• Hello Guest, You'll need to login or signup to be able to post on here.

General Election 2017

Who will you be voting for on June 8th

  • Conservative

    Votes: 15 32.6%
  • Labour

    Votes: 21 45.7%
  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 3 6.5%
  • UKIP

    Votes: 3 6.5%
  • Green

    Votes: 1 2.2%
  • Other

    Votes: 3 6.5%

  • Total voters
    46
Cameron might have engineered the referendum, but to attribute dissatisfaction with the EU and ultimately the decision to leave as being a Conservative problem really is an attempt to re-write history and to deny the reality of what actually brought all this about. The seeds for this discontent were sown as far back as when we joined the Common Market in January 1973 on terms that were not favourable to the UK. Members of both Labour and Conservative parties were very much divided by the terms and decision to join and by subsequent parliamentary legislation. The original SDP gang of 4 were always very pro European and played a major part in gerrymandering votes in Parliament to keep us in the EU but ultimately left the labour party in 1981 after it became official Labour policy to withdraw from the EU. Ever since that point there have been large numbers of Labour and Conservative voters who have wanted out of the EU. With the exception of the LibDems who have always been solidly pro-EU, members of Labour and Conservatives have campaigned for the UK to be out - including the current Labour leader!! For 40 years the pro-European league of LibDems, and EU leaning Labour and Conservative MPs have held sway. They engineered deeper integration into the EU with no exit plan ever being part of the contract, this making it almost impossible to get out. That's why we have the mess we are in, with the pro-EU lobbies working as hard as ever to keep us aligned so that when the storm passes they can re-engineer our re-joining.The EU is the biggest regulated, protectionist, anti-free trade block in the world. A free market UK, free of the EU and its regulations could be a powerhouse in the world economy and that terrifies the EU. The prospect of having a deregulated economy on its doorstep, leaving the EU economically behind would cause further problems for the "project" and that's why they want to tie us down.
 
Last edited:
That may or may not have been an answer to my post. If it was, it missed my point - which was that the current mess we are in has nothing to do with people not uniting behind one particular trade negotiating strategy and everything to do with Cameron seeking to appease his own anti-EU faction by offering them what he thought was the sop of a referendum. He (and everyone else who sanctioned this) grossly miscalculated the outcome.

We have a UK economy dominated by the service sector at around 80%, and only a 10% "manufactuing base", much of which is ultimately in foreign ownership and reliant on complex global supply chains. While that manufacturing base has profited from the 10% drop in the value of sterling in the past two years, I would hardly call us an economic powerhouse, sitting as we do at the bottom of the G7 on economic growth indicators.

Throwing an extra element into the discussion - the whole furore about trade with the US is also essentially an irrelevance. We already do around one trillion dollars worth of trade with the US (despite membership of the EU, which does not preclude trade with other countries - ask the Germans how much trade they happily do with eg China). The only thing a trade deal would do would be to open up our agri-market to cheap hormone-filled beef and chlorine-treated chicken and open up our NHS to the influx of private US medical and pharma companies.
 
Trumps visit has been Comedy Gold all honesty. And for once, not because of his Gaffs, but rather his opposers.

- Hysterical Protesters with no idea why they’re upset, but the sure as hell are!

- The MASSIVE £30k Trump Balloon is infact a tiny disappointment. Looks like they’ve got Jim Rushe spending the money because looks like a large chunk of that’s gone Walkies

- People who position themselves as the brightest minds in the country reduced to mass hysteria that is on the scale that only embarrasses themselves

- And the Icing on the cake, Jeremy Corbyn - The man that Hangs around Hamas and the IRA (real terrorists, that actually kill people in cold blood) - criticising the Government for meeting with the Democratically elected leader of our Closest ally. What a Wally.

The whole thing has been a great day for the Middle Class Protestors to take photos of their protest signs for their Social Media, hasn’t it?
 
And I think you miss the point that this was not just about Cameron and a sop to the Conservative Party. There was a growing anti EU trend across the country and all parties, with the exception of LibDems who have stayed solidly pro EU, were getting worried by the rise of UKIP. The referendum bill passed through Parliament with a majority of 544 to 53 if memory serves me correctly - hardly an indicator that Labour were against the referendum. I think what they all misjudged was that the majority of MPs were of the mind that they could see off this ant-EU sentiment and put this to bed for another generation. How wrong they were !!

With respect to trade - I agree we are very much a services dominated economy and its interesting that the government isn't pushing for services to be included within the new agreements as much as one may expect. But overall if we are so reliant on global, rather than EU supply chains, we should have less to fear from leaving than we apparently have. In any event, an economy free from EU regulations must be more able to trade and if that open us up to hormone beef and chlorinated chicken, so what? We don't have to buy it, we probably don't give it a thought when we go to the states on holiday. To me its just more protectionism to protect a vastly over priced EU sector
 
Last edited:
Hope UK farmers agree with you.

Eating something on holiday is not quite the same as having it as part of your normal diet.

My point remains that it is an illusion promoted by the likes of Liam Fox with his shadowy US big-business connections that in order to trade with the US (or any other nation around the world) we need (a) to exit the EU * and (b) to conclude a bilateral trade deal. I won't bother quoting all the stats on how much trade each individual EU country does with other countries around the world while being a member of the EU - you can look it up if you want, but from a UK perspective it makes depressing reading.

