I'll lay odds that Scotland at least will not be giving that mandate. Currently the Conservaties have 1 out of 59 MPs in Westminster from north of the border. Of course, that's irrelevant as the Tories can simply continue to completely ignore Scotland.
Yes but this is a general election where we're voting for a party, not pro or anti-Brexit. I despise the conservatives, but I support Brexit. So I'm certainly not voting for the lib dems. I actually like every single Liberal Democrat policy besides their hard-line on doing everything they can to ignore the result of the referendum. It's a shame because I don't feel like labour are in a position to really take the country forward right now.
To be fair, she wouldn't be the first PM in recent history to call a vote they were sure they'd win and live to regret it.
The real danger for her is presumably that MPs don't give her the mandate to hold the election at all, which would potentially mean we get yet another new and unelected PM.
She wasn't pro-brexit, it's difficult to say what her motives are. It does seem the enormity of brexit is becoming more apparent as time goes on, perhaps she would like a tight result to keep a lid on the right of her party.
As much as I want to stay in Europe that ain't happening. She didn't need to call this. She did it because the polls say she'll win and that's another 5 years we're stuck with a tory government. Labour is the biggest challenger and they're pro-brexit. With the SNP's popularity Labour can't win enough seats to challenge anyway and given their differing stances on brexit I don't see how a Labour/Lib Dems/SNP coalition would work.
Are Labour really "pro-Brexit"? I understand they're pretty divided right now, but I thought it was more that they have to publicly show they're prepared to live with it moving forward.
Well the LibDems are going to say that but they are not going to win. The other two parties aren't - Labour is going split in half. The Tories might see defections, but will stay together and press ahead with Brexit in the hope of a massive majority.
Agreed, I think Tim Farron was right on point strategy-wise to come out and immediately, unequivocally say that a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote to stay in.
It's just not going to sway nearly enough people to win a majority, and the Tories know that.
True, but if the LibDems can pull enough Blairites away from Corbyn and urban Tories away from May it will give the LibDems a core that they can move forward with. (I don't think they have a hope in hell of actually even getting enough MPs to play kingmakers, but they may be aiming to simply supplant Labour as the opposition party...)
The trouble is, the Lib Dems under Farron have essentially become a single-issue party.
That decision potentially alienates about 1/3 of their previous voter base who voted to Leave, as well as those who did want to Remain but either don't believe in overriding a popular referendum on democratic principles or don't feel strongly enough on the issue to disrupt things further.
Given that we're talking about the Lib Dems here, all of those could be significant groups. It's quite a gamble to bet your whole political strategy on attracting enough voters from other parties because they feel so strongly on Europe, and according to recent polling, it looks like it's a gamble that is going to fail unspectacularly.
I don't think it alienates any of their base. The Lib Dems have always been hugely pro-Europe, I doubt that anyone who voted Leave would have been a supporter in the first place.
I don't have numbers in front of me, but I also can't think of a riding where the LibDems were within 5% last election that voted Leave. IMHO the odds seem better if the LibDems can claim "Remain if possible, soft Brexit if not" when it comes to picking up Tory and Labour seats.
FWIW, I know from immediate personal contacts that it does, and not in entirely trivial numbers. I'm in one of the most pro-Remain areas of the country, but also a LD/Lab marginal, so it will be interesting to see what happens as a result. I suspect it won't make much difference here, but if the same effect is evident in more moderate parts of the country, it could actually hurt them.
Sorry to reply twice; I can't edit my previous comment any more.
It looks like there's been another poll today that is consistent with what I've seen reported previously: about 1/3 of Lib Dem voters at the last election voted Leave in the referendum, and currently Lib Dem loyalty is lowest among the major parties, with a similar proportion of Lib Dem voters at the last election expecting to vote for someone else at the next one.
Thinking about this more I am convinced Farron is on the right track. The leave/remain issue gives the LibDems an opening to expand and they should take it, there is no future in being 'not nasty enough to vote Tory but not dumb enough to vote Labour' and if both parties are willing to surrender an issue that at one point had the support of 48% of the country (and concentrated in a few areas to make campaigning easier) then you go for it.
Without such a gamble the LibDems will remain in the also-ran group with UKIP and the Greens. You push any issue that gives you a wedge and use it to crack a few ridings and if necessary you write off the 1/3 in the hope of picking up 2/5 of the two larger parties.
The conservatives could have real trouble getting out the vote if people think it a foregone conclusion. Will people really fear a Corbyn victory enough to turn out?
Sure, but many who voted never expected them to actually win and saw it as a protest vote. A lot of people claimed they regretted voting brexit after it became clear the brexit camp actually won. Now brexit has been initiated and it's becoming clear what the consequences are many more people are getting cold feet.
A lot of people claimed they regretted voting brexit after it became clear the brexit camp actually won.
This is mostly just wishful thinking on the part of the Remain side. Opinion polls have pretty consistently shown very little change in overall sentiment on Brexit. In many cases they seem to have observed marginally more regret among Leave voters than Remain voters, but the numbers were small enough in both cases that it probably wouldn't have affected the referendum result itself, and surely far too small to have much effect on a general election result.
No, it's not. From the same article I linked before: "But a small number of Remain voters were apparently glad the vote did not go their way, with two per cent saying Brexit was in fact the best part of 2016"
So 4% of 'leave' voters regret voting leave and 2% of 'remain' voters regret voting 'remain'. So in total it's about a 2% shift which would reverse the current result percentages.
I've never seen any detailed analysis of the reasons why people voted the way they did in the EU referendum, but I can think of one good reason why people who voted to remain might now think the UK should leave: because it was a democratic vote and they think its result should be acted upon, rather than ignored. That doesn't mean they regretted voting to remain in the EU.
The point you make is definitely valid. I personally know people who are likely to vote against the Lib Dems having previously supported them for exactly that reason.
Regarding detailed analysis, you might find the Ashcroft polls interesting if you haven't seen them before. He did a write-up shortly after the referendum[1], primarily about who voted which way and why. Then there have been a couple more interesting ones just a few days before today's announcement as well[2,3], looking at current expectations regarding Brexit and more general voting intentions.
Spoilers for [1]: The top three reasons identified for Leave voters were (most significant first) sovereignty, immigration, and lack of control over ever closer union and EU expansion in the future. The top three reasons identified for Remain voters were the economic risks of leaving, Single Market access without being in the Eurozone or Schengen area being seen as the best of both worlds, and the feeling of becoming more isolated if we left.
Spoilers for [2]/[3]: Everything you've been assuming about the Tories being dominant in British politics today is true, except that you've probably underestimated just how utterly dominant they actually are and how unpopular both Labour and the Lib Dems are. It's going to be a long few weeks if you're not a blues fan.
As far as I'm aware, that relates to the only major poll since Brexit that suggested sufficient remorse on the Leave side to affect the referendum decision. That's why it was big news.
Even so, it was still well within the margin of error. Your rounding was misleading: the referendum result was 51.9% to 48.1%, almost a 4% gap.
It also still assumed, probably incorrectly, no remorse on the Remain side to cancel out the remorse from Leavers.
But probably more significantly than any of that, I think every other poll I've seen from reasonably credible sources in recent months has pointed the other way. The one you're talking about appears to have been an anomaly.
I always wondered how many realized that "leave" would mean the union is dissolved (The Kingdom, that is - not the European union), and of give those circumstances would rather have voted remain, to keep the UK intact?
Northern Ireland is dependent on having an open border with the Republic, and also has an agriculture-based economy.
Some of the possible (likely?) Brexit outcomes mean a closed border with customs posts and the end of agricultural subsides or the ability to sell agricultural products cross-border.
I agree that the open border is important for those on both sides. Personally I was hoping that the political leaders of both the UK and EU would start the negotiations by aiming for common ground and establishing some good faith, and the Irish border would surely be one of the areas where everyone could agree a high degree of openness was in everyone's best interests. Alas, they seem to be doing the opposite so far, and now we have this new spanner in the works.
I meant the odds of Scotland or Northern Ireland leasing the UK may have been different than what the voters thought in the referendum. Or to put it differently: if there had been a third option in the referendum of "Leave, but only if it can be done while keeping the UK intact" how would that option have done in the referendum? (ignoring whether it would be practically possible to have that option).
I'm afraid that's wishful thinking - there is no opposition to the Conservatives right now other than the SNP. Short of a miracle, May's majority will increase.
The majority of the English like strong, essentially unopposed governance. They like be to be able to choose the g'vner occasionally, but they don't want multiple powerful factions.
I think that the majority of the country is generally less comfortable with the idea of coalitions/minority governments/power sharing than many other parliamentary democracies where those things happen more regularly.
Consider the run-up to the 2015 GE when it looked like Labour/Lib Dems/SNP might be able to form a majority coalition even though the Conservatives were likely to be the largest party - there was a lot of sneering at the idea of a "coalition of the losers". That circumstance arises quite frequently and is largely accepted in many other countries, as can be seen from the results of Denmark's recent elections.
English maybe, but the rest of the UK has different electoral systems and different popular parties.
And I'm not even sure it's the English public asking for this. Are people really going to say they'd rather a strong government they disagree with than a marginal one that's forced to negotiate for support? No, I think it's English conservatives who have trouble with the concept of loyal opposition and the English press in particular who hate anything that would make politics less of a binary choice.
Actually this is just good business for the Tories, and I've long expected it.
The opposition is in disarray under Corbyn, and our prime minister has never won an election. This is as easy a victory as Theresa May will ever be able to bank on, and legitimises her leadership in the eyes of a large section of the public. She can also claim (maybe rightly so) that she has the undisputed majority support of the public for whatever terms she gets for a hard Brexit from the EU.
Indeed, she is shoring up the Tory vote in the commons. At the moment they have a thin majority and just a small number of backbenchers can run amok to prevent or derail government / ministerial law making agenda.
Most people will see this as the party political move that it is. Tory voters will love this, other parties much less so.
As an aside, Northern Ireland will probably join in and have another assembly election on the same date. I wonder if Scotland will join in too?
I wonder (I'm not from UK), is there really zero chance of someone from Labour to challenge Corbyn (someone more moderate/center leaning) and rally the pro-EU voters ?
The only person who's trying to do that right now and is at all visible to the public eye is Tony Blair.. and there's just no way that's going to go over with the public.
Nothing will happen in the short term, but the upcoming hammering that Labour will endure is probably going to be the catalyst for either a successful challenge or a final split between the populist far left in Labour and the urban Blairites.
Pretty much, Corbyn has gathered a lot of grass roots support but will fail to appeal to the wider electorate. I suspect there is a good chance that Labour in the rest of the UK will implode after this election in the same way that it has collapsed in Scotland (although I'm not clear who voters would transfer their loyalties to as they have here in Scotland where the SNP now dominates).
I'm thinking of the fact that there's far more 'older' people, young people are less likely to vote & young people also captures people below the voting age.
As you get older you get more politically active. I'm guessing the retired have more time on their hands.
The young just aren't too bothered. Have a feeling, with Brexit, the biggest losers are the young and I hope that there is at least some semblance that they can do something about it this time.
The Labour Party establishment have tried to dethrone Corbyn before and failed.
He's an odd case. He commands a lot of influence among Labour members and to some extent the unions (who have significant ties to and influence on the Labour Party here). This makes him more-or-less untouchable as party leader.
However, he's loathed by most of the party's current MPs, who are politicians and know he's going to be a liability at election time. And he's not particularly popular among the general public outside the traditional Labour voters, which is why he's going to be a liability.
The irony of the snap election, if it does happen, is that it will be an opportunity for Corbyn to clear out the disloyal backstabbers in the Commons and replace them with more traditional Labour MPs, which is probably why he seems to have said previously that he'd support calls for a snap election. On the other hand, he would probably lose so many MPs altogether that his party would become almost irrelevant in the next Parliament, much as the Lib Dems did last time.
A somewhat ironic but apparently quite plausible outcome to all the political manoeuvres is that Corbyn says Labour will support the snap election, almost all of his MPs openly rebel, the election consequently doesn't achieve the 2/3 support needed in the Commons and so doesn't happen, May is weakened and probably steps down as a result, and Corbyn is also so weakened that he finally goes, thus making the two party leaders who were playing the political games the major victims of those games.
We live in interesting times, literally and perhaps euphemistically as well.
>who are politicians and know he's going to be a liability at election time
I daresay that it's them who are making the party a liability. They've made the Labour Party seem completely ridiculous - and that's not Corbyn's fault.
I was a Corbyn supporter, on the basis that we'd had too many Labour leaders who went against the wishes of the members and supported Tory policy.
Then on Brexit, he went against the wishes of the members and supported Tory policy.
Needless to say I'm no longer a supporter. Of course, it's easy to forget that all the other leadership candidates and challengers would have done the same.
I'd love to see the scenario in your final paragraph. I think May knows it's all or nothing, and if anything gets in the way of her timetable, it's game over for her and for Brexit.
I don't honestly expect that to happen, because I'm fairly sure that Corbyn is either delusional or compromised - and also willing to use a three-line whip to make sure the election goes ahead.
I'm still a Corbyn supporter, and I think he's had a difficult time, having to owe up to his own goals, the goals of his grassroots movement and the goals of the old time voters and unions. This is very highlighted on the EU move; I don't think it's charitable to say that he "supported Tory policy"; the members don't mean anything when the majority of people voting for you aren't members.
So what would you have done if you were him? Go with your members and get booted out of any sensible position, or go with your voting base and disregard your members? Brexit was a hot button topic for many reasons and arguably the fact that someone is either a Tory supporter or betraying their voter base is an example of politics becoming more about principle than doing what's right.
'Go with your members and get booted out of any sensible position'
I don't understand why its to be taken as a given that noone will vote for the anti-brexit party, given that a was a good 45% of the population supported it? surely then all you have to do is win 10% of the population over with other arguments to win?
Corbyn is not to blame for this. When Harriet Harman was caretaker leader after Ed Miliband resigned, Labour MPs voted in favour of having the referendum on EU membership. They should therefore feel bound by its result.
The only party which voted against having the referendum, and who aren't similarly bound, were the SNP.
Some legal opinions have been proferred that it could be reversible, even though if you read the text of A50 there's no mention of such a mechanism.
Personally I would have thought that was something you would want to exclude - article 50 could be used as a tool to extract concessions "We're leavingg unless...".
There's apparently a court case in Ireland to try to establish this.
Also there's the possibility it could be reversed with unanimous consent from the other 27 members because, when it comes down to it, the members make the rules.
It's entirely possible that the UK could be made to leave and reapply though, which would make for many more years of turmoil.
It's possibly worth mentioning for those not closely following UK news that "soft Brexit" now usually seems to mean "remaining a member of the Single Market", and "hard Brexit" usually seems to mean "anything less than that".
I don't personally think this is a very useful distinction. By this definition, a soft Brexit is what for example the Lib Dems are advocating at the moment. However, I think it is also highly unlikely to happen, because to a first approximation it is leaving-in-name-only and thus probably an untenable position for the government to adopt politically. The entire spectrum of other possibilities, from retaining relatively close ties in some respects up to completely walking away with no deal at all, then fall under the single banner of hard Brexit, but treating such widely different possible outcomes as equivalent doesn't seem to be very useful (unless for political reasons you want to try to equate them anyway, I suppose).
