Agreed. Once in a generation thing, this. Even if it has been somewhat dirtily fought.
In what way?
Trying to curtail the purdah period. Sending out a leaflet with HM Government insignia all over it and pretending it was an informative piece of factual literature, when in truth it was a campaign booklet full of unsubstantiated claims. Osborne presenting figures in a genuinely absurd way in order to imply everyone would be £4,000 per annum worse off post-Brexit. Really poor stuff all round.
I think it depends on which way they want to go. If they continue to be focussed on leaving the EU then their appeal and relevance would be limited. However if they decide to broaden their approach further it's possible they could find a niche on the far right. Perhaps as a British version of front nationale, Jobbik or Golden Dawn. A lot depends on their ability to unite the myriad political entities which would naturally sympathise with a true far-right, nationalist party.
You have a truly bizarre impression of the far right's strength and potential in this country, I have to say.
I would agree, but I think it's difficult for Remain, because the Leave lot have quite a good narrative. They've got good rhetoric, arguments they've been rehearsing for 40 years about sovereignty and immigration and GREAT BRITAIN etc.
What deal was that? He got fuck all as the Germans stopped him getting anything that would benefit us.
I don't think it was. Cameron said he would base his decision on what concessions he could get (which was of course complete bollocks he was always supporting remain), but as a campaign remains main argument was always going to be maintaining what we have rather than anything we could get.
It depends what question you're asking there. Is it enough to win? Yes, I think so. Remain will win and a vague sense of foreboding about the economy will be a decisive factor. For me? Well, I obviously look at it differently. I think there is a great deal of uncertainty and potential risk if we stay in, and I believe more important matters are at stake than short-to-medium-term economy stability anyway.
You're probably right that most people don't care about democracy, though that seems more an indictment of the electorate than a comment about what really matters vis-à-vis our relationship with the EU. And your point about Lizzy is just fatuous. While our unelected head of state does have political powers, they are, for all intents and purposes, merely ceremonial. Moreover, her popularity owes a great deal to people trusting her to be hands off and politically neutral, a national figurehead who rises above the silly factionalism of party politics.
Nah, that’s bollocks. I doubt even Mr Cameron's Old Etonian arrogance extends to thinking he can "sort out" the Tory schism over the EU by having a referendum on membership. All that does is give two bitterly opposed intra-party factions a much coveted prize to fight over. What does that achieve from a party unity PoV?
I do understand what you mean, but I think both sides make use of this idea of fear of change. A lot of Brexit messaging is about returning power to Britain, going back to when Britain was 'great/Great' etc.and maintaining the status quo of not having loads of Turks living here.
I suspect fear-based arguments are an unavoidable part of political debate. I wrote about this much earlier in the thread if you interested (or feeling particularly masochistic). What's needed generally is sharper critical thinking, particularly with regard to distinguishing rational fears from irrational ones. But I digresss...
I don't want to delve too deeply into the Turkey argument (since I don't much like it either), but I think there's maybe a useful point to make about time scales here. What is meant by "the remotely near future", exactly? Next year? The next five years? The next few decades?
Fair enough. Like I say, much of this comes down to one's political and philosophical priorities. I haven't seen the movie (I've been told it's fucking dire, and I've still got season 2 of The Leftovers to watch) but FWIW I'm certainly closer to Hefferlump’s boiled grass PoV than yours!
Bit of a straw man. I didn’t suggest anything. I wrote it can do that, not that it always does. Also, I did preface my comments about the HoL by saying I'd abolish it tomorrow, which hopefully conveyed I'm not a fan. I object to it on democratic grounds too. I'll get more into this when I reply to your earlier comments, but I suppose the gist here is that an unelected chamber of British-based coffin dodgers with the power to temporarily block laws passed by the HoC worries me less than an unelected, multinational body of officials with the power to propose legally binding directives and regulations.
I'd say that is my position, not a halfway house. UKIP were taking too big a bite out of the core conservative vote. The referendum pledge was made to counter that.
The Commission is the EU's executive body. It alone has the power to propose EU legislation. There are 28 Commissioners, none of them elected. The President is proposed by the Council. The UK has some say towards the nomination (since our Prime Minister sits on the 28 member Council) but it counts for very little. Cameron's hopeless failure to oppose the Juncker nomination illustrates this.
