the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/12/no-brexit-until-2022-philip-hammond-warns-eu-exit-could-take-at/">Chancellor said Brexit would take 6 years</a>, and most of the Brexit hardliners have already vomited themselves into an increasingly irrelevant bucket called UKIP. Either way, in or out of the EU we're probably watching the slow-motion betrayal of the most fervent Brexit voters. Their howling at the EU was nothing more than resentment of the modern world, and so they are unappeasable. So there is no point trying to please people who simply voted to smash something people they resent, valued.<br />
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This is as it should be. No country which aspires to greatness can for any length of time have its agenda set by <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2016/06/24/brexit-demographic-divide-eu-referendum-results/">ill-educated, elderly losers</a>, waiting to die in depressing hell-holes at the <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4198515.ece">end of the line</a>. Thankfully, with sensible people back in charge, the outlook is improving in inverse proportion to liklihood of Brexit.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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I suspect Brexit is going to happen, but May will be more likely to manage to remain in the single market. The worst elements of the Brexit camp have now been sidelined. If the immigration obsessives can be thrown under the bus in favour of "passporting for the banks", so be it. After all, immigration wasn't on the ballot. "Democracy" you see...<br />
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If there is to be a bright economic future for the UK, the single market is probably part of it. Quite what benefits this brings compared to being in the EU is beyond me; the faith in "free trade agreements" to be part of this are likely to be overdone. Within the single market, we will still pay in, and obey all those rules that so "hamper" the UK (which was until a couple of weeks ago was... um.. the best performing developed economy, and no brexiteers could point to unnecessary rules). What the UK still exports are unlikely to be particularly hurt by small tariffs, and FTAs rarely cover services, which the UK is good at.<br />
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If we can remain in the Single Market via some sort of bespoke deal, with some token bone thrown on free movement, then that might be a compromise which will end the issue that has poisoned politics for so long, for good. The crucial negotiations to withdraw from the EU are going to be handled by grown-ups. rather than a tryo of questionable competence.<br />
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My guess - a framework for Brexit will be negotiated with partners after the French and German elections in 2017, with article 50 to be triggered at some point within the parliament. However, I see no reason why those of us who want to remain, should stop campaigning for it to not be. Democracy, after all, is a process, not an event. One man, one vote, once is the "democracy" favoured by dictators. If we can get a new deal with the EU, perhaps one with a significant changes to the relationship, there might be grounds to stay in the EU.<br />
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I suspect the one risk is that this process will not be quick enough for the "bastards" (John Major's description...), who will want article 50 triggered more or less immediately and who will sniff betrayal at every step. The "Remainiacs" may well get stronger as time passes, and of course the bastards have a point that the longer before article 50 is triggered, the less likely it will be. If you don't like this, UKIP is over there, folks. You know what to do. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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Leadsom represents the conservatism of <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1396316/andrea-leadsom-blasted-for-extremist-web-posts-blaming-baby-p-death-on-sex-outside-marriage-and-attacking-gay-adoption/">Mary Whitehouse</a>, not Margaret Thatcher. This is why Leadsom has such enthusiastic support from UKIP. She is the culture war, as well as the brexit candidate. This isn't about Europe. It's not about economics. It's not left and right. It's open vs closed society. </div>
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They don't just want to reverse the European Union, but roll back the "permissive society" of the 1960s. These are the purse-lipped miserablists who write into local papers complaining about "filth" on TV or "hooligans" in the street, who in reality are just boys playing football. This is the racist aunt, who now feels confident to say she doesn't like Mrs Patel in no.34 because she smells funny. This is the Daily Mail (Paper, not website) made flesh, obsessed by what other people do in the bedroom, and absolutely terrified someone, somewhere might be having fun.</div>
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This is where we are, when Theresa May is the standard bearer for the liberal cause. What a time to be alive.</div>