Yes, there's certainly an element of that going on, and it's not surprising that a lot of people are concerned about it.
I suppose to be balanced we should also acknowledge the other side's similarly daft argument that they accept that people voted for tea and yet propose a scheme in which you can't buy any of tea bags, tea leaves, a kettle, an urn, or an instant hot water tap, though it's possible that milk or lemon will still be negotiable. :-)
> Then on Brexit, he went against the wishes of the members and supported Tory policy.
May was campaigning to remain before she was appointed leader. And said categorically she would not call a snap election. The lack of conviction is equal parts depressing and hilarious
openly blocking the call for an early election would be really interesting, but I wonder if it would actually lead to either Corbyn or May resigning.
There are straight forward routes through for both of them.
May :- repeal the fixed term parliaments act (which would be an entertaining kick in the teeth to the Lib Dems)
Corbyn :- accuse Labour rebels of not respecting democracy and even question their motives w/regard to Brexit.
On that basis I can't see enough Labour rebels actually turning out to block it. They're more likely to walk away from politics completely (their heart was never really in the business of fighting for something).
How is Corbyn playing political games? He had the overwhelming support of members in two leadership elections. The people playing political games have been those Labour MPs who have been trying to get him to stand down. It's almost as if they'd rather have the Tories in government.
Presumably the general public don't like him because the media have been telling them he's unelectable, even though he's been voted leader twice and his policies are popular with the electorate even if he isn't.
I suspect he's considering his own position and the general dissatisfaction he faces among his current crop of MPs, and he's probably figuring this is a chance to clean house a bit. I also suspect the extremely short notice given by May is designed to frustrate that effort.
It's almost as if they'd rather have the Tories in government.
I imagine some current Labour MPs with Blairite leanings really might prefer having the Tories in government if a Corbyn-led administration is the alternative. The Tory position on a lot of issues is probably closer to their own.
Presumably the general public don't like him because the media have been telling them he's unelectable, even though he's been voted leader twice and his policies are popular with the electorate even if he isn't.
But being voted leader by a party who like him is far different from getting votes from anyone else, and almost everyone's policies are popular until you start asking the hard questions like how you're going to pay for it or who else is going to lose out as a result. I don't think either the general public's view of him or any resulting electability problems are entirely down to the media.
I would hope that any Labour MPs who want the Tories to win rather than a Corbyn-led Labour Party would have the integrity to resign their seats and stand as Tories, instead of undermining the party from within.
Theresa May's just taking advantage of her huge poll lead, which is mostly down to a divided official opposition.
I think a lot of Labour MPs are in a tricky ethical and political bind at the moment.
When they were elected, Corbyn wasn't leader. The platform they were elected on wasn't Corbyn's, and the people who elected them were their local constituents, not just Corbyn-supporting members of the Labour party.
On the other hand, they ran under a Labour banner, which will be why quite a lot of them are MPs today, and it wasn't the New Labour of Tony Blair, it was the Labour of Ed Miliband, which now belongs to Jeremy Corbyn.
Everyone is always describing Corbyn as some far left nutjob, look at Europe or Scandinavia and you'll see he is actually the moderate left. Don't let the continued hatchet job by every media outlet in the country fool you.
Corbyn isn't in Europe or Scandanavia, I'm going to assume your post you're under 30 and in the UK judging by your support for Corbyn. Maybe you should ask yourself why in your lifetime a Labour leader hasn't won an election without dominating the centre of the political spectrum. Corbyn is too far left to win a general election the press have nothing to do with it, Teresa May is becoming increasing right wing and he lacks the common sense to vacate that position.
> I'm going to assume your post you're under 30 and in the UK judging by your support for Corbyn.
Nice assumptions there, shame they are incorrect other than my location. My point is that Corbyn is a bog standard left of centre politician in a left of centre party.
If you honestly believe the press have nothing to do with the image of him being a left wing loon then I honestly don't think you're paying attention. He is continually painted as a terrorist sympathizer for his views that talking and treating others as humans actually gets shit resolved (you know, diplomacy), he's quoted out of context time and again to paint him into the fringe left rather than where he actually stands.
That said, I agree that he's not the right candidate to get elected in the UK and he has been particularly ineffectual at providing any meaningful opposition to either Cameron or May both of whom I think Thatcher would think was a bit extreme.
This is similar to the election in Australia just after Julia Gillard took power from Kevin Rudd. Basically to quash the people complaining that she didn't get voted in and just usurped power instead.
I don't see how it does that, In effect it makes them stronger by giving them a general election she gives them an indyref. All her arguments against one fall away.
Yes exactly, it is IndyRef lite! She is hoping they lose, thereby negating calls for IndyRef proper. I din't say it wasn't going to backfire spectacularly. I think the whole thing is a huge mistake. Brexit is happening, Article 50 has been triggered and is irrevocable. Unlike the rest of UK, Scotland still appear to have a choice. I can't see how the Tories ever thought this was going to end well.
Yeah they did, in my eyes they did a great job stopping Tories doing too much damage. I'm also one who was affected by their tuition u-turn also but I decided to get over it.
And it is a bit ironic that New Labour introduced tuition fees, the Tories were the coalition partner that wanted to increase them, but it is the Lib Dems who caught all the flak.
It's understandable that they took a hammering over it: it was a tentpole pledge, they couldn't stick to it, and they then apologised for it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19646731
Of course you're right. I just pointed out that the Tories and Labour did worse on the issue and suffered less for it. But then, the Lib Dems did the pledge and weren't able to stand up for it, so they did deserve some punishment.
Libdems lost the trust of students everywhere. I like core libdem ideas on land but sadly they were led by empty suits like Clegg and Cable. Anyhow, under first past the post your vote means nothing. Kneel before your boomer overlords, who will be bribed and who will enslave their own kids for their gain.
Given that the country basically fell apart the moment we went out of coalition government - yeah I'm not too uncomfortable with the record at this point despite lots of reservations on things like austerity and the tution fee embarrassment (which in the scheme of politics today is the least of anyone's concerns).
I would have prefered a Labour + LibDem coalition in 2010 and 2015, but for what its worth the Lib Dems kept the conservatives on the side of sanity between 2010 and 2015. Without the lib dems they were torn apart by the far right of their party.
I will be voting Lib Dem as I always have. Not that fussed about EU membership either way but if the LDs can capture a decent proportion of the 'remain' vote then that could mean a huge boost.
Surely this is a Tory own-goal? Petitioning the people again (whilst ignoring the inconvenient ones)? You'd have thought Cameron's dodgy success rate would have put paid to that. Of course your lot fell for the PR one... that worked so we got one on Scotland - ooh squeaky - and then he tried it again on Europe:'not so great' as POTUS would say. How easy will it be to make this an anti-Brexit vote, a vote to keep Scotland, a vote on the NHS, on social care, an anti-Trump vote, a pro-status quo, conservative with a small 'C' anti-change vote, an anti-war vote, an anti-elitist grammar schools, a kick the arrogant Tory toffs of Johnson, Gove and Hunt... the Tories are hugely unpopular in spite of the Lab-Con polls (Labour are just even more unpopular)
Labour is in a bit of leadership dispute and the Article 50 negotiations haven't had time to go bad. Now is probably the best possible time to call an election. This time next year Labour might have gotten their house in order and the first results of the negotiations with the EU will be in and under close scrutiny, and it is very likely the the government will have been forced to make some tough concessions. Both of those things are likely to make winning an election much harder.
Also if they win now they can conduct the Article 50 negotiations in peace and with clear mandate. Trying to win an election and negotiate Brexit at the same time will be much harder, if for no other reason than the fact that the person across the table won't have any idea if the person they're talking to now will be in charge when it comes time to actually sign the papers.
Not a two party thing at all though eh? They won't get a majority. There will be no winner at all. They will have to carry on with a minority government trying to negotiate a Brexit they no longer have a mandate for - LOL!
They won't get a majority. There will be no winner at all.
That is certainly one possible outcome. However the Tories seem rather convinced that they can keep and even increase their majority (although the Tories do seem to have a thing for taking big bets with the country on election outcomes). And if they end up even just keeping their majority it will remove the whole "Theresa May has no public mandate to negotiate Brexit" argument from the table. It will also give them 5 more years to ride out the Brexit storm before having to face the voters again.
Vote for your Progressive Alliance candidate. Both Greens and Lib Dems have signed up to this and will hopefully put forward one agreed candidate locally in your area. Basically you are voting for an Anti-Brexit and pro proportional representation candidate.
This is not about party allegiance, this is all about brexit.
This is not about party allegiance, this is all about brexit.
Which, frankly, is scary in itself. Brexit, in whatever form, is far the only thing that matters in government. We also have significant and immediate concerns about the NHS, the education system at several different levels, our transport and communications infrastructure, our energy infrastructure, the environment and natural resources, the changing nature of work and employment, over-centralisation around London, the erosion of civil liberties, and other issues. Many of these could have far greater effects on the average citizen than anything to do with Brexit is likely to cause, even over the next few years and certainly in the long term, but they're being drowned out by an issue that is, in the big picture, simply not that big a deal.
When 40% of your NHS workforce are potentially at risk due to Brexit, or when farming as we know it will collapse, then it very very much is a big deal.
However you are right that what should be happening is that the current intended prosecutions for electoral fraud should be completed (report due 12th of June) before any election is considered. The opposition parties should not be voting for to enact an election.
That dates from last year, but suggests only 5% of NHS staff overall and 10% of doctors at that time were immigrants from elsewhere in the EU, and that this was a lower proportion than immigrants from non-EU nations.
Talk of farming collapsing also seems rather extreme. There are some important subsidies from the EU that do support genuine farming, but there is a lot more in the CAP that really doesn't.
I'm far more worried about not just underfunding but morale in the NHS, and in those who are leaving it or who might consider working within it in the future. For example, the figures for doctors planning leaving the profession in the near future compared to those starting to train to become doctors are not comfortable reading next to our predicted national demographics in the future.
I'm also far more worried about the kinds of conditions that make genuine farming need hand-outs to be viable. If that is the case then it seems likely that market forces and/or national resilience strategies have failed catastrophically already and those problems need to be addressed in their own right.
It's not that Brexit couldn't affect these things, I just think some of our existing problems are significantly bigger and their effects longer-lasting than any likely changes due to post-Brexit arrangements.
I agreed with the Lib Dems on about two issues: privacy and censorship. For these, I disagree with the Labour line. However I am also against capitalist exploitation, and that makes a stronger case for me than the previous two issues.
If the Lib Dems became a Democratic/Liberal Socialist party, I'd be happier.
I wish you all the best. I think you may be able to capture some Conservative voters who do not like what is going on, but critically as always there need to be enough people without a defeatist attitude to switch and for you to succeed.
Why vote Lib Dem? If the last election turned out slightly differently and the Conservatives still needed the coalition, I bet they'd be out happily singing the praises of Brexit to us all, and walking back their campaign promises. They previously always had a "were not like Labour/Con" cred, but the coalition showed that this simply is not true
People say things like this a lot at the moment, but the objective reality is that for a lot of graduates in the current tuition fees and student loans system, they are leaving university already tens of thousands of pounds in debt.
Earning anything resembling a "normal" graduate salary -- which of course isn't guaranteed these days -- they will then be making repayments that effectively increase their marginal income tax rate by a whopping 9%.
And with the current rate of inflation and the 3% extra interest that gets added on top, most of those repayments will actually just be servicing interest.
Bottom line: a young person graduating this year will have huge debts at the start of their career, they could be facing an extra tax-like burden for most of their working lives, and they're entering a workforce that demands more and offers less than any previous generation in recent history has faced. And that's before you even consider things like the housing market or the likelihood of that generation receiving a useful state pension by the time they retire.
How is anything related to Brexit, even in the most negative possible outcome, going to have anywhere close to that effect on the life of a young person who graduates this year?
It is. Nationalism is on the march, and with it war won't be far away. We're looking at a disintegration of the Western order and the rise of China and a threat from Russia, and a self-interested USA. I don't think the individual countries of Western Europe have a hope standing alone; they will have their arms twisted and they'll toe someone else's line, like it or not, if they can't band together.
I agree that certain forms of nationalism and an aggressive Russia are real and significant concerns, but I don't see how Brexit is going to make much difference to either of them.
There were always unpleasant people using nationalism as cover for doing unpleasant things, even though the current sentiment in many western countries has brought them a higher profile. They're still a relatively small minority, they've never amounted to much before, and I don't see them achieving much in the long term either, even if they cause nasty irritation for a while. More generally, broader nationalist sentiment might lead to a more isolationist foreign policy for a while, with the pros and cons that brings, but talk of that getting us into a war any time in the near future seems hyperbolic.
Russian aggression in Eastern Europe seems a greater and more urgent threat in terms of geopolitical stability, but then NATO seems a more likely forum to moderate that influence than the EU. Given that even NATO has had a limited effect on Putin so far, I don't see the UK's membership or otherwise of the EU making much difference to anything in this respect. With the US not knowing what its foreign policy is from one day to the next under Trump and with many of the other relatively powerful European nations systematically underinvesting in defence for years, I think there are much more influential factors that would need to change here before Brexit started to have much relevance in this context.
Meanwhile, with the tuition fees and student loans system we now have and with current inflation rates, we're talking about crippling around half of a whole generation economically, possibly for their entire lives. I'm already somewhat concerned that inequality and generational conflict could lead to widespread disorder within the next few years here at home, regardless of anything going on abroad. The effects of Brexit surely wouldn't help with that, but I don't believe any outcome in relation to Brexit (including completely stopping it) would fix these deep problems in our own society or their long term consequences either.
> but the coalition showed that this simply is not true
Actually, their behaviour in the coalition was the fact or that made me respect the LibDems tremendously. In my opinion they actually set aside party advantage in order to give the UK a working government. I believe that without their moderating influence the last government would have been a lot worse - hats off to them. And I speak as a (probably former) Labour voter.
> set aside party advantage in order to give the UK a working government
Working government is overrated; Belgium took over a year to form a government and therefore ended up handling the financial crisis slightly better as there was no opportunity to do anything dramatically stupid.
The Lib Dems should have fought a lot harder and longer before agreeing to that coalition.
I really don't get this line of thinking at all. In any coalition compromises are required. Yes the Lib Dems made a campaign promise not to increase tuition fees. But (and this is important), they DID NOT WIN the general election so therefore did not have a strong mandate for those promises. Somehow the Lib Dems get all the blame for increased tuition fees as if it was their idea. The blame for that should lie squarely with the Tories. They really pushed for it and were willing to compromise in other areas important to the Lib Dems to achieve it.
They campaigned on a promise then bailed on it and the electorate punished them. If you don't get this line of thinking then I don't know what to tell you.
Firstly it wasn't their only campaign promise. Secondly they didn't win so had no mandate. Thirdly it was a coalition and the Tories had a slightly stronger mandate. Finally they had to compromise on some things to achieve other arguably more important goals. This is how politics works. If you don't get this then I don't know what to tell you.
I originally posted a smartass one-liner response ("I don't think even the Lib Dems understand the Lib Dems") but deleted it as it was not constructive or particularly fair on you. I think that it is worth explaining what I meant however.