The Danes rejected Maastricht (1992) and were made to vote again. The Irish rejected Nice (2001) and the Lisbon (2009) and were made to vote again. France and Holland both comprehensively rejected the EU Constitution (2005). The EU response was to repackage the constitution as the Lisbon Treaty, which in effect meant French and Dutch voters were ignored. The Greek referendum in 2015? Blithely disregarded! The recent Eurozone bailouts? Patently illegal (see the Article 125 of the Lisbon Treaty), but the EU unapologetically violated its own rules. That's just off the top of my head. How many precedents of EU arrogance and anti-democratic bullying do you need?
Us not doing terribly inside the EU does not mean we couldn't have done better outside it. Given our shared history and cultural similarities, it's ludicrous that Britain doesn't have FTAs with countries like USA, Canada, Australia and India. Had we been outside the EU for the last 40+ years, we'd probably have them, not least because we'd have been free to negotiate them on a bilateral basis. We're counterfactual territory here, I know, but it's food for thought.
It's natural to consider it, but it's also lazy and vain. When concerns about keeping the 'right' company are given primacy over facts, logic and the general quality of arguments, there is a problem. Politics ceases to be an intellectual endeavour. It becomes more like a fashion parade. No good comes from that.
Nigel has done precisely nothing to obstruct the system, not least because he is largely powerless to do so. His 'work', as he sees it, is to draw attention to how thoroughly wretched the EU is, which he's better positioned and resourced to do from the inside. I suppose we could debate the morality of taking money from a system one is intent on destroying, but I see that as largely irrelevant. Nigel should be judged on his arguments. His factual claims are either true or false. His arguments for withdrawal are either logical or illogical, cogent or unconvincing.
Very possibly, but ultimately it’s his arguments that should matter. His Hitler argument from last week was abysmal (possibly the nadir of the entire Leave campaign). His repeated claims about £350m per week going to the EU are untrue. Attack that, not what you perceive to be his real motivation. Also, the idea that there isn't self-serving careerism in the Remain camp – which often seems implicit when people attack Johnson using this argument – is risible.
My first thought was to ignore this analogy on the grounds of it being irredeemably daft. What pubs do you imagine going to? In what sort of dystopian nightmare would the government endorse a washing machine?! But perhaps a worthwhile point that can be teased out of this.
Thank fuck for that...
The problem is twofold. First, there is a well established pattern of British governments paying lip service to this idea (and occasionally backing it up) but us slowly becoming more entangled in the project anyway. Second, why stay part of a political project if the starting intention is to set yourself against its founding purpose? It's a bit like not wanting children but marrying a woman who is tragically hell bent on becoming a mother. You might get your way, there may be benefits to the marriage and it may even last a while. But wouldn't both parties be happier if they went their separate ways?
I broadly agree with the second part. There are hard-headed ideologues on both sides, people whose voting intentions are unlikely to be changed by rational argument. The real battle is for the undecideds, and it's naive to think Leave can win the majority of those simply by carping about how shit the current situation is (and how it's likely to get worse). That part is necessary, but it's only Stage 1. Stage 2 is convincing people that there's a better alternative. I think certain Leave campaigners – Dan Hannan, Richard North and Roland Smith immediately spring to mind – have done that, but they're not spearheading the campaign. Check out some of their stuff.
Part 2 of 2:
It's natural to consider it, but it's also lazy and vain. When concerns about keeping the 'right' company are given primacy over facts, logic and the general quality of arguments, there is a problem. Politics ceases to be an intellectual endeavour. It becomes more like a fashion parade. No good comes from that.
It's not given primacy. It's a supporting argument. It stands to reason that if an argument sounds dodgy (everything Boris Johnson has contributed for example), then a look at his record as a notorious liar, charlatan and fraud only serves to reinforce this distrust. There are tossers on both sides of the debate, to be sure, but people are not always considering this in a purely intellectual endeavour.
Nigel has done precisely nothing to obstruct the system, not least because he is largely powerless to do so. His 'work', as he sees it, is to draw attention to how thoroughly wretched the EU is, which he's better positioned and resourced to do from the inside. I suppose we could debate the morality of taking money from a system one is intent on destroying, but I see that as largely irrelevant. Nigel should be judged on his arguments. His factual claims are either true or false. His arguments for withdrawal are either logical or illogical, cogent or unconvincing.