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<p dir="ltr">Whatever, the die is cast. There were 2 leave campaigns. One, an open-society, free-trade vision with which I have some sympathy. Already, the USA, Canada, Australia and Ghana have reached out for free trade with us. New Zealand, those dear, distant friends (except during the 80 minutes of a Rugby match) have gone further and offered their trade negotiators to boost the UK's corps of 12. </p>
<p dir="ltr">This is welcome, and it's a start. But it won't go close to replacing the benefits of the single market. Not least because many of the benefits of free trade with these Nations we effectively enjoyed or will have enjoyed anyway one day within the EU.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This free trade vision of post-brexit Britain was not the loudest voice, and the main effect of the brexit referendum was to draw the battle lines between those who desire and open Society, and those who desire a closed Society.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If the Tory Labour split was mainly about economics, taxation and redistribution, a battle the free market privatising Tories comprehensively won. the new culture war is about what sort of society we want to be. Imagine this split looking something like spectrum between the Liberal Democrats, and UKIP. The current electoral coalition is no longer fit for purpose.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It looks like the party that has brought this catastrophe upon us, will end up being the chief beneficiary in electoral terms, at least in the short term. If the Tories manage a coronation of Theresa May and not go to the party in the country with a final shortlist of two, they will have achieved a vision of competence that perhaps they no longer deserve.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Assuming no major disaster beyond that expected, labour being in complete disarray will be unable to capitalise on the chaos of the brexit negotiations. Furthermore labour have been abandoned by large swathes of the electorate in the Heartlands of the North, adding to their wipeout in Scotland.</p>
<p dir="ltr">John Major's "Bastards" however, are working hard. Having won the first battle in the culture War they are looking to press home their advantage and install one of their social conservative candidates as prime minister. UKIP candidates already rejoining the Conservative Party.</p>
<p dir="ltr">However it is premature to write off the Conservative Party to the morlocks just yet. UKIP will become an electoral Force across large swathes of England. Corbyn will have achieved his function and destroyed the Labour Party reducing it to a few hold out in a few cities.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If UKIP does indeed become electrically successful, expect to see the right of the Conservative Party move that way. This leaves a space within the Conservative Party for the sensible elements of the Labour Party who have come to terms with the twentieth century's economic settlement to make common cause with their fellow open Society advocates across the floor of the commons.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Just as the Labour leadership election going on at present is about the ownership of the Labour brand, (does it belong to hard left socialist, or the social Democrats of the centre?) so is the Tories'. If Leadsom wins the leadership election, then the Tories will move right and absorb UKIP. May, supported almost exclusively by the Tory MPs who favoured remain, Leads the liberals, but whichever way The Tory <u>Party</u> will dominate politics for the foreseeable future (about 3 days at present...)</p>
<p dir="ltr">The Be.Leavers may think this choice of Prime Minister is about Europe, but actually it's about an open vs a closed society. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The European Union was a hard institution to love. I was certainly a harsh critic of it. It's hubris in assuming the trappings of a state, are a large cause of the resentment. Unbecoming arrogance from the panjandrums of Brussels didn't help.They revelled in the myths of their omnipotent Power, myths which fed the Paranoid delusions of the people who want to leave. </p>
<p dir="ltr">However I never felt compelled to make destroying it my life's purpose. I suspect the EU is an institution who's value only becomes apparent when it's gone. It seems that the Scots viewed Europe as something of a counterweight to the hegemon to their South. As such the European Union had become one of the ties that bound the Union together. The the European Union was Central to the Anglo Irish settlement.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Above all above all the European Union was a crucial part of the Post cold war security architecture of Europe. It seems likely that Russia under Putin will get a much easier ride from a European Union that does not contain the United Kingdom. We are weakened. And Putin is emboldened. As are the idiot populists of the democratic world, who seek to thow up borders, pull up the drawbridge and sulk at the modern world. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I've seen this flick before, and it doesn't have a happy ending.