I genuinely admire that you are motivated enough to get involved with UK politics - and I wish you all the best. You've no idea the disappointment I had in the LDs though - I cheered them on in a handful of successive elections (they ousted the Tories in my home constituency West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine in '97 much to my family's delight) and in the run-in to 2010 was convinced they could rise up to challenge Labour and the Conservatives.
And then to join the Tories - it just boggles the mind, I cannot fathom how anyone didn't think "won't this completely kill us off?". For one this basically lost them the foothold they had Scotland (my home constituency was lost to the SNP, for example) and whatever was left of the younger supporters who weren't turned off by the association with the Conservatives were then burned by the Tuition Fee saga in England.
We'll never know what would have happened with Brexit if the Lib Dems were still in the coalition. But they completely capitulated on a single extremely simple promise in 2010. Now I (a previous Lib Dem voter) have no reason to believe they wouldn't do the exact same again.
But overall, yeah you are right. I do not understand the Lib Dems. And it fucking saddens me.
We're nerds. I've met very few Lib dems who aren't nerds. And some of us are nerds about transport, and some of us are nerds about budgets, and so on. That is who we are above all else. We're ravenclaws. (With some hufflepuffs). We write long complex policies with painstaking research only to have the other parties nick them, and then say "well at least the clever thing I designed is happening even if I don't get the credit".
Now, one thing we did with the coalition was do exactly what we'd been saying before the election. It wasn't what the media reported, but it is what we said. Which was that we'd consider coalition with any party that got the most votes and the most seats. Which was the Tories.
Now, you should also remember that the Lib Dems have a shared history with both the conservative and labour parties. The SDP may be much more recent, but the flight of the libertarians in the 1920s and 30s (along with the telegraph newspaper) lost us what was an originally liberal idea: the market. Suddenly we were no longer the party of the market. And the Tories were a mixture of market purists, capitalists and moral conservatives (political theists). They've purged most of the moral conservatives now, and we're just left with the capitalists (the libertarians forgot all about the social conscience of Adam Smith without the rest of the Liberal party to remind them.)
Now, the Liberals who were left in the 40s and onwards were several things. Social liberal, internationalist, a little bit CND, etc. Radicals. Protestors.
Then we got this influx from Labour in the 80s, the right wing of the Labour Party, the SDP. Vince Cable. Shirley Williams. We grew up and became less of a protest party and more professional. We started winning by-elections and having more than 6 seats.
It is important to distinguish us from a European Liberal (centre-right) party. It is also important to remember that we're internationalists. And it is important to remember that we're not too different from a European Liberal party; we definitely believe in free trade across borders.
So, the European project is a part of British Liberalism which cuts across both internationalism and market freedoms. It's in the political DNA of nearly all Lib Dems.
Brexit is one of the few things we pretty much all agree on (that it's a terrible catastrophe).
I'm afraid this is a "but her emails!" position. I'm not a fan of the way the Lib Dems handled the tuition fees fiasco - straightforward breach of promise - but they seem to be the only remaining viable anti-brexit option in England.
I think the UK will be fine, post Brexit, as the UK is a very important trading partner for The Netherlands, Denmark & Ireland. These countries don't want harsh punishments for the UK (as Brussels seems intent on) and they want little trade barriers: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/792782/EU-rebellion-Bloc...
Your comment is over simplistic because many reputable news outlets are reporting the hard observable fact that a general election has been called. Therefore the fact that the Guardian is a source for this is irrelevant. A single newspaper, The Daily Express is reporting comments made by a single Danish MEP, who could be from some mad fringe party for all we know, as if this is the official policy of four nation states. Therefore the Express article is mostly speculation based on a secondary source of information; a person whose personal agenda and relation to the Danish Government's official foreign policy is unknown.
Dane here. According to the article he is from the Danish People's Party. Although pretty right wing on issues like immigration, they're not exactly a fringe party these days but also they have never been a governing party.
As for the official foreign policy, I think our government is sorry to see the UK leave ship as we have often had similar objectives when it came to EU politics. I don't think there is any desire to "punish" Britain as far as the Danish government is concerned.
If the eu falls there will be huge economic suffering, it will mean almost certain war, and probably an invasion by Putin in the east after he takes Ukraine.
Doesn't really matter what three countries want. You'd need to get agreement from 27 countries. That is why trade deals are so hard for the EU to do. I really doubt we'll be getting a deal in the next two years.
A more likely outcome is a French Exit or the collapse of a large Italian bank causing the end of the EU as we know it. Then we can make trade deals with individual countries.
If this was going to happen, it would have happened during the peak of "Grexit" talk about Greece. Greece were doing incredibly badly out of the EU at that point, far worse than the UK could ever be said to be experiencing, and decided not to leave. That's why I don't think further fragmentation is likely, and the banking system has been shored up.
French exit would kill the EU, but I think we'll see another narrow defeat for Le Pen. But I could be wrong there, it's volatile.
I've never really seen the "punishment" rhetoric outside the British press; among the EU-27, the assumption seems to be that the consequences of a hard Brexit will be bad enough. The problem with a hard Brexit is all the non-tariff barriers [1] that will kick in. This is unavoidable: lack of tariffs was never that big a benefit of EU membership, because the EU has few tariffs as is and one of the lowest weighted mean tariff rates in the world. The benefit of the single market is that British products and services are basically treated just like domestic products and services in all the other member states for regulatory purposes.
This will force Britain to largely keep regulations for products that are being exported in line with the EU's (as its biggest export market), while still adding costs [2].
Nobody seriously believes that the British economy will implode as a result; what it will do is retard economic growth somewhat (economists argue how much) and possibly create structural problems in sectors that are heavily reliant on exports.
P.S.: I would also not rely on the Daily Express. It's probably one of the worst British tabloids.
Probably because the EU 27's rhetorical tactic is to claim all the ways they come up with to punish Britain over Brexit are simply inevitable consequences of Brexit, regardless how obvious it is that they're just things they've pulled out their ass for naked political reasons. For example, their bizarre interpretation of a rule forbidding countries from negotiating trade agreements unilaterally to mean the EU couldn't negotiate its post-exit trade agreements with the UK until the UK actually exited (hurting members with close trading ties to the UK), or cynical insistence Spain must get a veto on the deal because of the Gibraltar border but Ireland doesn't get one.
The UK won't get a deal like Norway because UK politics prohibits it; it's not politically acceptable to continue to send billions to the EU after leaving. If UK were to contribute as much to the EU as Norway per capita, it would be over 2 billion EUR per year.
Most of the countries in the EU are in the Eurozone too. The UK is pretty much the last major economy in the EU that's outside the Eurozone, and one of only two EU members that are not in theory obliged to join it as soon as they're able to.
I don't know where you get your information from with regard to the desire for a trade war. It is wishful thinking at best. The UK will not come to any settlement within the allotted time frame with the EU and will have to accept default terms if they want to continue trading. I don't think we can underestimate the enmity that already exists because of Brexit. There will be a huge payback for this. What is left of the UK will have a huge hostile super-power right on its doorstep.
It's a bit like pointing out to environmentalists that the earth itself will be fine; it's true but glossing over a huge amount of detail of what might actually be lost.
Possibly the most accurate prophecy I've read on twitter is that we'll gradually forget that people used to migrate to the UK from Ireland for economic reasons, as it becomes the other way round. The UK is likely to move smoothly from importing workers to young people going abroad (with greater difficulty) in order to find work. And the Home Office net migration figures will declare this a success.
Brexit won't demolish the UK, but it will cripple growth and cut us out of a whole bunch of global opportunities.
(Unless the Home Office goes to kick out the 3m Europeans already here, in which case we're back to tanks-in-the-streets apocalypses)
who's "we"? I'd be pretty happy about an election legitimising May's leadership. If labour wants to become more competitive they should stop nominating far-left leaders.
Labour's problem is they are basically two parties, the metropolitan socialists (remain) and working classes (leave). I doubt any leader would be able to fight this upcoming general election - it's a huge mess for them.
this is the funny thing - Labour has bent over more and more to gain the backing of middle-class wannabe socialists to the point where it has alienated its core constituency. There's not really a good party for the working class any more.
It's not quite as simple as that. Much of the country is prosperous but still voted leave, many working class people live in cities and voted remain, and it's quite hard to define working class now in a country which gets ~10% of its GDP from industry and most of it from services.
There's stronger signs of a generational split, and a rural/city split than a simple rich poor split and of course each area has substantial numbers of voters who think differently. Lots of rich people voted for Brexit, lots of people who are not nationalists voted for Brexit lots of people who are not particularly racist voted for Brexit, etc. The reasons are varied. I disagree with Brexit and think it will end in disaster (esp. for labour as you point out), but the view above is unduly reductive.
Unfortunately such a nuanced reality doesn't fit into a sound bite and people prefer to neatly put their opponents in a reductive box, so here we are talking about cities vs countryside and rich vs poor.
> Unfortunately such a nuanced reality doesn't fit into a sound byte and people prefer to neatly put their opponents in a reductive box
> lots of people who are not nationalists voted for Brexit lots of people who are not particularly racist voted for Brexit
Sounds like you're doing the exact same thing. Are the majority of Brexit voters racist and nationalist (assuming you consider nationalism a negative)?
your quote seemed to imply that it should come as a surprise that there are non-racist Brexit voters. As a pro-Brexit voter myself I'm used to being on the receiving end of that kind of inflammatory rhetoric so if that wasn't your intention then I apologise.
> If labour wants to become more competitive they should stop nominating far-left leaders.
A party becomes more competitive by moving closer in policy to another party? I'm happy with a far-left leadership, and I'd take it any day over some party vaguely in favour of Keynesianism.
a party becomes more competitive by actually having voters that support it. Very few people are socialists or communists, Labour would have a lot better luck positioning themselves in liberal rather than far-left territory. I currently support the Conservatives because Labour is socialist and Lib Dems are incompetent but I'm really pretty centrist.
I currently support Labour because Conservatives have a thing for capitalism, Lib Dems are pushing social democracy as a solution and centrists don't care about it :)
>Socialism is basically confirmed to be invalid now.
I don't think that's true, I still think Socialism is a solution to the problems of society structured with class (capitalism, feudalism, slavery etc.)
Like people were doing during the great depression? Or England before social democracy?
Class is not about equality, it is about removing a power relationship. In the same way that the abolitionist movement removed the property relationship between master and slave, the Socialist movement seeks to remove the private property power relationship between bourgeois and proletariat in general.
Socialism has been attempted many many times and never succeeded in peace time without degrading into a hellish dystopia - it also almost always seems to be pushed by middle class people rather than the working class, who are generally somewhere between social democrat and nationalist.
The idea that inequality can be solved by handing all property to the government, the single biggest source of corruption in existence, is ludicrous and the sooner the ideas of socialism and communism die out the closer we'll be to an actual approach to raising up the working poor.
but it's close enough that we can tweak the existing system through optimised taxes and regulations. It's like the political equivalent of saying "oh shit our web app is running a bit slow, best throw it all out and rebuild the whole thing in <insert hip framework here>". Except the hip framework almost always results in your co-workers getting genocided or dying in a famine.
>but it's close enough that we can tweak the existing system through optimised taxes and regulations
Optimised taxes and regulations do not stop exploitation[0].
>"oh shit our web app is running a bit slow, best throw it all out and rebuild the whole thing in <insert hip framework here>"
This is such a false analogy; there are problems inherent with capitalism, which is what the Socialists oppose - namely, the structure of unjustified authority of the State, the exploitation of labour, the class system, the internal contradictions and crises of capitalism, and being forced by threat of starvation to sell labour-power to the class of property owners. A better analogy would be if your web app is only serving 5% or less of customers, and the rest get an extremely slow connection, which they complain about to the web app owner, and you respond "We just need to make the website a few kB/s slower for the 5% and give that speed to you!"
> the structure of unjustified authority of the State
Socialism in all real world implementations has been in the form of an all-encompassing state. The idea that socialism can exist as a form of anarchy seems to be busted - the Soviets (as in the unions that initially formed during the Russian revolution) quickly formed into a hierarchal structure of abstract Soviets that looked just like government departments. I don't agree with the extent that the State has power either, but fundamentally it can provide security from criminal behaviour via the police, protection from outside groups via the military, and welfare via taxation. Those are all positives, imo.
> the exploitation of labour
"Ownership of the means of production" has less and less meaning every year. Everyone can start a business from a laptop, this isn't the Victorian era where most working class are forced to work in factories to escape the poor-house. It would seem that business people do provide real value after all - managing people and structuring organised work between individuals with separate skills is an incredible value-add to a workforce. Plus, the idea of the 1% owning the vast majority of the wealth in society can in large part be attributed to their owning a large share of their own businesses, which are built with their own work and hiring people at mutually-agreed-upon wages.
> the class system
The class system is becoming less and less relevant. I don't have to toil away as a serf on some rich noble's land any more. I started out very much lower-middle to working class, and now I live a very comfortable life. Economic mobility is pretty good these days, we don't live in Marx's time any more.
> the internal contradictions and crises of capitalism
... can be well-managed by a more competent state. Tragedy of the commons, neocolonialism, and such could be drastically reduced by improvements to the state. We know this because countries like Norway have good social standards and are military non-interventionist, and the USA is pretty much the only Western country that invades others any more.
> being forced by threat of starvation to sell labour-power to the class of property owners
You mean being forced to be a productive member of society? Work still needs to keep the world going, and if sitting at home consuming goods and providing absolutely no value were a viable option everyone would do it and society would collapse. For those who can't due to disability or unemployability we have welfare benefits to allow them to do exactly that.
Consider this - if people don't have to sell labour-power to earn money to buy things, but can still consume the fruits of others' labour, are they not being exploitative themselves?
> A better analogy would be if your web app is only serving 5% or less of customers, and the rest get an extremely slow connection, which they complain about to the web app owner, and you respond "We just need to make the website a few kB/s slower for the 5% and give that speed to you!"
You, like every other socialist I've spoken to, seem far more preoccupied with punishing the wealthy than actually helping the poor. If we can establish a dignified baseline for all people to live off of, what's wrong with those who are willing to work hard and sacrifice to provide better services to their customers being able to earn more? Without incentives we wouldn't have any innovation because people don't make sacrifices without incentives. Most innovation is born of personal sacrifices.
>Socialism in all real world implementations has been in the form of an all-encompassing state. The idea that socialism can exist as a form of anarchy seems to be busted
I think it could exist as a distributed network of communes, no particular commune with authority over any other, voluntarily exchanging resources where needed. I'm against strengthening the State; at most the State should take the form of a government, having all its other powers handed away.
>and welfare via taxation
I don't think taxation can be justified, unless it is optional and agreed to by everyone paying and receiving the taxes.
> Everyone can start a business from a laptop
Yes, but that laptop only becomes social means of production when you start to hire other people to work on it in the form of wage labour. It's fine to be an artisan or "self-employed", because in that case, the only exploitation happening is exploitation of yourself (depends on the point of view).
>managing people and structuring organised work between individuals with separate skills is an incredible value-add to a workforce
Property owners are distinct from managers; there's no reason why one must cease being a manager when they cease owning property. Managers are workers, and their management would probably be decided via a democratic vote in a Socialist co-operative. Management is cruical, nobody is arguing against it; engineers etc. add value to products of course.