Very possibly, but ultimately it’s his arguments that should matter. His Hitler argument from last week was abysmal (possibly the nadir of the entire Leave campaign). His repeated claims about £350m per week going to the EU are untrue. Attack that, not what you perceive to be his real motivation. Also, the idea that there isn't self-serving careerism in the Remain camp – which often seems implicit when people attack Johnson using this argument – is risible.
I have criticised those points, but I don't think you can entirely separate someone's arguments and their reputation. There is careerism all over professional politics, but Johnson's case is just particularly transparent at the present moment.
My first thought was to ignore this analogy on the grounds of it being irredeemably daft. What pubs do you imagine going to? In what sort of dystopian nightmare would the government endorse a washing machine?! But perhaps a worthwhile point that can be teased out of this.
In the above example, the 10 mad blokes down the pub have no obvious incentive to flog you a washing machine. Presumably they're waxing lyrical about the spin cycle (or whatever!) because they really like it. Perhaps they're just satisfied customers. On the other hand, people who make and/or sell washing machines have an obvious vested interest. Washing machine repairmen? Isn't it in their interests to sell you a machine that routinely breaks down? Can't trust those fuckers! And a government that endorses a washing machine has almost certainly been aggressively lobbied by corporate interests. With all that in mind, do you still buy the second washing machine?
The analogy was obvious facetious. My point was that I am not an expert on the EU, as most people aren't. The majority of the public are hugely ignorant and therefore you do naturally rely on the credibility of the people offering you the choices. We can't really proceed with the washing machine unfortunately, because in this case the mad chaps down the pub are conspiracy theorists. Government MP Penny Mordaunt was on Andrew Marr this morning saying the Remain side was an establishment stitch-up. People arguing on Turkey this week are deliberately misleading people to capitalise on fears of immigration, which is the main tactic that Brexit now have. Of course there are careerists in Remain, but it seems to me that almost every argument being articulated by the Leave campaign is thinly masking a an ugly agenda, usually but not always to do with immigration. The incredibly broad consensus of people advocating for Remain seem more plausible to me than the band of arguments brought together by Leave.
I think it's wrong to elevate motive (or perceived motive) above the quality of arguments, but if that's your preference at least be consistent. Don't just apply that sort of scepticism to fools like Boris. Apply to the people who are trying to sell you the EU.
I do try to do this, and I think it's obvious Cameron and Corbyn don't have their heart in this.
The problem is twofold. First, there is a well established pattern of British governments paying lip service to this idea (and occasionally backing it up) but us slowly becoming more entangled in the project anyway. Second, why stay part of a political project if the starting intention is to set yourself against its founding purpose? It's a bit like not wanting children but marrying a woman who is tragically hell bent on becoming a mother. You might get your way, there may be benefits to the marriage and it may even last a while. But wouldn't both parties be happier if they went their separate ways?
We are moving towards a two-tier Europe (http://www.euractiv.com/section/fut...ut-plans-for-two-tier-europe-eurozone-budget/). This is no bad thing. There is no reason why, as mentioned, we have to give ourselves to every aspect of EU integration. It is perfectly possible to carve out a middle way between Brexit and a federal Europe, and I think it is in fact the most likely outcome. (Was having an interesting conversation a few weeks ago with the political scientist Simon Hix whose theory was closer to a three-tier Europe, with a trade but not free movement section for Turkey et al)
I broadly agree with the second part. There are hard-headed ideologues on both sides, people whose voting intentions are unlikely to be changed by rational argument. The real battle is for the undecideds, and it's naive to think Leave can win the majority of those simply by carping about how shit the current situation is (and how it's likely to get worse). That part is necessary, but it's only Stage 1. Stage 2 is convincing people that there's a better alternative. I think certain Leave campaigners – Dan Hannan, Richard North and Roland Smith immediately spring to mind – have done that, but they're not spearheading the campaign. Check out some of their stuff.
Leave can win by using immigration and I think they will. Leave also have a demographic advantage, as their supporters tend towards the older section of the population, who will crawl through a river of lava to get to a polling station. I've seen some very dodgy arguments from Dan Hannan, but will concede he also often talks some sense. Not heard of the other two but will gladly read up before commenting further in this thread
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