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This also comes down to identity. We have seen a rise of English and Scottish identity, and a fall of British identity. Britain is the loser. British is an identity into which it is much easier to assimilate new citizens. And as for me, I am not English. I am British. I am not European, I am a man of the West. Brexit has divided Britain. It's risks dividing to West. And it almost certainly will makeus poorer weaker, and less able to confront the new threats of the world. It is, for most people who voted for it, a vision of little England, not caring about the Scots, or the Irish, or our friends and allies accross the continent. This isn't the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland I have served most of my adult life.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I Lament the loss of the world European Union was trying imperfectly to create: one of trade openness and political stability. A Unified West Staring Down our enemies and keeping the world free. If there is one lesson of history it is that revolutions eat their children, and nothing good comes from smashing functioning institutions.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Pour your bile into the comments. I have chosen my side. It's whoever stands for an open Society, free trade, low taxes, constitutional conservatism and economic competence. That half of the Conservative Party still exists. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Just.</p>
<p dir="ltr">My Great Britain still exists. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Just.</p>
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<br />
We're all agreed the "it will have little effect" argument was nonsense? Good.<br />
<br />
First up "<b>Democracy</b>". Well the EU was a club of democracies that tried hard to be democratic itself. Power rested with the council of ministers who were elected by the people of the countries concerned. The commission was akin to a civil service, advised. Such bodies are never elected anywhere in the world. Then there was the parliament, who chose the president. Above all, the EU basically dealt with issues concerning trade. So we have democratic control over issues we're going to have to accept what the EU says anyway. Good one. We are no more "democratic" now than on Thursday.<br />
<br />
"<b>Freedom</b>"? For whom? To do what? I can think of several freedoms I've lost.<br />
<br />
"<b>Trade deals</b>" If you think a trade deal with even the US (which won't cover services) even remotely compensates for the single market, then I've a bridge to sell you.<br />
<br />
"<b>Immigration</b>?" Well it will only fall if there's a big recession resulting in mass unemployment. Besides the official campaign won, not the hateful UKIP bigotry, and the Government will probably keep us in the single market with (basically) free movement. The bigots will be betrayed.<br />
<br />
The upside to Brexit is, for the people who supported it, the satisfaction of smashing something someone you hate holds dear. I hope you're proud of yourselves.<br />
<br />
I welcome comments suggesting other upsides, but any comment that boils down to one of the answers above, will be deleted.<br />
<br />
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<p dir="ltr">What Next?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Well. There is much that can happen. Article 50 will be invoked by the next Prime Minister, but still needs to be ratified by Parliament. So it is possible a General Election could get in the way. A new parliament will not necessarily be bound by the referendum result. </p>
<p dir="ltr">In the looming crisis, I reflect on this: The Tory right couldn't help but pick at the scab for 40 years. All they needed to do was, as Cameron asked, stop "banging on about Europe", and they coukd have been in government for 20 years. But the Tory right's mania about Europe couldn't be assuaged. And in giving in to it, it seems likely they will shatter not just the EU but the UK. Scotland is Angry. The Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Greeks and others will want a referendum too. Which is why I don't expect the EU to play nice.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Welcome to the fun new Zero-sum world. It's probably now in the UK's interest to see the European project fall. No-one will be better off as a result.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Let's negoitate a deal with the EU. Put it to another vote (so we know what we're voting for this time). Obviously the Be.Leavers who believe so fevervently in "democracy" will understand, then invoke article 50. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Or, an EEA-style agreement with free market access and free movement satisfies the demand to leave the European Union, with less damage. The people who thought the referendum was about immigration will be disappointed, but I really don't care what such people think.</p>