>which are built with their own work and hiring people at mutually-agreed-upon wages.
Very few businesses reach the kind of scale they are today from the labour of the owners; in fact, they reach that status due to the labour of the workers. Agreeing upon wages doesn't mean anything at all, because that agreement almost always happens in a case where one must sell his labour-power in order to survive. The Marxian analysis says that exploitation isn't a matter of wages, it's a matter of receiving the value of labour. Without exploitation, the companies would not make profit.
Yes, the worker has options as to who to sell himself to piecemeal, but that does not mean that the transactions are free; considering the class of property owners as a whole, they force people knowingly by societal structure to work for them.
>Economic mobility is pretty good these days, we don't live in Marx's time any more.
Economic mobility is irrelevant. There are roughly three classes, which some people are able to move between: the proletariat, who must sell their labour-power for wage in order to survive, the petit-bourgeoisie who take the form of artisans or those self-employed, i.e bourgeois in potential, and the bourgeoisie who are a class of property owners. It is possible to be a property owner and work, too. For example, many small businesses have the property owner work. But that does not mean that the property owner should be entitled to the fruits of others' labour.
Many (most?) people do not have sufficient capital, or have no way of accumulating sufficient capital, to move from proletarian to petit bourgeois. Even fewer have the ability to move from proletarian to bourgeois. The system is stacked agaisnt them, it's not a matter of choice and some hard work.
>You mean being forced to be a productive member of society?
I see no reason why one must sell labour-power in order to be a productive member of society, at least, a productive member of a society. Of course one must work to survive, but that work need not be compensated with wages, at least in jobs where goods are produced. One can work for himself, and decide how much surplus product to give to others; this kind of decision making at a large scale can be managed by a voluntary council which manages production. For example, workers may agree to give a certain percentage of their product to those who are less fortunate or unable to work.
> if people don't have to sell labour-power to earn money to buy things, but can still consume the fruit...
>it also almost always seems to be pushed by middle class people rather than the working class, who are generally somewhere between social democrat and nationalist.
Why does that make it a bad idea? I'm of the belief that stigma surrounding Socialism has meant that only interested academics will talk about it, but this certainly wasn't the case in the 19th century. It is not only the working poor who are of concern, it is the workers as a whole. Class consciousness must be raised.
>The idea that inequality can be solved by handing all property to the government
That's not what I'm proposing; rather, I propose that private property (i.e property used for social commodity reproduction) be taken over by workers, and the powers of the state be transferred to people so that the state withers away, leaving behind it a government. Decentralised government is also possible.
>socialism and communism die out the closer we'll be to an actual approach to raising up the working poor.
Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell?[0] He himself was a working class man making the case for Socialism, and why capitalism, a system which is designed to keep one class below the other, is not favourable.
Capitalism has nothing to do with government, the idea that only 'corporatism' is bad is equivocation. The class structure still exists without a government, surplus labour is still extracted without a government, private property is still defended without a government.
The workers are raised up by ideals looking out for their interests rather than those ideals looking out for the interests of the bourgeoisie. The class system prevents realisation of a meritocracy in which each person is rewarded exactly according to his labour rather than paid by the hour.
I'm not saying it does - I'm saying that if the working class have rejected it then clearly they do not see it is in their benefit. The idea of "raising class consciousness" seems like a fancy way of saying "the working class are too stupid to know what's good for them".
> I propose that private property (i.e property used for social commodity reproduction) be taken over by workers
Such as what? Workers already own property. Most people have a TV, a house (that they own fully after their mortgage matures), a car and so on. Should we steal all of that stuff too? Or just the lambourghinis and yachts of the wealthy? Sounds like "lets just steal stuff we want from other people" to me.
> Decentralised government is also possible.
Sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what form of government you're referring to.
> Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell?[0] He himself was a working class man making the case for Socialism, and why capitalism, a system which is designed to keep one class below the other, is not favourable.
I haven't, I'll add it to my reading list. I doubt I'll be convinced though. The idea that capitalism exists to keep classes separate is one I disagree with - my understanding is that capitalism exists to allow people to compete to be the best at providing services people want. Naturally, people who are better at this will rise to the top. It's a form of talent sifting. I'd rather have competent people do things they're competent at or we'll end up with more Lysenkoism and bread lines.
> Capitalism has nothing to do with government, the idea that only 'corporatism' is bad is equivocation. The class structure still exists without a government, surplus labour is still extracted without a government, private property is still defended without a government.
Defense of private property makes sense though. If I own a car I like, I'm not going to just let you come and steal it from me. The idea that a community can own property that is shared seems bogus when you extend the argument to things that are scarce. Marx himself posited socialism and communism as being a state that requires a post-scarcity and automated society, which we do not have. Not even close.
> The workers are raised up by ideals looking out for their interests rather than those ideals looking out for the interests of the bourgeoisie. The class system prevents realisation of a meritocracy in which each person is rewarded exactly according to his labour rather than paid by the hour.
You can't calculate the value of a thing based on the labour required to create it. Otherwise what stops me spending years on some piece of junk and then demanding a reward? Value of a thing is determined by what it's worth to the person who wants to use it, i.e. utility pricing.
>Such as what? Workers already own property. Most people have a TV, a house (that they own fully after their mortgage matures), a car and so on. Should we steal all of that stuff too? Or just the lambourghinis and yachts of the wealthy? Sounds like "lets just steal stuff we want from other people" to me.
Marx and other 19th century writers make the distinction between private and personal property (at the time, it was simply called 'property', and personal property called 'possession'). An example of private property is a factory, machinery and land upon which people are employed to make things. These things are social means of reproduction. I don't think anybody, Communist or otherwise, is advocating for taking personal property such as cars (unless property of a limousine company), televisions, computers (unless property of a commercial software house) etc.
>my understanding is that capitalism exists to allow people to compete to be the best at providing services people want
I think that this is merely incidental, capitalism producing goods for exchange rather than usage is not incidental. Not even bosses are in charge of capital, capital is its own owner, and ensures its continuation through the capitalist system. This is why sometimes you see property owners giving themselves salaries of $1.
I don't think that people who provide the best service rise to the top; rather, those who are the most ruthless in providing that service rise to the top; it's not even proportional to the amount of labour applied. In fact, many products are made which people wouldn't buy if it wasn't for a lot of advertising. Accumulating capital is one of the goals of a property owning actor in a capitalist system, and that can be best done by paying the workers the minimum, that is, the amount required to maintain the worker and ensure the continuance of the flow of workers.
> The idea that a community can own property that is shared seems bogus when you extend the argument to things that are scarce.
I think that the community should collectively own means of production; however the labourers themselves as individuals own the product of their own labour and choose when and how to distribute it, if at all. A worker who makes social means of production (i.e MoP which multiple people use) would likely be persuaded to let the community use his machine, in exchange for a certain amount of product for example. However ideally, community projects would make sure that most members of the community who wish to produce contribute to the production of means of production.
>Marx himself posited socialism and communism as being a state that requires a post-scarcity and automated society, which we do not have.
It's not necessary that society be post-scarcity; rather, that resources be managed without introducing artificial scarcity. Full automation is not possible under capitalism, for there has to be someone to buy back the products which are producted. Capitalism isn't a way to get to the point of full automation.
>You can't calculate the value of a thing based on the labour required to create it.
The Labour Theory of Value[0] attempts to do exactly this.
> Otherwise what stops me spending years on some piece of junk and then demanding a reward?
Marx wanted to make the distinction between private labour and social labour. Social labour calculations take place within the context of society, whereas private labour is not commodified. He writes in Capital chap. 1:
"Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities prod...
> Socialism has been attempted many many times and never succeeded in peace time without degrading into a hellish dystopia - it also almost always seems to be pushed by middle class people rather than the working class
Two factors are at work here; first, in a capitalist society (or modern mixed economies, which retain this feature of capitalism) visibility is driven in large part by class and wealth, so higher-status individuals will appear more significant (especially from outside the movement) simply because of their status.
Second, the modern popular concept in the West of the "middle class" is almost entirely part of what socialists (and others following the classical analysis of class in capitalist societies) call the working class (the traditional capitalist-economy middle class, the petit-bourgeoisie, aligns better with the current popular concept of the"upper middle class" and lower range of the upper class.)
In modern Western parlance, "middle class" is the middle income segment of the wage-labor dependent segment of society; in traditional (socialist in origin, since they first described and analyzed capitalism) the wage-labor dependent segment is the working class.
And, yes, the segment of the working class that is able to afford to spend effort directed beyond immediate survival, and with the most to lose, is usually the base of most reform efforts and resvolutions (socialist or otherwise), and usually the petit-bourgeoisie is significantly involved, too (though also significantly involved in defending the status quo), since very early in the capitalist (and pre-capitalist transitional) world.
it also largely seems to be university students. Basically, it always seems to be those who are doing alright by the current system and don't want to have to work. Work will always have to be enforced until society is mostly automated, and even then the automation will need to be maintained.
It's also an incredibly cynical ploy that'll probably damage belief in democracy more than anything. It's not a vote on whether Brexit happens because she called it after she'd already irrevocably started the countdown on that by triggering Article 50. It's not a vote on how Brexit happens because, as far as I can tell, she's consistently refused to be specific about that and no real negotiation with the EU has happened yet. (Edit: and the Tories have confirmed this is their election strategy: https://twitter.com/DMcCaffreySKY/status/854329597793632257) It lets May claim a democratic mandate for whatever she wants to do without giving voters any insight or say in what that is.
(1) It's not whether to Brexit or not because that has already been democratically decided by the voters. (2) If there are any counterproposals (i.e. another party saying "we'll do Brexit this way") then she'll have to clarify her strategy. If not, it doesn't matter anyways (the democratical choice of a single option is that single option).
The only problem I see with this is that the election is only 6 weeks away, too little for any credible new stances to form. Beneficial for her & Tories, but undemocratic and bad for the country.
It is a smart move. The next election was due in 2020.
By doing this she gives herself a full five years to hammer out all of the deals required to "successfully" Brexit.
With the opposition in disarray, they stand a good chance to securing more seats. This helps them to prevent other parties blocking the things she needs to pass in order to start revoking EU laws, which they have already said they will copy verbatim to start with into UK law, and then slowly rewrite the bits out they don't want. EHRC being one of their key targets.
I hear you. You even see people openly embracing Enoch Powell's ideas again.
Brexit and Trump removed the taboo on fascism and those long time closeted fascists are now very openly pushing their propaganda. The rest of us are too busy defending their right to destroy our society and our values.
As a Tory and a Brexit voter, let me reassure you that I (and my Brexit voting friends) are not closeted fascists. The idea is quite offensive, actually. :)
Second reply to the same comment, because I was curious as to why would you create a throwaway for this debate...
And turns out your other comments are 2 oversimplifying The Guarding and The Independent editorial line / quality and the other two are misleading or a straight lie.
That makes me wonder if you really misunderstood my comment here or are you stirring the pot on purpose? That would explain the need to create a throwaway.
>The rest of us are too busy defending their right to destroy our society and our values.
Which values are those? Unfortunately, I would argue that England has never had values I'd agree with. What about values of privacy and civil liberties? You can't even have certain drawings (yes, even their possession is illegal) and ISP have to keep your Internet usage for a year.
Bourgeois democracy cannot protect the values of the people.
Privacy, freedom, protection from the tyranny of the majority, equality, fraternity, respect for minorities, socialised and universal healthcare, feminism, ecologism (firefox says this is not a word?)...
Those are the ones I care about and I think are at danger.
Democracy is "tyranny of the majority" no matter which way you look at it (I'm still in favour of it though). And I think equality, fraternity, respect for minorities, socialised and universal healthcare, feminism and focus on ecology would be much better served without capitalism.
Why didn't you include the right to privacy and freedom of expression too?
Democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Direct democracy might be, but that's a very narrow view of democracy.
> Why didn't you include the right to privacy and freedom of expression too?
Privacy is literally the first one on my list :)
Freedom of speech (freedom of expression seems a literal translation from Spanish "libertad de expresión" which is "freedom of speech") I agree. I just forgot about it :)
I could add others like separation of powers that I also forgot (and they're under attack if you follow UK politics).
We've already had it! Any democracy without a free vote is a sham. Democracies have free speech, and their citizens ought to have a free conscience and privacy is a cornerstone of that - or do you wish to find out what we have to hide (plenty), make windows into all our souls and still want to know what we really, really think? Certainly democracies do not depend on nudge politics, dog-whistle tactics or the thought police, allow people to associate freely and not have to submit to arbitrary detention and interrogation and most often of all have a Law which is the same for everyone regardless of status and those who make the Law make it and those who rule on the Law do not fear for their lives! Democracies rarely have chiefs of police warning about police states. Perhaps you are unawares of your party's late-night retro-active legislation making what was once illegal legal. What sort of democracy is that? One more redolent of Pyongyang than Putney. Brexit is a nasty little englanders' nationalist working class pipe dream on something that will never be again. If you don't want to be offended by being called a fascist don't support a fascist party and hold fascist views actually.
You're being a bit of a bellend. We can hold conservative views and not be fascist, the same as you can hold relatively left-wing views and not want socialism. Life isn't black-and-white, you know that I'm sure and labelling doesn't help anything.
You can hold any views you like in a democracy but you can't pretend your views are conservative when they are mostly shared by fascists. It was a conservative and greatest PM who defeated the last lot of moselys, nobody thought he was a socialist.
No, you were right first time. It is. Of course if you'd like to defend your comment with a supported argument that might be more interesting. First off you might define what you mean by fascism. On the other hand, this is not what HN is about.
No - but communicating to the public that the reason you are calling an election is to silence the opposition parties and other bodies holding you to account (and espousing the view that the opposition should effectively shut up and put up) definitely registers high on my dark and scary times scale
The Lib Dems campaigned for an EU referendum [1], and now want to reverse it because the result wasn't what they wanted.
The SNP campaigned for Scotland to leave the EU (as it would have done if leaving the UK) in their independence referendum, and now behave as if leaving the EU is unthinkable.
Both are playing politics. The ground has shifted, and so it's helpful for the government to get a new mandate.
The statement that the SNP campaigned for Scotland to leave the EU is a bald-faced and deliberate lie. Please do not spread misinformation like this; there are enough lies kicking around already.
Silencing someone with open election that would show that they have no support doesn't sound very sinister. If anything, it sounds like the best possible way to resolve such a situation.
No. This is a common (and very cunning) straw man and I hope it stems from a position of ignorance not deceit.
Silencing someone should never be the goal. If the Conversatives are experiencing difficulties pushing through their agenda due to opposition from other parties, then the best way to resolve that is either via compromise or by calling an election to increase their majority in parliament which should allow them to push through their agenda more easily.
Even if (arguably especially if) the Conservatives win 99% of the seats in the House of Commons, the remaining 1% should be opposing, scrutinising and holding to account as well and as loudly as they can.
Yet Theresa May is after something different here (a tactic which we've heard recently, but by no means exclusively, from many Brexiteers as well) - she is implying that unless opposition parties can beat the Conservatives in a general election, then they should put up and shut up as the public have spoken.
