Cont: Brexit: Now What? 9 Below Zero

[The Don]

You mean turn the party into the Tories in the 90s?

edited to add this bit........

New Labour was very different to the Conservatives, that's why they eventually picked "call me Dave" to be their leader to help close the gap between the centreist New Labour and the increasingly right wing Conservatives. If they were impersonating any party, it would be the Liberal/LibDem party IMO.

Given the Conservatives' lurch to the right since Cameron resigned, the Labour Party could choose to reclaim that centre ground but have instead chosen to move significantly to the left.

.....end edit

I think a lot of people just possibly think its better to have a party represent their ideas, even in opposition, than have a party get elected representing someone else's ideas?

I guess they do.

Then again you can get a party elected which manages to do things like significantly increasing public spending, setting about reversing the decline in economic and social mobility whilst paying lip service to terms like fiscal responsibility.

dogmatic vs Pragmatic

YMMV.

 

[The Don]

This should be put on the side of every bus in the UK and mentioned every time BJ appears at a press conference.

Brexit will cost us 2,264 million pounds a week. How do you intend to pay for the expense? Shouldn't we give that money to NHS instead?

It's a reasonable question to ask, surely. I mean, with an extra budget of that size the NHS can probably solve all it's outstanding issues and begin delivering patented designer drugs within a decade or two, generating even more revenue in the process.

McHrozni

An excellent idea, the trouble is that the Labour Party cannot do that because they are still pro-Brexit (albeit with a referendum) so it's down to the "minority" parties.

 

[McHrozni]

An excellent idea, the trouble is that the Labour Party cannot do that because they are still pro-Brexit (albeit with a referendum) so it's down to the "minority" parties.

Labour party should get the same treatment.

It's a very reasonable question to ask, they support Brexit so they should at least tell the public where they intend to find the money to finance it - and justify why that money is better spent on Brexit than on, say, starving orphans.

McHrozni

 

[The Don]

Labour party should get the same treatment.

It's a very reasonable question to ask, they support Brexit so they should at least tell the public where they intend to find the money to finance it - and justify why that money is better spent on Brexit than on, say, starving orphans.

McHrozni

Labour have two challenges, they need to explain how they will fund Brexit and they also need to explain how they will fund all of their post-election spending promises (the Conservatives have the same challenge, but their spending plans don't seem to be quite as grandiose).

One thing I find really interesting about one of Labour's pledges is to cover personal care for the elderly. Those who have low incomes and/or few assets already have this covered. It's people like my father, decent occupational pension and money in the bank, who have to pay for their own care - not unreasonably IMO. This is a policy which will make it easier the middle classes to pass on their houses to their middle aged children and maintain the wealth inequalities which IMO are a major challenge to the UK.

 

[McHrozni]

Labour have two challenges, they need to explain how they will fund Brexit and they also need to explain how they will fund all of their post-election spending promises (the Conservatives have the same challenge, but their spending plans don't seem to be quite as grandiose).

That too, of course.

One thing I find really interesting about one of Labour's pledges is to cover personal care for the elderly. Those who have low incomes and/or few assets already have this covered. It's people like my father, decent occupational pension and money in the bank, who have to pay for their own care - not unreasonably IMO. This is a policy which will make it easier the middle classes to pass on their houses to their middle aged children and maintain the wealth inequalities which IMO are a major challenge to the UK.

Wealth inequality is a side product of low social mobility. The way to approach wealth inequality is not to recude it, but to improve social mobility. Most people aren't held back by the fact someone else got the house and they didn't, they're held back by a lack of opportunities due to their existing economical situation.

The correct way to approach the problem is to generate extra opportunities for the lower classes, such as widely available quality education without exorbiant fees. You can pay for it with additional taxes on the wealthy, just so long as the point of those taxes is to generate additional revenue to pay for those opportunities and not just to take money away from the wealthy to make them poor.

I don't mind paying taxes for the less fortunate to have the opportunity to climb out. I do mind paying taxes so I'm in the same hole as the poor with neither of us having much of a way out.

It's a reasonable position to hold, I think. Corbyn might disagree though. He and his ilk hold the position wealth inequality itself is a problem and the way to solve it is to tax the rich to death, then everyone will be better off. That position may have been ... not disproven, I guess ... until 1920s and in(s)ane ever since.