<p dir="ltr">There are no upsides to what has happened. I hope the UK survives. I hope there isn't a knock on populust surge around the democratic world. I hope Vladimir Putin doesn't get tempted to try to break NATO too. I hope the recession isn't too bad, but it's probably just that it falls hardest on the areas that voted for it. Which it will. The one part of the the UK that will be fine no matter what is the city. The government will protect its interests, and being "offshore" may even help it.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As for the Tory party? It has got what it has long wanted. There will be a recession. The reputation for economic competence, hard won by Cameron and Osborne, has been sacrificed on the European altar. Again. Be careful what you wish for.</p>
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<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
OK: Going to stick my neck out: Remain to win, by over 10 points.</div>
— Jackart (@VeryBritishDude) <a href="https://twitter.com/VeryBritishDude/status/745942383590801408">June 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
<br />
You know my views on this, and it looks like sanity will prevail over the dread forces of nativist populism.<br />
<br />
I think a few Tories who threw their lot in with Leave will wake up relieved, as if from a fever, that their frenzy didn't result in too much damage. There hasn't been all that much Blue on Blue action whatever the papers say. I think Gove will not be welcomed back. His hyperbole was too great. But Gove aside, the Tories will find it easier to put the party back together than pundits suggest.<br />
<br />
Farage will try to do to England what Nicola Sturgeon did to Scotland. He will tour the country whipping up anti-establishment feeling in all the worst places. Mostly, he will fail, but It remains to be seen whether UKIP can supplant the Labour party in its abandoned heartlands. The habit of voting and activism may have been regained amongst the working class. This is a cure to the ennui they feel, in and of itself. They do matter, and can change things. After all, whatever happens, they just have.<br />
<br />
As for Labour, who went AWOL under their laughable leader: well quite a few of the grown-ups will have been working with the saner Tories, and these tribes may find they don't hate each other quite as much as they hate the more extreme elements of their own parties. This is the new divide in politics: Cosmopolitans vs Nativists, Mangerialists vs Idealogues, those asking "what do we do" vs those asking "whom do we blame". This fun new culture war doesn't tie down nicely along party lines. It spreads across groups more used to voting on economic solutions, not matters of identity.<br />
<br />
This yawp of dissatisfaction, mainly by people which Labour elite once thought they could rely upon, without having to listen, represented a great wail of anguish at the modern world, which settled upon the EU as a scapegoat, may well sweep the Labour party away.<br />
<br />
There are too many working parts, tribal loyalties run too deep. Personalities too difficult to see from afar. UKIP, Tory right and Labour left are not a comfortable coalition. Tory and Labour centrists? Or maybe there will be a new Social Democratic party. Or maybe Labour's centrists may attempt a takeover of the Liberal Democrats....<br />
<br />
As for the EU, the panjandrums know deep down, they narrowly dodged an existential crisis, brought about by arrogance, hubris and a tin-ear. They would do well to <a href="http://brackenworld.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/an-open-letter-to-jean-claude-juncker.html">read this</a>.<br />
<br />
But sanity prevails. The broad west can now get on with being the shining light on the hill, the example to other societies for riches, productivity and freedom, to which huddled masses not lucky enough to be born in one of our countries will struggle and risk death to get to. Immigration will remain a fact of life, for as long as the UK is a better, freer, happier place to live, offering more opportunity than elsewhere. All we need is the French to reject Le Pen, and the Americans to reject the Trump. Luckily both look like they will do so comfortably.<br />
<br />
Nothing's perfect. Here's my Rallying cry:<br />
<br />
WHAT DO WE WANT?<br />
GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT!<br />
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?<br />
WHENEVER ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ALLOW.<br />
<br />
Not one to get the masses to the barricades, but it's delivered more wealth, happiness and prosperity than any other.<br />
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Bolton Branch of UKIP. I was a member when UKIP was in favour of a flat tax, slashing the size and
scope of government and was at least pretending to be libertarian. I left when I saw the writing on the
wall; that UKIP was turning in a 1960’s Labour tribute band of social conservatism and big
government paternalism (my two least favourite things).<br />
<br />
I was and still am anti EU. I think it’s officious, bureaucratic, inefficient, meddlesome, nannying,
bloated and expensive. But guess what – so are all governments. Long before the EU we were bribed
and coerced by unelected faceless British civil servants, so I don’t buy the argument that Brexit would
result in some miraculous purging of pedantic officialdom.<br />
<br />
But that’s not my main reason for opting
for Remain, rather history, the economy, and British values seem to point that way.