That's not how democracy works.
-----
edit: For those who don't see the straw man here, it is that while silencing someone who is standing up for the beliefs of people who don't exist is okay, in real life the parties who are currently opposing the government are guaranteed to be defending a none-zero number of British citizens, who we cannot allow to be silenced on principle (even if we act against their wishes).
"“I’m not going to be calling a snap election. I’ve been very clear that I think we need that period of time, that stability, to be able to deal with the issues that the country is facing and have that election in 2020.”"
> spoiled ballot papers counts are not announced at all
That's not true. Returning officers announce the number of rejected ballot papers, and explain why they were rejected, at the same time as this winner is announced.
Are you sure they are safe? Historically they may have been, but this election will be different and many Tory supporters may not feel like giving them a manifesto for a hard brexit.
Labour are a disaster, so I suspect the Lib Dems may benefit strongly from the current situation.
I guess you're referring to a viable opposition contender where you live, but I'm planning on supporting the most agreeable independent candidate I can find.
No practical chance of them getting in, but it's an option when you think it's important to vote anyway for philosophical or historical reasons.
Especially in constituencies where you could pin a red or blue rosette on a donkey, and it would still get elected.
I've often though the best policy in a safe seat is to vote for the opposition, no matter who you support. It just makes the seat slightly less safe and hence your MP a bit more responsive to their constituents needs.
She's announced her intention to call a general election.
Before it can actually happen, she needs 2/3s of MPs to agree, according to the Fixed Term Parliament Act. Otherwise, it's a five-year term whether the current PM likes it or not.
This is an odd one, because if we have the election then it's likely to be a Tory landslide, but the Tories have only a narrow majority in the House of Commons and so need the turkeys to vote for Christmas.
On the other hand, Labour is currently led by Jeremy Corbyn, so it's entirely possible that enough of the turkeys will vote for every day of the year to be Christmas.
More amazing if they voted against an election, with the inevitable implication that the current regime is doing a good job and they don't want to take over right now, thanks all the same for asking.
This is why I have always thought the fixed term parliaments act is a nonsense. What opposition would ever vote against the motion to call an election?
One that expected to be in a worse position afterwards than before, presumably. For example, a party whose MPs are mostly opposed to the current leadership and think it will cost them a lot of seats they currently have if an election is held.
It's all about politics and probably an element of self-interest now, though. Public perception doesn't actually matter in our system until the next election, whenever that is.
So, if opposition MPs want to put that off for another three years, everyone currently sitting as an MP keeps their seat by default, the Tories are still in charge but still only with a narrow working majority, and those in opposition parties have only three years to wait for another shot after cleaning house instead of five years.
I'm not sure whether that sort of rebellion is a realistic prospect given the views expressed so far today, but I think it would be a rational position for opposition MPs to take given the current unpopularity of both Labour and the Lib Dems among the general public.
If they think (a) their seat is safe and (b) nothing can unseat Corbyn short of an election loss and (c) the party can't win an election with Corbyn at the helm; then they might figure they might as well unseat Corbyn in 2017 and have a fighting chance in the 2022 election; rather than unseating Corbyn in 2020 and hoping to win the 2025 election.
Of course, if they think their seat isn't safe; or they think they can dump Corbyn early and win in 2020; it's easy to imagine them opposing an election.
An early election can be called if 2/3 of MPs support it, OR if there's a vote of no confidence in the Government. Labour should say that they won't support it, but will support a no-confidence vote. That will only be carried if enough Tories also vote no-confidence.
- May has a slim majority, meaning she has to negotiate with people within the Conservative Party who might not agree with her on the Brexit terms.
- She'll likely get a larger majority, so it makes it easier to deal with the rebels.
- For Corbyn, it's interesting. He might be facing another leadership challenge if polls keep looking crap.
- He wants to have an actual attempt at a GE, where he can make his case to the public.
- He won the leadership challenge last year, so he knows his fans are at least loyal for now.
- Why does Corbyn's opinion matter? Well back when Cameron did a deal with Clegg, they did a fixed terms act, meaning elections had to happen every 5 years. This one is within 5 years of the previous, so you actually need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to trigger it.
30m ago
11:44
Corbyn confirms Labour will vote for early election
Jeremy Corbyn has put out this statement about Theresa May’s announcement.
I welcome the prime minister’s decision to give the British people the chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first.
Labour will be offering the country an effective alternative to a government that has failed to rebuild the economy, delivered falling living standards and damaging cuts to our schools and NHS.
In the last couple of weeks, Labour has set out policies that offer a clear and credible choice for the country. We look forward to showing how Labour will stand up for the people of Britain.
Labour confirms it will vote for early election.
There's no unseating Corbyn before the election. He's already faced a leadership election just last year, and there is simply not enough time. It would be political suicide for whoever challenged him. The best hope for Labour is in 2022.
> - Why does Corbyn's opinion matter? Well back when Cameron did a deal with Clegg, they did a fixed terms act, meaning elections had to happen every 5 years. This one is within 5 years of the previous, so you actually need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to trigger it.
May says she'll call an election under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, and obviously that's the first choice, but now that the Tories are governing without the Lib-Dems, they can also simply repeal the Act (with an ordinary majority).
Some people criticize May whatever she does. If she calls election, because she wants to destroy opposition or because the election will cause more political instability, and if she doesn't, because she is afraid of democracy or something.
Of course it does... just read this thread. Everybody just wants to stop and destroy the tories because they are the tories and, you know, fuck right-wingers because they are right-wingers and we have to stop conservatives because fuck the tories because they are right-wingers and tories
Obviously such mindset has only accelerated the downfall of labour under that spineless sissy Corbyn. And even that they are trying to ruin because now labour guys are antisemitic and pro-brexit and whatever the hell.
I criticise her because she relentlessly tried to comply with an american extradition request for a fellow student of mine that had merely made a website.
Exactly. I really wouldn't want her job. Her job description is to fly the plane into the mountain and afterwards be cricified for the outcome.
Tactically this is her best move.
She is really counting on there not being enough time for the opposition to turn this into another vote on Brexit or a vote on Scotland or a vote on the NHS or a vote on all of the above. We live in interesting times.
As someone who made money betting on a Trump victory - certain topics / polls. Calling Brexit / Trump voters racist leads to a certain % of the population not disclosing their vote, oversampling of Democrats was another issue in the US polls.
Oversampling is a standard thing to do with polling.
There's a confused conspiracy theory that it means "adding extra votes to the Democrat column".
This doesn't even stand up to the most cursory of examinations, as if that was really happening then people would say "they're intentionally fudging the results to favor the Democrats" and kick up a fuss about it. Instead they say "oversampling Democrats", in the hope that people who don't know what that is will think it sounds like cheating while not actually looking like idiots to people who do know what it means. A classic dogwhistle approach to say two things to two audiences.
You claim to know what it is, yet you say it's an "issue" (which it isn't) and you say that at the end of a sentence claiming that there's a "shy voter" factor leading to an undercount of Trump support. Oversampling has no logical connection here unless you mean it in the "Democrats are cheating in the polls" meaning. You claim that you mean it in the actual statistical meaning. The two obvious explanations are that you don't know what it is and have been fooled by all the chatter around it, or that you're trying to fool others despite knowing it's nonsense. I think you don't know what it is, that's why I provided the explanatory link a couple of comment above.
Also, the polls did not materially undercount Trump voters. The polls were more accurate than at the last election. Some people badly mapped the accurately predicted 3 million popular vote win to electoral college results, but that's a different thing than polls being bad, Trump voters not wanting to admit who they were voting for, or being intentionally skewed. On a state by state basis polls were wrong in both directions, for various reasons, but that cancelled out overall.
Ok, so when you were telling me 'that's not what oversampling means', you meant 'I disagree with what you are saying'. I would be more inclined to debate if you approached the disagreement in a more open fashion.
Your partisan paragraphs further make me think I will be wasting my time here, so let's just say we have different views on the polls :).
Polling is hard; there are lots of ways for polls to be inaccurate (see the British Polling Council postmortem of the last general election for the gory details).
Those errors don't add up to 20 points. And I say that as a card-carrying member of the Labour party.
In my fantasy of UK politics, the centre and centre-left parties would form an opposition coalition ahead of the poll, proposing some radical reforms like PR, as well as some socially progressive policies like reigning in the surveillance state, thoroughly reviewing the drug laws, reviewing basic income as an idea and instituting some sort of evidence-basis mandate for law-making.
This is effectively what Lib Dems would do, call another EU Referendum. Perhaps the only reason I am considering voting for them, after we've seen at how inept the current govt are at dealing with Brexit.
I think opposing it is a really bad idea. As a supporter of Brexit and someone who actually doesn't like the Conservatives, any party thinking they'll get votes by opposing Brexit will certainly not win them from me. I'll just not vote.
Absolutely, though we perhaps disagree on what's meant by "centre" (see Political Compass).
The SNP (and the one Green MP) support Basic Income. I think John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, also supports Basic Income, but it's now too short a timescale for Labour to get a policy in place and convince the general public. The Liberal Party supported a variant of it, but the Lib Dems now oppose it.
My quick (and probably off) analysis: Tories found this timing to be the best one to call an election based on the disarray of UKIP and Labour. Tories are again playing politics, they want to get a good slice of UKIP vote and keep Labour at the current level at best. I believe the only real alternative to another May government is for Lib Dems, Labour, Green, to make a coalition against this Tory initiative. Otherwise, should be an easy win for May.
I used to be a Conservative supporter, but now I just look at Westminster and wonder what the hell happened. Didn't David Cameron basically do this very same thing only a year ago? He expected everyone to be with him and vote Remain, and look how that turned out. Now Theresa May is literally following in his footsteps, thinking everyone is on her side. I'm so confused.
I'm actually thinking of voting for Lib Dems for the first time in my life, only because they said they'd hold another EU Referendum. And I say this because I honestly don't trust any party actually want's to take us through Brexit anymore, nor will any of them do a good job of it. I feel like a Lib Dem government is currently the best of a bad bunch.
Don't rule out the very real possibility that this is about heading off the unprecedented police investigation that could lead to twenty Conservative MPs (larger than their working majority) being sent to prison.
So... how big is the chance that the LibDems will promise to try to reverse Brexit, or at least go for the softest possible Brexit, and everyone who wants to remain votes for them, and they would get 51%, or at least enough to force a coalition government?
Probably zero, especially given the weirdo FPTP system, but I'm curious anyway.
Conspiracy theory: May expects the Art 50 talks to not go well and having the election after Brexit has fully played out over the next two years will damage her approval rate. Having the election now means she doesn't have to worry about her approval throughout the negotiations and won't have to face an election right at the time the consequences of Brexit are felt by most voters.
LibDems/Labour should just go into these elections saying "we'll keep the kingdom together".
I think there is a fair chunk of people who voted leave who didn't actually realize they were voting for England and Wales to leave Scotland and Northern Ireland, rather than voting for the UK to leave the EU.
If Labour and LibDems play their cards right, couldn't they make these elections about the mandate for Conservatives the break the United Kingdom apart, rather than a mandate to negotiate with the EU.
Under those circumstances: how big an upset is needed for the election results to be seen as a complete disqualification of the Brexit vote?
Plus it's not clear the Scots would actually vote to leave and the talk about NI leaving the UK is nonsense. They voted, narrowly, to remain in the EU. Not to remain in the EU even if that meant leaving the UK.
I don't think conservatives say that "We aren't leaving if Scotland or Northern ireland poll even close to 50% for leaving the UK in order to remain in the EU after a brexit vote". That would have been useful information before the referendum.
> it's not clear the Scots wouldnactually vote
Exactly, it's very uncertain. And having a referendum with that uncertainty was very strange. And if it does become clear that the leave vote actually did break up the UK, then the consequences should (and could!) have been known to voters in the referendum.
All parties will indeed say that they are pro-union and that they will do what they can to keep things together.
Making promises on EU membership based on ideas about union seems unwarranted though - we have no idea what the result of polls would be where it is explicit that the choice is between UK and EU membership. Nor do the respective parties know that "Stay in the EU outside of the UK" is even an option - Scotland is likely to have multiple years as part of neither one while it establishes an economic track record and a stable set of government institutions.
335 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 337 ms ] thread.. Not that you'd know as you never call or write anymore. :'-(
This is basically to get a higher majority in the commons, so things can go through unimpeded.
The real danger for her is presumably that MPs don't give her the mandate to hold the election at all, which would potentially mean we get yet another new and unelected PM.
What would happen without Corbyn is anyone's guess though.
It's just not going to sway nearly enough people to win a majority, and the Tories know that.
That decision potentially alienates about 1/3 of their previous voter base who voted to Leave, as well as those who did want to Remain but either don't believe in overriding a popular referendum on democratic principles or don't feel strongly enough on the issue to disrupt things further.
Given that we're talking about the Lib Dems here, all of those could be significant groups. It's quite a gamble to bet your whole political strategy on attracting enough voters from other parties because they feel so strongly on Europe, and according to recent polling, it looks like it's a gamble that is going to fail unspectacularly.
FWIW, I know from immediate personal contacts that it does, and not in entirely trivial numbers. I'm in one of the most pro-Remain areas of the country, but also a LD/Lab marginal, so it will be interesting to see what happens as a result. I suspect it won't make much difference here, but if the same effect is evident in more moderate parts of the country, it could actually hurt them.
It looks like there's been another poll today that is consistent with what I've seen reported previously: about 1/3 of Lib Dem voters at the last election voted Leave in the referendum, and currently Lib Dem loyalty is lowest among the major parties, with a similar proportion of Lib Dem voters at the last election expecting to vote for someone else at the next one.
Without such a gamble the LibDems will remain in the also-ran group with UKIP and the Greens. You push any issue that gives you a wedge and use it to crack a few ridings and if necessary you write off the 1/3 in the hope of picking up 2/5 of the two larger parties.
To be clear, I don't think anything nefarious was done to engineer this, but it's a hugely distorting effect on national politics RN.
This is mostly just wishful thinking on the part of the Remain side. Opinion polls have pretty consistently shown very little change in overall sentiment on Brexit. In many cases they seem to have observed marginally more regret among Leave voters than Remain voters, but the numbers were small enough in both cases that it probably wouldn't have affected the referendum result itself, and surely far too small to have much effect on a general election result.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-leave-...
"Four per cent of Leave voters polled said they thought Brexit was the worst thing to have happened this year,"
The result was 51% leave 49% remain, it would be the reverse if they could vote again today.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/europe/eu-policy-agenda/br...
So 4% of 'leave' voters regret voting leave and 2% of 'remain' voters regret voting 'remain'. So in total it's about a 2% shift which would reverse the current result percentages.
No, it wouldn't. Your maths is off by about a factor of two, one way or another.
Regarding detailed analysis, you might find the Ashcroft polls interesting if you haven't seen them before. He did a write-up shortly after the referendum[1], primarily about who voted which way and why. Then there have been a couple more interesting ones just a few days before today's announcement as well[2,3], looking at current expectations regarding Brexit and more general voting intentions.
Spoilers for [1]: The top three reasons identified for Leave voters were (most significant first) sovereignty, immigration, and lack of control over ever closer union and EU expansion in the future. The top three reasons identified for Remain voters were the economic risks of leaving, Single Market access without being in the Eurozone or Schengen area being seen as the best of both worlds, and the feeling of becoming more isolated if we left.