McHrozni

 

[The Don]

Wealth inequality is a side product of low social mobility. The way to approach wealth inequality is not to recude it, but to improve social mobility. Most people aren't held back by the fact someone else got the house and they didn't, they're held back by a lack of opportunities due to their existing economical situation.

Which makes the Labour promise for free personal care for all so disappointing. Well off pensioners will get to keep their assets and pass them on to their children and grandchildren allowing them to buy houses in areas with good schools, subsidise their tertiary education, ease their progress into the job market and so on.

The again, even if there is reasonable social mobility, high levels of income and wealth inequality is still a bad thing. If only 10% of people earn a living wage then it really doesn't matter too much whether that 10% are chosen by merit, chance or birth, 90% of the population are still screwed.

 

[McHrozni]

Which makes the Labour promise for free personal care for all so disappointing. Well off pensioners will get to keep their assets and pass them on to their children and grandchildren allowing them to buy houses in areas with good schools, subsidise their tertiary education, ease their progress into the job market and so on.

Again, the proper way to approach this is to have financial programs that allow the less fortunate to access quality education as well. Ideally you'd want most of the quality education to be funded by the state and admit students on academic merit alone. Let private, for profit schools exist for the schmuks who can't get into public schools.

This is how you ensure the highest possible academic output in a society, which (unlike income inequality) is a worthy goal all by itself. Yes, it's weird. Yes, it's achievable.

The again, even if there is reasonable social mobility, high levels of income and wealth inequality is still a bad thing. If only 10% of people earn a living wage then it really doesn't matter too much whether that 10% are chosen by merit, chance or birth, 90% of the population are still screwed.

Those aren't "high" levels of income and wealth inequality, but "extreme" levels. Those need to be brought down, if possible by lifting incomes of a significant portion of the 90%. But UK is nowhere near as far, living wage is around 8 pounds and median wage is estimated at over 13 pounds per hour. I'm getting these off Google, but it sounds reasonable. This means over 50% of UK gets the "living wage". The situation may still need fixing but it's nowhere near as bad as you put it.

McHrozni

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Revocation of article 50 must be done in good faith. UK explicitly can't revoke A50 with hopes of getting a better deal. It doesn't matter that no such deal is possible, UK can't even attempt it.

McHrozni

Not only that, but a deal cannot be negotiated unless Article 50 has been invoked.

 

[McHrozni]

Not only that, but a deal cannot be negotiated unless Article 50 has been invoked.

That too, but what UK could do is form a parliamentary group that would cobble up a deal that UK would want and that EU could accept.

You can't negotiate, but you can look at basic principles of EU and relevant international law. Massage the deal until it doesn't violate any, then present that as a proposal, accept it and invoke A50 again with a clear goal in mind.

Yet, UK can't even do that. Revoke is revoke, it means UK intends to stay.

McHrozni

 

[3point14]

Someone convince me that Boris isn't going to spend the next five years dismantling the welfare state. Please.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

He genuinely thinks that his Brexit-supporting, left wing (re-nationalisation and forcing business owners to transfer ownership of their business to the workers) agenda is going to prove popular.

He's mostly right about nationalisation.

As for the idea of forcing business owners to transfer ownership of their business to the workers, the Labour manifesto speaks of "introducing a 'right to own,' making employees the buyer of first refusal when the company they work for is up for sale." Is that what you're referring to?

 

[McHrozni]

Someone convince me that Boris isn't going to spend the next five years dismantling the welfare state. Please.

He probably won't be able to maintain a stable government for five years. Not if there's a no deal Brexit in between. If the deal passes in HoC expect a new election before the end of 2020, thanks to all the waggling and resignations that will follow in the wake of what the deal with the EU will eventually be.

I hope I haven't made it worse for you, but that's the reality of the situation.

McHrozni

 

[a_unique_person]

Exactly, and it's Militant v2.0. Militant almost destroyed the Labour Party as an electable party in the 1980s. It was a lot of heavy lifting to turn the party around in the 90's, but it seems that Labour's self destructive tendencies are just baked in.

If people like Blair hadn't ******* it up so badly then momentum never would have happened.

 

[Lothian]

Someone convince me that Boris isn't going to spend the next five years dismantling the welfare state. Please.