Brexit advocates seem to want to fight the tide of history. The story of humanity’s political entities has
been one, dare I say it, of ever closer union – groups of gathers came together to form small tribes,
which came together to form communities, which in turn grouped together to become towns, which
became cities, which united to become small kingdoms, which in finally came together to form the
nation states we know today. Europe is now trying to forge the next step – that of bringing nation
states into something larger. Being the first attempt it seems new and scary, just as there would have
been those in the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex who resisted this new-fangled ‘England’, with its
distant rulers and burdensome taxes and laws. It’s going to happen, so we can try and influence that
as it’s evolves, or we can re-join in a few decades time as a junior member on much worse terms than
we have now.<br />
<br />
By far my biggest concern is that of the economy. Markets can deal with democracies and dictators,
they can handle with Tories or Labour, but what they don’t like is instability and uncertainty, and Brexit
negotiations are uncertainty incarnate. Nobody knows how long negotiations will take. Nobody has
any idea as to what sort of deal we’ll get. Nobody knows what EU rules we’ll have to abide by and
which we’ll be able to ignore. Nobody knows if we’ll repeal existing EU legislation and if so how much.
All this is an anathema to business deciding where to sink investment. The best and brightest of the
world flock to Britain because their skills and talents have an unrivalled platform and outlets through
our links to Europe, the Commonwealth and North America. Brexit and the subsequent reservations
about visas and free movement would throw this into doubt.
“But it’s in the EU’s interests to give Britain a good deal, we do too much trade for them to jeopardise
it”. This message has been the crux of the Leave camps economic case, but it’s tragically naive for it
rests on the assumption that EU leaders act rationally. They don’t. The history of the EU is one of
making political decisions that go against economic sense. The Euro, the madness of monetary union
without fiscal union, was a political project, not economic. The CAP is a political settlement that runs
against all but the most projectionist economic rationale.<br />
<br />
If Britain opted to leave left the EU Brussels
would have to make an example of us. Negotiations would be tortuous, dragged out for years with
every line of the settlement debated and revised and amended purely out of spite. Just look at
Greece. Every sensible economist pleaded for some form of debt write-off, but no. Greece had to be
made an example of, especially after the defiance of the anti-austerity referendum. The vanity and
pride of those behind ‘The Project’ cannot be over stated, and EU chiefs really will go out of their way
to cause an independent Britain as much trauma as possible if it meant deterring other would be
separatists.
This is partly why the EU needs Britain. An EU without Britain would mean all the worst aspects of the
bureaucracy would be let loose, with little or no restraint. Those members who tend to side with us,
like the Nordic nations, would find themselves without a large ally, and would be cowed and bullied
into meek compliance. A Britain-less EU would also be a more insular, inward looking beast.<br />
<br />
During
the 1990s it was Britain that led to the push to see the ten Eastern European states of the former
Warsaw Pact brought into the EU, much to the annoyance of the French who argued attention should
be focused on deepening integration among the existing members. But Britain triumphed, correctly
insisting that without EU membership anchoring these new democracies to the West, they’d succumb
to a gradual economic, then political slide back into the Russian orbit. And this is the rule rather than
the exception – for Britain gets its way a lot in Europe, especially on the big issues. The very fact the
EU is a free trade area is largely down to us. The European Court of Human Rights, though not part
of the EU, was created almost at the British behest. That we don’t have an EU Army is down to Britain
thwarting the idea every time it rears its head.<br />
<br />
And it’s not just our friends and allies in Europe that want us to stay. The Commonwealth nations, to
whom Brexiteers point as an alternative trading bloc to the EU, want us to remain. Our closest ally,
the United States, wants us to stay. Both recognise that our membership of the EU is the unique
bridge that binds the Anglosphere and the continent of Europe together. Our place in the EU reminds
Brussels that there’s a world outside Fortress Europe and that globalisation is an opportunity, not a
threat.<br />
<br />
It’s no coincidence that the only world leader who supports Brexit is Vladmir Putin, a man
itching to divide and weaken a united West that’s hemmed in and punished his geopolitical trolling.
I get the frustration with the EU, I really do. I too hear the siren song of Brexit, the temptation to stick
two fingers up at Brussels and reclaim sovereignty. But every year nation states get less and less
relevant. True sovereignty hasn’t existed for any state since the Second World War. If we took the
Norwegian option we’d still have to follow EU rules, but we’d have no say in how they’re made.