Spoilers for [2]/[3]: Everything you've been assuming about the Tories being dominant in British politics today is true, except that you've probably underestimated just how utterly dominant they actually are and how unpopular both Labour and the Lib Dems are. It's going to be a long few weeks if you're not a blues fan.
[1] http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-...
[2] http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2017/04/new-political-landscape...
[3] http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2017/04/more-from-my-brexit-res...
Even so, it was still well within the margin of error. Your rounding was misleading: the referendum result was 51.9% to 48.1%, almost a 4% gap.
It also still assumed, probably incorrectly, no remorse on the Remain side to cancel out the remorse from Leavers.
But probably more significantly than any of that, I think every other poll I've seen from reasonably credible sources in recent months has pointed the other way. The one you're talking about appears to have been an anomaly.
Can you clarify what you meant here?
Some of the possible (likely?) Brexit outcomes mean a closed border with customs posts and the end of agricultural subsides or the ability to sell agricultural products cross-border.
There is a clause in the Good Friday Agreement for referendums on Irish reunification: http://www.thejournal.ie/united-ireland-border-poll-3136932-...
The thought of indefinite unopposed Tory rule is sickening.
Consider the run-up to the 2015 GE when it looked like Labour/Lib Dems/SNP might be able to form a majority coalition even though the Conservatives were likely to be the largest party - there was a lot of sneering at the idea of a "coalition of the losers". That circumstance arises quite frequently and is largely accepted in many other countries, as can be seen from the results of Denmark's recent elections.
And I'm not even sure it's the English public asking for this. Are people really going to say they'd rather a strong government they disagree with than a marginal one that's forced to negotiate for support? No, I think it's English conservatives who have trouble with the concept of loyal opposition and the English press in particular who hate anything that would make politics less of a binary choice.
The opposition is in disarray under Corbyn, and our prime minister has never won an election. This is as easy a victory as Theresa May will ever be able to bank on, and legitimises her leadership in the eyes of a large section of the public. She can also claim (maybe rightly so) that she has the undisputed majority support of the public for whatever terms she gets for a hard Brexit from the EU.
In short; we're screwed.
Most people will see this as the party political move that it is. Tory voters will love this, other parties much less so.
As an aside, Northern Ireland will probably join in and have another assembly election on the same date. I wonder if Scotland will join in too?
If I'm going out to vote in another assembly election I expect at LEAST a full five-piece with a free coffee on arrival.
... Alright I'll go. Again. Because I'm a mug.
The only person who's trying to do that right now and is at all visible to the public eye is Tony Blair.. and there's just no way that's going to go over with the public.
As an outsider, the news that got to me was that older people simply showed up to vote (and others didn't).
The young just aren't too bothered. Have a feeling, with Brexit, the biggest losers are the young and I hope that there is at least some semblance that they can do something about it this time.
He's an odd case. He commands a lot of influence among Labour members and to some extent the unions (who have significant ties to and influence on the Labour Party here). This makes him more-or-less untouchable as party leader.
However, he's loathed by most of the party's current MPs, who are politicians and know he's going to be a liability at election time. And he's not particularly popular among the general public outside the traditional Labour voters, which is why he's going to be a liability.
The irony of the snap election, if it does happen, is that it will be an opportunity for Corbyn to clear out the disloyal backstabbers in the Commons and replace them with more traditional Labour MPs, which is probably why he seems to have said previously that he'd support calls for a snap election. On the other hand, he would probably lose so many MPs altogether that his party would become almost irrelevant in the next Parliament, much as the Lib Dems did last time.
A somewhat ironic but apparently quite plausible outcome to all the political manoeuvres is that Corbyn says Labour will support the snap election, almost all of his MPs openly rebel, the election consequently doesn't achieve the 2/3 support needed in the Commons and so doesn't happen, May is weakened and probably steps down as a result, and Corbyn is also so weakened that he finally goes, thus making the two party leaders who were playing the political games the major victims of those games.
We live in interesting times, literally and perhaps euphemistically as well.
[Edit: Added a missing bit. Thanks, gpvos.]
No wonder - I suspect a lot of them will be out of a job soon.
I daresay that it's them who are making the party a liability. They've made the Labour Party seem completely ridiculous - and that's not Corbyn's fault.
Then on Brexit, he went against the wishes of the members and supported Tory policy.
Needless to say I'm no longer a supporter. Of course, it's easy to forget that all the other leadership candidates and challengers would have done the same.
I'd love to see the scenario in your final paragraph. I think May knows it's all or nothing, and if anything gets in the way of her timetable, it's game over for her and for Brexit.
I don't honestly expect that to happen, because I'm fairly sure that Corbyn is either delusional or compromised - and also willing to use a three-line whip to make sure the election goes ahead.
So what would you have done if you were him? Go with your members and get booted out of any sensible position, or go with your voting base and disregard your members? Brexit was a hot button topic for many reasons and arguably the fact that someone is either a Tory supporter or betraying their voter base is an example of politics becoming more about principle than doing what's right.
The only party which voted against having the referendum, and who aren't similarly bound, were the SNP.
(I'm not in the UK, apologies if this is a common question.)
[edit] Thanks for the answers!
Some legal opinions have been proferred that it could be reversible, even though if you read the text of A50 there's no mention of such a mechanism.
Personally I would have thought that was something you would want to exclude - article 50 could be used as a tool to extract concessions "We're leavingg unless...".
There's apparently a court case in Ireland to try to establish this.
Also there's the possibility it could be reversed with unanimous consent from the other 27 members because, when it comes down to it, the members make the rules.
It's entirely possible that the UK could be made to leave and reapply though, which would make for many more years of turmoil.
I don't personally think this is a very useful distinction. By this definition, a soft Brexit is what for example the Lib Dems are advocating at the moment. However, I think it is also highly unlikely to happen, because to a first approximation it is leaving-in-name-only and thus probably an untenable position for the government to adopt politically. The entire spectrum of other possibilities, from retaining relatively close ties in some respects up to completely walking away with no deal at all, then fall under the single banner of hard Brexit, but treating such widely different possible outcomes as equivalent doesn't seem to be very useful (unless for political reasons you want to try to equate them anyway, I suppose).
"Tea?"
"OK, go on."
"There's no kettle so I'm burning the house down to heat water."
"Now wait a…"
"Shut up, I've a clear mandate for tea."
https://twitter.com/louisejjohnson/status/829617043582369792
I suppose to be balanced we should also acknowledge the other side's similarly daft argument that they accept that people voted for tea and yet propose a scheme in which you can't buy any of tea bags, tea leaves, a kettle, an urn, or an instant hot water tap, though it's possible that milk or lemon will still be negotiable. :-)
This is slightly simplistic, since the Tory party was split on the issue of Brexit.
May was campaigning to remain before she was appointed leader. And said categorically she would not call a snap election. The lack of conviction is equal parts depressing and hilarious
There are straight forward routes through for both of them.
May :- repeal the fixed term parliaments act (which would be an entertaining kick in the teeth to the Lib Dems)
Corbyn :- accuse Labour rebels of not respecting democracy and even question their motives w/regard to Brexit.
On that basis I can't see enough Labour rebels actually turning out to block it. They're more likely to walk away from politics completely (their heart was never really in the business of fighting for something).
Presumably the general public don't like him because the media have been telling them he's unelectable, even though he's been voted leader twice and his policies are popular with the electorate even if he isn't.
I suspect he's considering his own position and the general dissatisfaction he faces among his current crop of MPs, and he's probably figuring this is a chance to clean house a bit. I also suspect the extremely short notice given by May is designed to frustrate that effort.
It's almost as if they'd rather have the Tories in government.
I imagine some current Labour MPs with Blairite leanings really might prefer having the Tories in government if a Corbyn-led administration is the alternative. The Tory position on a lot of issues is probably closer to their own.
Presumably the general public don't like him because the media have been telling them he's unelectable, even though he's been voted leader twice and his policies are popular with the electorate even if he isn't.
But being voted leader by a party who like him is far different from getting votes from anyone else, and almost everyone's policies are popular until you start asking the hard questions like how you're going to pay for it or who else is going to lose out as a result. I don't think either the general public's view of him or any resulting electability problems are entirely down to the media.
Theresa May's just taking advantage of her huge poll lead, which is mostly down to a divided official opposition.
When they were elected, Corbyn wasn't leader. The platform they were elected on wasn't Corbyn's, and the people who elected them were their local constituents, not just Corbyn-supporting members of the Labour party.
On the other hand, they ran under a Labour banner, which will be why quite a lot of them are MPs today, and it wasn't the New Labour of Tony Blair, it was the Labour of Ed Miliband, which now belongs to Jeremy Corbyn.
The only major pro-EU voice in parliament now (discounting regional parties) is Lib Dems.
Nice assumptions there, shame they are incorrect other than my location. My point is that Corbyn is a bog standard left of centre politician in a left of centre party.
If you honestly believe the press have nothing to do with the image of him being a left wing loon then I honestly don't think you're paying attention. He is continually painted as a terrorist sympathizer for his views that talking and treating others as humans actually gets shit resolved (you know, diplomacy), he's quoted out of context time and again to paint him into the fringe left rather than where he actually stands.
That said, I agree that he's not the right candidate to get elected in the UK and he has been particularly ineffectual at providing any meaningful opposition to either Cameron or May both of whom I think Thatcher would think was a bit extreme.
I am a candidate in very north london, we're all organised for this possibility.
I would have prefered a Labour + LibDem coalition in 2010 and 2015, but for what its worth the Lib Dems kept the conservatives on the side of sanity between 2010 and 2015. Without the lib dems they were torn apart by the far right of their party.
That was a pun about currency value, yes? :)
I will be voting Lib Dem as I always have. Not that fussed about EU membership either way but if the LDs can capture a decent proportion of the 'remain' vote then that could mean a huge boost.
Best of luck!
It was your austerity cuts that created the favourable climate for Brexit in the first place.
I'll probably be voting short term "stop this madness"
We live in interesting times!
Labour is in a bit of leadership dispute and the Article 50 negotiations haven't had time to go bad. Now is probably the best possible time to call an election. This time next year Labour might have gotten their house in order and the first results of the negotiations with the EU will be in and under close scrutiny, and it is very likely the the government will have been forced to make some tough concessions. Both of those things are likely to make winning an election much harder.
Also if they win now they can conduct the Article 50 negotiations in peace and with clear mandate. Trying to win an election and negotiate Brexit at the same time will be much harder, if for no other reason than the fact that the person across the table won't have any idea if the person they're talking to now will be in charge when it comes time to actually sign the papers.
That is certainly one possible outcome. However the Tories seem rather convinced that they can keep and even increase their majority (although the Tories do seem to have a thing for taking big bets with the country on election outcomes). And if they end up even just keeping their majority it will remove the whole "Theresa May has no public mandate to negotiate Brexit" argument from the table. It will also give them 5 more years to ride out the Brexit storm before having to face the voters again.
This is not about party allegiance, this is all about brexit.
Which, frankly, is scary in itself. Brexit, in whatever form, is far the only thing that matters in government. We also have significant and immediate concerns about the NHS, the education system at several different levels, our transport and communications infrastructure, our energy infrastructure, the environment and natural resources, the changing nature of work and employment, over-centralisation around London, the erosion of civil liberties, and other issues. Many of these could have far greater effects on the average citizen than anything to do with Brexit is likely to cause, even over the next few years and certainly in the long term, but they're being drowned out by an issue that is, in the big picture, simply not that big a deal.
However you are right that what should be happening is that the current intended prosecutions for electoral fraud should be completed (report due 12th of June) before any election is considered. The opposition parties should not be voting for to enact an election.
https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-and-nhs-staff/
That dates from last year, but suggests only 5% of NHS staff overall and 10% of doctors at that time were immigrants from elsewhere in the EU, and that this was a lower proportion than immigrants from non-EU nations.
Talk of farming collapsing also seems rather extreme. There are some important subsidies from the EU that do support genuine farming, but there is a lot more in the CAP that really doesn't.
I'm far more worried about not just underfunding but morale in the NHS, and in those who are leaving it or who might consider working within it in the future. For example, the figures for doctors planning leaving the profession in the near future compared to those starting to train to become doctors are not comfortable reading next to our predicted national demographics in the future.
I'm also far more worried about the kinds of conditions that make genuine farming need hand-outs to be viable. If that is the case then it seems likely that market forces and/or national resilience strategies have failed catastrophically already and those problems need to be addressed in their own right.
It's not that Brexit couldn't affect these things, I just think some of our existing problems are significantly bigger and their effects longer-lasting than any likely changes due to post-Brexit arrangements.
If the Lib Dems became a Democratic/Liberal Socialist party, I'd be happier.
Capitalism = bad, Markets = OKish.
It's only the Tories who believe in unrepentant profit mongering as a good way to organise society. (Oh, and UKIP. are they still a thing?)
Is it, really?
People say things like this a lot at the moment, but the objective reality is that for a lot of graduates in the current tuition fees and student loans system, they are leaving university already tens of thousands of pounds in debt.
Earning anything resembling a "normal" graduate salary -- which of course isn't guaranteed these days -- they will then be making repayments that effectively increase their marginal income tax rate by a whopping 9%.
And with the current rate of inflation and the 3% extra interest that gets added on top, most of those repayments will actually just be servicing interest.
Bottom line: a young person graduating this year will have huge debts at the start of their career, they could be facing an extra tax-like burden for most of their working lives, and they're entering a workforce that demands more and offers less than any previous generation in recent history has faced. And that's before you even consider things like the housing market or the likelihood of that generation receiving a useful state pension by the time they retire.
How is anything related to Brexit, even in the most negative possible outcome, going to have anywhere close to that effect on the life of a young person who graduates this year?
There were always unpleasant people using nationalism as cover for doing unpleasant things, even though the current sentiment in many western countries has brought them a higher profile. They're still a relatively small minority, they've never amounted to much before, and I don't see them achieving much in the long term either, even if they cause nasty irritation for a while. More generally, broader nationalist sentiment might lead to a more isolationist foreign policy for a while, with the pros and cons that brings, but talk of that getting us into a war any time in the near future seems hyperbolic.
Russian aggression in Eastern Europe seems a greater and more urgent threat in terms of geopolitical stability, but then NATO seems a more likely forum to moderate that influence than the EU. Given that even NATO has had a limited effect on Putin so far, I don't see the UK's membership or otherwise of the EU making much difference to anything in this respect. With the US not knowing what its foreign policy is from one day to the next under Trump and with many of the other relatively powerful European nations systematically underinvesting in defence for years, I think there are much more influential factors that would need to change here before Brexit started to have much relevance in this context.
Meanwhile, with the tuition fees and student loans system we now have and with current inflation rates, we're talking about crippling around half of a whole generation economically, possibly for their entire lives. I'm already somewhat concerned that inequality and generational conflict could lead to widespread disorder within the next few years here at home, regardless of anything going on abroad. The effects of Brexit surely wouldn't help with that, but I don't believe any outcome in relation to Brexit (including completely stopping it) would fix these deep problems in our own society or their long term consequences either.