He will keep on lying, the gullible will buy into his fantasy and he will spend the next 10 years dismantling the welfare state.

 

[Rolfe]

My own view is that they will have to at the very least run their own referendum in 2020 and even if it isn't the trigger for a UDI declaration (in the event of a YES win) then it will be more leverage for a confirmatory referendum later and possibly the start of discussions on independence with the government.

I've been avoiding this thread (don't need the stress) but there's a point here that people are missing and to be frank most commentators in Scotland are missing too. It is probably impossible, in practical terms, for the Scottish government to hold a referendum without either a Section 30 order or a court finding that a Section 30 order is not required to do so.

The reason is that elections and referendums are run and administered by local authorities. They have the mechanisms, the infrastructure and so on. They are also all (or almost all) under the control of unionist parties. Even where the SNP won the majority of seats in the STV elections, unionist coalitions have been formed to prevent them being in administration. Labour seem happy to cosy up with the Tories to do this. If the Scottish government tries to call an independence referendum without a Section 30 order they will most certainly declare that this is illegal and refuse to co-operate. Then what?

The electoral system as run by the local authorities is secure. It's absolutely impossible to subvert on a systematic basis. We totally need it to run a fair and honest referendum. If the Scottish government thinks it can circumvent this and use a different system (maybe an all-postal vote based on the electoral register without using the councils?), it's going to have a great deal of difficulty persuading anyone that that is secure and not open to tampering.

Not only that, it's a dead certainty that the unionists will call for a boycott of this "illegal vote", so that unless there are more Yes votes than 50% of the total electorate if would be impossible to say there was an actual independence majority, even if Yes won the actial vote substantially.

Then where are we? Catalonia without the violence, that's where. And I'm not laying any large bets on the violence part either at that point.

The Scottish government should have applied to the court at least two yers ago for a ruling on the necessity for a Section 30 order. If it was ged unnecessary then all the above problems would go away, but without the ruling the unionists will insist that it's necessary. If it was judged to be necessary then we'd know where we stand and could work on other strategies.

As things stand it's simply an unholy mess.

 

[Darat]

Which makes the Labour promise for free personal care for all so disappointing. Well off pensioners will get to keep their assets and pass them on to their children and grandchildren allowing them to buy houses in areas with good schools, subsidise their tertiary education, ease their progress into the job market and so on.

The again, even if there is reasonable social mobility, high levels of income and wealth inequality is still a bad thing. If only 10% of people earn a living wage then it really doesn't matter too much whether that 10% are chosen by merit, chance or birth, 90% of the population are still screwed.

Never forget the disgust many had for how they had to get the NHS started, Bevan's "by stuffing the doctors’ mouths with gold". We can't let the perfect stand in the way of the good. We need to help hundreds of thousands of people without assets to pass onto their children receive fantastic care. Yes it might be that we have to also pay for those that could well afford their own care. But which would you have it, the poor continuing to receive care - if at all - of a very low quality just so the rich don't get anything?

 

[Darat]

Let's take discussions about the GE to the thread The Don started: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=339994 and leave this one for specific Brexit issues and discussions. And that includes you Darat!

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat

 

[The Don]

If people like Blair hadn't ******* it up so badly then momentum never would have happened.

It was always there, it was just lying dormant until it could rise again.

It's not clear to me what Blair messed up so badly. The Labour government was doing pretty well until the 2008 global crisis and even then managed to protect government spending and investment. Despite the global crisis, it was still a hung parliament in the 2010 election.

OTOH most economists are agreed that the Coalition government's austerity programme hampered the UK economy's recovery whereas if the Labour government had been allowed to continue with its policies we'd be in a much better state today IMO (not least because austerity led to the stress on local services that Brexiteers were able to blame on immigrants - no austerity, no Brexit).

 

[ceptimus]

Amazed that Labor has agreed to this.

I don't think they had much choice. With the LibDems and SNP both supporting an election it was going to happen anyway.

Labour had to make the choice of how they were seen going into a General Election - enthusiastically, having voted for it, or reluctant and fearful having voted against. They chose the former.

 

[Ian Osborne]

It's not clear to me what Blair messed up so badly.

Nor me. He wasn't perfect, but given a choice between Blair and Corbyn, I know who'd get my vote, and he doesn't have a little grey beard.