Leaving would be to ignore the pleads of our oldest friends. Brexit would be an economic roll of the
dice that really don’t need. Much like the Scottish Nationalists, the economic case for Brexit rests on
hopeful scenarios and keeping our fingers crossed – I’m sorry but the world’s sixth largest economy is
too important to gamble on a wing and a prayer.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. The EU machine is infuriating, but Britain, the West, and the
world is a better place through our membership.<br />
<br />
A guest contribution by Lee T Jenkins<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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<br />
The polls suffer from a 6% response rate, and unlike the Scots Indy referendums, there's very little to calibrate them against, as Leave/Remain cuts across party lines, and there have been no recent referendums on the subject. A lot of IPSOS MORI's swing is methodology changes, reminiscent of the last election. The pollsters have been tweaking their methodologies to give similar results (so-called "herding"). There is a better than outside chance of another polling catastrophe.<br />
<br />
Given the extraordinarily low response rate, there is a good chance the highly excited leave supporters in every demographic by which Pollsters weight their samples: age, education, socioeconomic class, party affiliation etc, are significantly more likely to respond. The Be.Leavers are enjoying this referendum. The Bremainers are thoroughly sick of the whole referendum and cannot wait until it's over. I cannot see how this can be captured in their methodologies.<br />
<br />
Basically, I think there's a good chance the polls are at least as wrong as the General election, which would be nearly enough to get Remain over the winning post.<br />
<br />
There are 13% undecided in the last Survation poll. These people will break for the status quo, as they have in most referendums in the past.<br />
<br />
The ground game: where one side has access to all the party machines, and the other, leave has access to UKIP's chaotic machine alone, and no national footprint or experience in national 'Get Out The Vote' operations.<br />
<br />
This is all said with due respect to the view that shouting "The Polls are wrong" is the hallmark of the side that's going to lose.<br />
<br />
I was just about to hit publish.<br />
<br />
And As I was writing this yesterday, an MP was murdered. A bleak day for her family, Labour, Parliament, and the country. She was apparently shot and stabbed by a man with mental health issues, and an association with the far-right, who may, or may not have shouted "put Britain first" as he committed his murder. Jo Cox was the MP for Batley & Spen who was first elected in 2015, and was holding a constituency surgery, as MPs up and down the land do weekly. They are unprotected, yet attract some of the worst and most disturbed people in the land. She leaves 2 young children and a devastated husband. We in the UK are lucky to have such dedicated, humble, honest and decent MPs, of whom Mrs Cox was not out of the ordinary. MPs aren't "in it for themselves" nor are they part of "the elite". They're just like us, really.<br />
<br />
Whether Thomas Mair, the chief suspect, was, or was not motivated in part by the Referendum campaign is not the issue, as an untruth can get halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on. In this case, it's a still-plausible, not-yet an untruth bit of speculation. A motivation from far-right beliefs and influenced by the referendum campaign remains the most likely explanation for Mair's actions. And for the leave campaign who're busy suggesting an EU army is likely, and Turkey's about to join the EU, to complain about people suggesting this is so, is a bit rum, really. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.<br />
<br />
I'm making a prediction, not arguing what should happen, and while I wish it were not so, this appalling event <i>will</i> affect the outcome.<br />
<br />
What will people take from this senseless murder? That the referendum has poisoned politics? That perhaps we should pause for breath in this febrile atmosphere of anti-politics to reflect on the huge decision we're about to make? That perhaps the anti-politics, anti-expert mood has gone a bit far? Perhaps the politicians, our allies, the economists and international organisations who say Brexit will make Britain poorer, weaker, less influential and will harm the western alliance all have a point? Anything that makes people stop and think isn't going to be good for the 'leave' camp who for weeks have been doubling down on the sullen, nihilist anti-expert, anit-politics anti-immigrant hysteria sweeping western democracies. Events like this have a habit of being the moment the narrative changes.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Farage's disgusting poster unveiled yesterday, with its clear echoes of Nazi propaganda will be received differently in the light of this tragedy.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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