Actually, their behaviour in the coalition was the fact or that made me respect the LibDems tremendously. In my opinion they actually set aside party advantage in order to give the UK a working government. I believe that without their moderating influence the last government would have been a lot worse - hats off to them. And I speak as a (probably former) Labour voter.
Working government is overrated; Belgium took over a year to form a government and therefore ended up handling the financial crisis slightly better as there was no opportunity to do anything dramatically stupid.
The Lib Dems should have fought a lot harder and longer before agreeing to that coalition.
I genuinely admire that you are motivated enough to get involved with UK politics - and I wish you all the best. You've no idea the disappointment I had in the LDs though - I cheered them on in a handful of successive elections (they ousted the Tories in my home constituency West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine in '97 much to my family's delight) and in the run-in to 2010 was convinced they could rise up to challenge Labour and the Conservatives.
And then to join the Tories - it just boggles the mind, I cannot fathom how anyone didn't think "won't this completely kill us off?". For one this basically lost them the foothold they had Scotland (my home constituency was lost to the SNP, for example) and whatever was left of the younger supporters who weren't turned off by the association with the Conservatives were then burned by the Tuition Fee saga in England.
We'll never know what would have happened with Brexit if the Lib Dems were still in the coalition. But they completely capitulated on a single extremely simple promise in 2010. Now I (a previous Lib Dem voter) have no reason to believe they wouldn't do the exact same again.
But overall, yeah you are right. I do not understand the Lib Dems. And it fucking saddens me.
Now, one thing we did with the coalition was do exactly what we'd been saying before the election. It wasn't what the media reported, but it is what we said. Which was that we'd consider coalition with any party that got the most votes and the most seats. Which was the Tories.
Now, you should also remember that the Lib Dems have a shared history with both the conservative and labour parties. The SDP may be much more recent, but the flight of the libertarians in the 1920s and 30s (along with the telegraph newspaper) lost us what was an originally liberal idea: the market. Suddenly we were no longer the party of the market. And the Tories were a mixture of market purists, capitalists and moral conservatives (political theists). They've purged most of the moral conservatives now, and we're just left with the capitalists (the libertarians forgot all about the social conscience of Adam Smith without the rest of the Liberal party to remind them.)
Now, the Liberals who were left in the 40s and onwards were several things. Social liberal, internationalist, a little bit CND, etc. Radicals. Protestors.
Then we got this influx from Labour in the 80s, the right wing of the Labour Party, the SDP. Vince Cable. Shirley Williams. We grew up and became less of a protest party and more professional. We started winning by-elections and having more than 6 seats.
It is important to distinguish us from a European Liberal (centre-right) party. It is also important to remember that we're internationalists. And it is important to remember that we're not too different from a European Liberal party; we definitely believe in free trade across borders.
So, the European project is a part of British Liberalism which cuts across both internationalism and market freedoms. It's in the political DNA of nearly all Lib Dems.
Brexit is one of the few things we pretty much all agree on (that it's a terrible catastrophe).
I hope that helps you understand us a bit better.
As for the official foreign policy, I think our government is sorry to see the UK leave ship as we have often had similar objectives when it came to EU politics. I don't think there is any desire to "punish" Britain as far as the Danish government is concerned.
The EU is going to fragment and crumble over the next ten years. And Europa will be, if not fine then at least better for it.
"The EU is going to fragment and crumble over the next ten years."
No comment.
If the eu falls there will be huge economic suffering, it will mean almost certain war, and probably an invasion by Putin in the east after he takes Ukraine.
The EU will probably strengthen after brexit.
A more likely outcome is a French Exit or the collapse of a large Italian bank causing the end of the EU as we know it. Then we can make trade deals with individual countries.
French exit would kill the EU, but I think we'll see another narrow defeat for Le Pen. But I could be wrong there, it's volatile.
This will force Britain to largely keep regulations for products that are being exported in line with the EU's (as its biggest export market), while still adding costs [2].
Nobody seriously believes that the British economy will implode as a result; what it will do is retard economic growth somewhat (economists argue how much) and possibly create structural problems in sectors that are heavily reliant on exports.
P.S.: I would also not rely on the Daily Express. It's probably one of the worst British tabloids.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-tariff_barriers_to_trade
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/69202760-c3a2-11e6-9bca-2b93a6856...
The UK will probably get a deal like Norway and will be better off without Brussels.
But then many other EU countries will ask: Who actually needs the political union?
The monetary union has serious problems, but not all the countries in the EU are part of it.
EEA membership (which is what Norway has) includes:
* Freedom of movement.
* Contributions to the EU budget.
* Implementing most EU regulations without actually having representation in the bodies that decide them.
This would not go over well with Leave voters and would basically be a worse deal for the UK than remaining in the EU would be.
It's a bit like pointing out to environmentalists that the earth itself will be fine; it's true but glossing over a huge amount of detail of what might actually be lost.
Possibly the most accurate prophecy I've read on twitter is that we'll gradually forget that people used to migrate to the UK from Ireland for economic reasons, as it becomes the other way round. The UK is likely to move smoothly from importing workers to young people going abroad (with greater difficulty) in order to find work. And the Home Office net migration figures will declare this a success.
Brexit won't demolish the UK, but it will cripple growth and cut us out of a whole bunch of global opportunities.
(Unless the Home Office goes to kick out the 3m Europeans already here, in which case we're back to tanks-in-the-streets apocalypses)
There's stronger signs of a generational split, and a rural/city split than a simple rich poor split and of course each area has substantial numbers of voters who think differently. Lots of rich people voted for Brexit, lots of people who are not nationalists voted for Brexit lots of people who are not particularly racist voted for Brexit, etc. The reasons are varied. I disagree with Brexit and think it will end in disaster (esp. for labour as you point out), but the view above is unduly reductive.
Unfortunately such a nuanced reality doesn't fit into a sound bite and people prefer to neatly put their opponents in a reductive box, so here we are talking about cities vs countryside and rich vs poor.
> lots of people who are not nationalists voted for Brexit lots of people who are not particularly racist voted for Brexit
Sounds like you're doing the exact same thing. Are the majority of Brexit voters racist and nationalist (assuming you consider nationalism a negative)?
I don't think so no. I do think that should be clear from the text you have quoted.
A party becomes more competitive by moving closer in policy to another party? I'm happy with a far-left leadership, and I'd take it any day over some party vaguely in favour of Keynesianism.
I don't think that's true, I still think Socialism is a solution to the problems of society structured with class (capitalism, feudalism, slavery etc.)
Class is not about equality, it is about removing a power relationship. In the same way that the abolitionist movement removed the property relationship between master and slave, the Socialist movement seeks to remove the private property power relationship between bourgeois and proletariat in general.
The idea that inequality can be solved by handing all property to the government, the single biggest source of corruption in existence, is ludicrous and the sooner the ideas of socialism and communism die out the closer we'll be to an actual approach to raising up the working poor.
Optimised taxes and regulations do not stop exploitation[0].
>"oh shit our web app is running a bit slow, best throw it all out and rebuild the whole thing in <insert hip framework here>"
This is such a false analogy; there are problems inherent with capitalism, which is what the Socialists oppose - namely, the structure of unjustified authority of the State, the exploitation of labour, the class system, the internal contradictions and crises of capitalism, and being forced by threat of starvation to sell labour-power to the class of property owners. A better analogy would be if your web app is only serving 5% or less of customers, and the rest get an extremely slow connection, which they complain about to the web app owner, and you respond "We just need to make the website a few kB/s slower for the 5% and give that speed to you!"
[0] https://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation...
> the structure of unjustified authority of the State
Socialism in all real world implementations has been in the form of an all-encompassing state. The idea that socialism can exist as a form of anarchy seems to be busted - the Soviets (as in the unions that initially formed during the Russian revolution) quickly formed into a hierarchal structure of abstract Soviets that looked just like government departments. I don't agree with the extent that the State has power either, but fundamentally it can provide security from criminal behaviour via the police, protection from outside groups via the military, and welfare via taxation. Those are all positives, imo.
> the exploitation of labour
"Ownership of the means of production" has less and less meaning every year. Everyone can start a business from a laptop, this isn't the Victorian era where most working class are forced to work in factories to escape the poor-house. It would seem that business people do provide real value after all - managing people and structuring organised work between individuals with separate skills is an incredible value-add to a workforce. Plus, the idea of the 1% owning the vast majority of the wealth in society can in large part be attributed to their owning a large share of their own businesses, which are built with their own work and hiring people at mutually-agreed-upon wages.
> the class system
The class system is becoming less and less relevant. I don't have to toil away as a serf on some rich noble's land any more. I started out very much lower-middle to working class, and now I live a very comfortable life. Economic mobility is pretty good these days, we don't live in Marx's time any more.
> the internal contradictions and crises of capitalism
... can be well-managed by a more competent state. Tragedy of the commons, neocolonialism, and such could be drastically reduced by improvements to the state. We know this because countries like Norway have good social standards and are military non-interventionist, and the USA is pretty much the only Western country that invades others any more.
> being forced by threat of starvation to sell labour-power to the class of property owners
You mean being forced to be a productive member of society? Work still needs to keep the world going, and if sitting at home consuming goods and providing absolutely no value were a viable option everyone would do it and society would collapse. For those who can't due to disability or unemployability we have welfare benefits to allow them to do exactly that.
Consider this - if people don't have to sell labour-power to earn money to buy things, but can still consume the fruits of others' labour, are they not being exploitative themselves?
> A better analogy would be if your web app is only serving 5% or less of customers, and the rest get an extremely slow connection, which they complain about to the web app owner, and you respond "We just need to make the website a few kB/s slower for the 5% and give that speed to you!"
You, like every other socialist I've spoken to, seem far more preoccupied with punishing the wealthy than actually helping the poor. If we can establish a dignified baseline for all people to live off of, what's wrong with those who are willing to work hard and sacrifice to provide better services to their customers being able to earn more? Without incentives we wouldn't have any innovation because people don't make sacrifices without incentives. Most innovation is born of personal sacrifices.
I think it could exist as a distributed network of communes, no particular commune with authority over any other, voluntarily exchanging resources where needed. I'm against strengthening the State; at most the State should take the form of a government, having all its other powers handed away.
>and welfare via taxation
I don't think taxation can be justified, unless it is optional and agreed to by everyone paying and receiving the taxes.
> Everyone can start a business from a laptop
Yes, but that laptop only becomes social means of production when you start to hire other people to work on it in the form of wage labour. It's fine to be an artisan or "self-employed", because in that case, the only exploitation happening is exploitation of yourself (depends on the point of view).
>managing people and structuring organised work between individuals with separate skills is an incredible value-add to a workforce
Property owners are distinct from managers; there's no reason why one must cease being a manager when they cease owning property. Managers are workers, and their management would probably be decided via a democratic vote in a Socialist co-operative. Management is cruical, nobody is arguing against it; engineers etc. add value to products of course.
>which are built with their own work and hiring people at mutually-agreed-upon wages.
Very few businesses reach the kind of scale they are today from the labour of the owners; in fact, they reach that status due to the labour of the workers. Agreeing upon wages doesn't mean anything at all, because that agreement almost always happens in a case where one must sell his labour-power in order to survive. The Marxian analysis says that exploitation isn't a matter of wages, it's a matter of receiving the value of labour. Without exploitation, the companies would not make profit.
Yes, the worker has options as to who to sell himself to piecemeal, but that does not mean that the transactions are free; considering the class of property owners as a whole, they force people knowingly by societal structure to work for them.
>Economic mobility is pretty good these days, we don't live in Marx's time any more.
Economic mobility is irrelevant. There are roughly three classes, which some people are able to move between: the proletariat, who must sell their labour-power for wage in order to survive, the petit-bourgeoisie who take the form of artisans or those self-employed, i.e bourgeois in potential, and the bourgeoisie who are a class of property owners. It is possible to be a property owner and work, too. For example, many small businesses have the property owner work. But that does not mean that the property owner should be entitled to the fruits of others' labour.
Many (most?) people do not have sufficient capital, or have no way of accumulating sufficient capital, to move from proletarian to petit bourgeois. Even fewer have the ability to move from proletarian to bourgeois. The system is stacked agaisnt them, it's not a matter of choice and some hard work.
>You mean being forced to be a productive member of society?
I see no reason why one must sell labour-power in order to be a productive member of society, at least, a productive member of a society. Of course one must work to survive, but that work need not be compensated with wages, at least in jobs where goods are produced. One can work for himself, and decide how much surplus product to give to others; this kind of decision making at a large scale can be managed by a voluntary council which manages production. For example, workers may agree to give a certain percentage of their product to those who are less fortunate or unable to work.
> if people don't have to sell labour-power to earn money to buy things, but can still consume the fruit...
Why does that make it a bad idea? I'm of the belief that stigma surrounding Socialism has meant that only interested academics will talk about it, but this certainly wasn't the case in the 19th century. It is not only the working poor who are of concern, it is the workers as a whole. Class consciousness must be raised.
>The idea that inequality can be solved by handing all property to the government
That's not what I'm proposing; rather, I propose that private property (i.e property used for social commodity reproduction) be taken over by workers, and the powers of the state be transferred to people so that the state withers away, leaving behind it a government. Decentralised government is also possible.
>socialism and communism die out the closer we'll be to an actual approach to raising up the working poor.
Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell?[0] He himself was a working class man making the case for Socialism, and why capitalism, a system which is designed to keep one class below the other, is not favourable.
Capitalism has nothing to do with government, the idea that only 'corporatism' is bad is equivocation. The class structure still exists without a government, surplus labour is still extracted without a government, private property is still defended without a government.
The workers are raised up by ideals looking out for their interests rather than those ideals looking out for the interests of the bourgeoisie. The class system prevents realisation of a meritocracy in which each person is rewarded exactly according to his labour rather than paid by the hour.
[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3608/3608-h/3608-h.htm
I'm not saying it does - I'm saying that if the working class have rejected it then clearly they do not see it is in their benefit. The idea of "raising class consciousness" seems like a fancy way of saying "the working class are too stupid to know what's good for them".
> I propose that private property (i.e property used for social commodity reproduction) be taken over by workers
Such as what? Workers already own property. Most people have a TV, a house (that they own fully after their mortgage matures), a car and so on. Should we steal all of that stuff too? Or just the lambourghinis and yachts of the wealthy? Sounds like "lets just steal stuff we want from other people" to me.
> Decentralised government is also possible.
Sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what form of government you're referring to.
> Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell?[0] He himself was a working class man making the case for Socialism, and why capitalism, a system which is designed to keep one class below the other, is not favourable.
I haven't, I'll add it to my reading list. I doubt I'll be convinced though. The idea that capitalism exists to keep classes separate is one I disagree with - my understanding is that capitalism exists to allow people to compete to be the best at providing services people want. Naturally, people who are better at this will rise to the top. It's a form of talent sifting. I'd rather have competent people do things they're competent at or we'll end up with more Lysenkoism and bread lines.
> Capitalism has nothing to do with government, the idea that only 'corporatism' is bad is equivocation. The class structure still exists without a government, surplus labour is still extracted without a government, private property is still defended without a government.
Defense of private property makes sense though. If I own a car I like, I'm not going to just let you come and steal it from me. The idea that a community can own property that is shared seems bogus when you extend the argument to things that are scarce. Marx himself posited socialism and communism as being a state that requires a post-scarcity and automated society, which we do not have. Not even close.
> The workers are raised up by ideals looking out for their interests rather than those ideals looking out for the interests of the bourgeoisie. The class system prevents realisation of a meritocracy in which each person is rewarded exactly according to his labour rather than paid by the hour.
You can't calculate the value of a thing based on the labour required to create it. Otherwise what stops me spending years on some piece of junk and then demanding a reward? Value of a thing is determined by what it's worth to the person who wants to use it, i.e. utility pricing.
Marx and other 19th century writers make the distinction between private and personal property (at the time, it was simply called 'property', and personal property called 'possession'). An example of private property is a factory, machinery and land upon which people are employed to make things. These things are social means of reproduction. I don't think anybody, Communist or otherwise, is advocating for taking personal property such as cars (unless property of a limousine company), televisions, computers (unless property of a commercial software house) etc.
>my understanding is that capitalism exists to allow people to compete to be the best at providing services people want
I think that this is merely incidental, capitalism producing goods for exchange rather than usage is not incidental. Not even bosses are in charge of capital, capital is its own owner, and ensures its continuation through the capitalist system. This is why sometimes you see property owners giving themselves salaries of $1.
I don't think that people who provide the best service rise to the top; rather, those who are the most ruthless in providing that service rise to the top; it's not even proportional to the amount of labour applied. In fact, many products are made which people wouldn't buy if it wasn't for a lot of advertising. Accumulating capital is one of the goals of a property owning actor in a capitalist system, and that can be best done by paying the workers the minimum, that is, the amount required to maintain the worker and ensure the continuance of the flow of workers.
> The idea that a community can own property that is shared seems bogus when you extend the argument to things that are scarce.
I think that the community should collectively own means of production; however the labourers themselves as individuals own the product of their own labour and choose when and how to distribute it, if at all. A worker who makes social means of production (i.e MoP which multiple people use) would likely be persuaded to let the community use his machine, in exchange for a certain amount of product for example. However ideally, community projects would make sure that most members of the community who wish to produce contribute to the production of means of production.
>Marx himself posited socialism and communism as being a state that requires a post-scarcity and automated society, which we do not have.
It's not necessary that society be post-scarcity; rather, that resources be managed without introducing artificial scarcity. Full automation is not possible under capitalism, for there has to be someone to buy back the products which are producted. Capitalism isn't a way to get to the point of full automation.
>You can't calculate the value of a thing based on the labour required to create it.
The Labour Theory of Value[0] attempts to do exactly this.
> Otherwise what stops me spending years on some piece of junk and then demanding a reward?
Marx wanted to make the distinction between private labour and social labour. Social labour calculations take place within the context of society, whereas private labour is not commodified. He writes in Capital chap. 1:
"Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities prod...
Two factors are at work here; first, in a capitalist society (or modern mixed economies, which retain this feature of capitalism) visibility is driven in large part by class and wealth, so higher-status individuals will appear more significant (especially from outside the movement) simply because of their status.
Second, the modern popular concept in the West of the "middle class" is almost entirely part of what socialists (and others following the classical analysis of class in capitalist societies) call the working class (the traditional capitalist-economy middle class, the petit-bourgeoisie, aligns better with the current popular concept of the"upper middle class" and lower range of the upper class.)
In modern Western parlance, "middle class" is the middle income segment of the wage-labor dependent segment of society; in traditional (socialist in origin, since they first described and analyzed capitalism) the wage-labor dependent segment is the working class.
And, yes, the segment of the working class that is able to afford to spend effort directed beyond immediate survival, and with the most to lose, is usually the base of most reform efforts and resvolutions (socialist or otherwise), and usually the petit-bourgeoisie is significantly involved, too (though also significantly involved in defending the status quo), since very early in the capitalist (and pre-capitalist transitional) world.
The only problem I see with this is that the election is only 6 weeks away, too little for any credible new stances to form. Beneficial for her & Tories, but undemocratic and bad for the country.
By doing this she gives herself a full five years to hammer out all of the deals required to "successfully" Brexit.
With the opposition in disarray, they stand a good chance to securing more seats. This helps them to prevent other parties blocking the things she needs to pass in order to start revoking EU laws, which they have already said they will copy verbatim to start with into UK law, and then slowly rewrite the bits out they don't want. EHRC being one of their key targets.
"In recent weeks Labour have threatened to vote against the final agreement we reach with the European Union.
"The Liberal Democrats said they want to grind the business of government to a standstill.
"The Scottish National Party say they will vote against the legislation that formally repeals Britain's membership of the European Union.
"And un-elected members of the House of Lords have vowed to fight us every step of the way.
"If we do not hold a general election now, their political game playing will continue."
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I for one hope their 'political game playing' will only intensify in the future. After all, it's their job to provide opposition.
Dark and scary times indeed.
I wish that was hyperbole. But I really don't think it is.
Brexit and Trump removed the taboo on fascism and those long time closeted fascists are now very openly pushing their propaganda. The rest of us are too busy defending their right to destroy our society and our values.
I said that Brexit and Trump removed the taboo about fascism and fascists are raising their voices.
Why would you think I called Brexit, Tories or Trump voters fascists? It would be over-simplifying demographics and politics.
And turns out your other comments are 2 oversimplifying The Guarding and The Independent editorial line / quality and the other two are misleading or a straight lie.
That makes me wonder if you really misunderstood my comment here or are you stirring the pot on purpose? That would explain the need to create a throwaway.
Which values are those? Unfortunately, I would argue that England has never had values I'd agree with. What about values of privacy and civil liberties? You can't even have certain drawings (yes, even their possession is illegal) and ISP have to keep your Internet usage for a year.
Bourgeois democracy cannot protect the values of the people.
Those are the ones I care about and I think are at danger.
Why didn't you include the right to privacy and freedom of expression too?
> Why didn't you include the right to privacy and freedom of expression too?
Privacy is literally the first one on my list :)
Freedom of speech (freedom of expression seems a literal translation from Spanish "libertad de expresión" which is "freedom of speech") I agree. I just forgot about it :)
I could add others like separation of powers that I also forgot (and they're under attack if you follow UK politics).
Are you a writer for The Independent by any chance?
(Seriously, you're saying that this will be the last ever democratic election in the UK?)
> You're being a bit of a bellend
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The Lib Dems campaigned for an EU referendum [1], and now want to reverse it because the result wasn't what they wanted.
The SNP campaigned for Scotland to leave the EU (as it would have done if leaving the UK) in their independence referendum, and now behave as if leaving the EU is unthinkable.
Both are playing politics. The ground has shifted, and so it's helpful for the government to get a new mandate.
[1] http://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/images/Clegg...
Silencing someone should never be the goal. If the Conversatives are experiencing difficulties pushing through their agenda due to opposition from other parties, then the best way to resolve that is either via compromise or by calling an election to increase their majority in parliament which should allow them to push through their agenda more easily.
Even if (arguably especially if) the Conservatives win 99% of the seats in the House of Commons, the remaining 1% should be opposing, scrutinising and holding to account as well and as loudly as they can.
Yet Theresa May is after something different here (a tactic which we've heard recently, but by no means exclusively, from many Brexiteers as well) - she is implying that unless opposition parties can beat the Conservatives in a general election, then they should put up and shut up as the public have spoken.
That's not how democracy works.
-----
edit: For those who don't see the straw man here, it is that while silencing someone who is standing up for the beliefs of people who don't exist is okay, in real life the parties who are currently opposing the government are guaranteed to be defending a none-zero number of British citizens, who we cannot allow to be silenced on principle (even if we act against their wishes).
"“I’m not going to be calling a snap election. I’ve been very clear that I think we need that period of time, that stability, to be able to deal with the issues that the country is facing and have that election in 2020.”"
That's not true. Returning officers announce the number of rejected ballot papers, and explain why they were rejected, at the same time as this winner is announced.
For example:
https://youtu.be/jbDgT3b-M44?t=117
But yes, I agree it sucks.
A quick Google search found this but I'm sure there's much more than that: http://voteswap.org/
Labour are a disaster, so I suspect the Lib Dems may benefit strongly from the current situation.
No practical chance of them getting in, but it's an option when you think it's important to vote anyway for philosophical or historical reasons.
Especially in constituencies where you could pin a red or blue rosette on a donkey, and it would still get elected.
Before it can actually happen, she needs 2/3s of MPs to agree, according to the Fixed Term Parliament Act. Otherwise, it's a five-year term whether the current PM likes it or not.
This is an odd one, because if we have the election then it's likely to be a Tory landslide, but the Tories have only a narrow majority in the House of Commons and so need the turkeys to vote for Christmas.
On the other hand, Labour is currently led by Jeremy Corbyn, so it's entirely possible that enough of the turkeys will vote for every day of the year to be Christmas.
So, if opposition MPs want to put that off for another three years, everyone currently sitting as an MP keeps their seat by default, the Tories are still in charge but still only with a narrow working majority, and those in opposition parties have only three years to wait for another shot after cleaning house instead of five years.
I'm not sure whether that sort of rebellion is a realistic prospect given the views expressed so far today, but I think it would be a rational position for opposition MPs to take given the current unpopularity of both Labour and the Lib Dems among the general public.
Of course, if they think their seat isn't safe; or they think they can dump Corbyn early and win in 2020; it's easy to imagine them opposing an election.
- May isn't going to lose to Corbyn
- May has a slim majority, meaning she has to negotiate with people within the Conservative Party who might not agree with her on the Brexit terms.
- She'll likely get a larger majority, so it makes it easier to deal with the rebels.
- For Corbyn, it's interesting. He might be facing another leadership challenge if polls keep looking crap.
- He wants to have an actual attempt at a GE, where he can make his case to the public.
- He won the leadership challenge last year, so he knows his fans are at least loyal for now.
- Why does Corbyn's opinion matter? Well back when Cameron did a deal with Clegg, they did a fixed terms act, meaning elections had to happen every 5 years. This one is within 5 years of the previous, so you actually need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to trigger it.
30m ago 11:44 Corbyn confirms Labour will vote for early election
Jeremy Corbyn has put out this statement about Theresa May’s announcement.
I welcome the prime minister’s decision to give the British people the chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first.
Labour will be offering the country an effective alternative to a government that has failed to rebuild the economy, delivered falling living standards and damaging cuts to our schools and NHS.
In the last couple of weeks, Labour has set out policies that offer a clear and credible choice for the country. We look forward to showing how Labour will stand up for the people of Britain. Labour confirms it will vote for early election.
Has it?? Where exactly? I've not heard a thing from Labour for months
If a political party announces policies and the press don't report it, did it actually happen.
The information is out there. Unfortunately with our media the way it is, you have to go looking for it.
https://twitter.com/LabourEoin/status/854301186756882432
May says she'll call an election under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, and obviously that's the first choice, but now that the Tories are governing without the Lib-Dems, they can also simply repeal the Act (with an ordinary majority).
Honestly, this makes no sense at all.
Obviously such mindset has only accelerated the downfall of labour under that spineless sissy Corbyn. And even that they are trying to ruin because now labour guys are antisemitic and pro-brexit and whatever the hell.
Tiring, tiring. Politics is getting tiring.
Current polling: CON 43, LAB 25 [1]
Conservatives won the 2015 Election polling at 34% [2].
[1] https://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9828
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/UK_opini...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/oversampling...
There's a confused conspiracy theory that it means "adding extra votes to the Democrat column".
This doesn't even stand up to the most cursory of examinations, as if that was really happening then people would say "they're intentionally fudging the results to favor the Democrats" and kick up a fuss about it. Instead they say "oversampling Democrats", in the hope that people who don't know what that is will think it sounds like cheating while not actually looking like idiots to people who do know what it means. A classic dogwhistle approach to say two things to two audiences.
You claim to know what it is, yet you say it's an "issue" (which it isn't) and you say that at the end of a sentence claiming that there's a "shy voter" factor leading to an undercount of Trump support. Oversampling has no logical connection here unless you mean it in the "Democrats are cheating in the polls" meaning. You claim that you mean it in the actual statistical meaning. The two obvious explanations are that you don't know what it is and have been fooled by all the chatter around it, or that you're trying to fool others despite knowing it's nonsense. I think you don't know what it is, that's why I provided the explanatory link a couple of comment above.
Also, the polls did not materially undercount Trump voters. The polls were more accurate than at the last election. Some people badly mapped the accurately predicted 3 million popular vote win to electoral college results, but that's a different thing than polls being bad, Trump voters not wanting to admit who they were voting for, or being intentionally skewed. On a state by state basis polls were wrong in both directions, for various reasons, but that cancelled out overall.
Your partisan paragraphs further make me think I will be wasting my time here, so let's just say we have different views on the polls :).
Those errors don't add up to 20 points. And I say that as a card-carrying member of the Labour party.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_second_Scottish_indep...
I realise this is a pipe-dream, however.
Would be an interesting legal position, now article 50 has been notified.
The SNP (and the one Green MP) support Basic Income. I think John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, also supports Basic Income, but it's now too short a timescale for Labour to get a policy in place and convince the general public. The Liberal Party supported a variant of it, but the Lib Dems now oppose it.
The SNP do just fine under the AMS system at Holyrood and the STV system for local council elections in Scotland.
I'm actually thinking of voting for Lib Dems for the first time in my life, only because they said they'd hold another EU Referendum. And I say this because I honestly don't trust any party actually want's to take us through Brexit anymore, nor will any of them do a good job of it. I feel like a Lib Dem government is currently the best of a bad bunch.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/23/conservative-el...
Also it seems extremely unlikely anybody will go to prison.
Only those of us that follow Michael Crick on Twitter are kept up to date.
What this will do is remove any risk of the tainted elections being voided, resulting in a string of difficult by-elections.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/theresa-may-brexit-first...
NB: The article's from October 2016 so slightly dated, but still useful
Probably zero, especially given the weirdo FPTP system, but I'm curious anyway.
If Labour and LibDems play their cards right, couldn't they make these elections about the mandate for Conservatives the break the United Kingdom apart, rather than a mandate to negotiate with the EU.
Under those circumstances: how big an upset is needed for the election results to be seen as a complete disqualification of the Brexit vote?
Plus it's not clear the Scots would actually vote to leave and the talk about NI leaving the UK is nonsense. They voted, narrowly, to remain in the EU. Not to remain in the EU even if that meant leaving the UK.
I don't think conservatives say that "We aren't leaving if Scotland or Northern ireland poll even close to 50% for leaving the UK in order to remain in the EU after a brexit vote". That would have been useful information before the referendum.
> it's not clear the Scots wouldnactually vote
Exactly, it's very uncertain. And having a referendum with that uncertainty was very strange. And if it does become clear that the leave vote actually did break up the UK, then the consequences should (and could!) have been known to voters in the referendum.
Making promises on EU membership based on ideas about union seems unwarranted though - we have no idea what the result of polls would be where it is explicit that the choice is between UK and EU membership. Nor do the respective parties know that "Stay in the EU outside of the UK" is even an option - Scotland is likely to have multiple years as part of neither one while it establishes an economic track record and a stable set of government institutions.