As for paragraph 1 - that was what I said ("He (and everyone else who sanctioned this) grossly miscalculated the outcome.")

* that is just stating a fact, not trying to re-run the referendum debate. That is done.
 
I agree that they miscalculated - but the bit I think misses the point is the assertion that Cameron gave the referendum as a sop. If he hadn't then the tidal wave of anti-eu sentiment would stripped votes from both Labour and Conservatives and propelled UKIP MPs into Parliament. I think Cameron cracked first, but it was inevitably coming.

The root change that will come from being out of the EU is breaking away from EU regulation. EU rules and process protect internal EU countries but are barriers to most countries and free trade. Most of the barriers thrown up (like chlorinated chicken) are just that, - barriers. Are Americans dying from chlorinated chicken? No I don't think so either. Yes we can still trade with other non-EU countries, but overall being without the EU will open more doors and allow us to go back to some of the commonwealth countries that we treated so shamefully when we joined the EU

Farmers being happy? Well that would be a first - outwardly anyway! We pay vast sums via subsidies for more expensive food. When we joined the EU food bills in France for example were considerably higher than they were here. There's no reason that can't be rolled back
 
Last edited:
Cameron promised people a choice. The majority voted for him. He campaigned to stay in Europe. The majority voted to leave. You’re saying that giving people a choice is wrong? The majority of the Tory party campaigned diligently to stay in. Can you say that Jeremy Corbyn did that? Nope, he went missing during the referendum debate.
 
We are never going to convince each other to change our respective views on whether the UK should be in or out of the EU, which is why I for one have not bothered to try.

My opinion (which you are free to disagree with) is that Cameron was wrong to put it to a referendum, and did so to appease that element of his own voters who were deserting his party, that he was wrong to build in a hurdle (of say 60%, or 50% of the electorate - he was happy to impose that on union votes for example), that he led a shocking Remain campaign which only served to turn a lot of people off, that he was wrong not to have at least some form of outline plan in the event of Leave winning (but then the leading Leavers were equally culpable on that front), that he then sought to run away and hide following his promise to stay on whatever the result, that the Tory party then ended up with May as leader by default because nobody else was good enough or brave enough to put themselves up successfully against her, that May should never have triggered Article 50 without having a plan, that May then made another bad decision in calling a snap election, and that from that point on the divisions within the Tory party have paralysed both their half-hearted attempts to conduct negotiations with the EU and (just as importantly) their attempts to govern this country in all other aspects of our lives, now propped up by the DUP.

The exit agreement with the EU is still unresolved, let alone the question of what to try to negotiate on future relationships once that exit has happened. Everything seems to revolve around "The 27 other EU nations will have to change their way of doing things to accommodate what we want". That simply isn't going to happen. In short, it's a mess, and it is being dominated by questions of trade when there are so many other unresolved facets of our membership (Euratom, Open Skies, Medicines Agency, European Arrest Warrant, Galileo, security & intelligence sharing, scientific research, citizen rights, travel, and of course the Irish border, to name but a few of the more prominent issues - all of which were of course covered in detail before June 2016 and all of which can of course easily be covered by a single Yes/No vote).
 
And disagree I will. Cameron's decision to call a referendum was driven by a growing resentment against the EU that would eventually, I think, have broken our political system. Too many politicians have colluded with the EU to keep us in Europe when it has been blindingly obvious for most of the past 40 years that it wasn't in the best interests of the UK, but there has been too much gerrymandering of votes and collusion by pro -EU politicians to avoid making it a clear choice for the electorate. It was always going to be messy because the project has never set aside or developed any schedules or exit plans that allowed any country to exit the EU. It has always been intended to be completely binding with no option of leaving. So irrespective of plans to do this and that (and yes I agree it was stupid not to plan for a no vote) the pro-Europeans have landed us in a mess that was always going to be the consequence of leaving and was therefore part of the argument to stay and prevent countries opting out ! This argument that its us who needs to change, not the other 27, is part of that whole deception. No one ever writes a contract without an exit plan unless your the EU - and we are having to write it now with all the chaff thrown up by the EU to still try and prevent it happening. In the normal course of events without us being in the EU, governments would have reached sensible compromises on trade and security relations over the past 40 years. That's what they should do now. The bottom line is we need to just leave and then start from there.
 
So it’s official. Labour have rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition and guidance on Anti-Semitism.

Instead they’ve come up with there own definition, one that simply allows Anti-Semitism, but just considers in acceptable so that they can claim that by their own definition, that there are no Anti-Semites.

The result? Well, Jewish Labour MP, Dame Margaret Hodge told Corbyn to his face how it is by telling him “You’re a f***ing Anti-Semite and a Racist”.

It’s been over 100 days since Labour Moderates demanded action from Corbyn over Anti-Semitism. And he’s done nothing.

How Corbyn Shrugged.

So I’m Summary:

- A Leader that seems ok with Anti-Semitism
- A party that changes its code of conduct on Anti Semitism to allow it to happen
- Its closest ally in Journalist Paul Mason has reportedly physically Assaulted Jewish Students last week

The most concerning bit is the Corbyn fanatics. They like to label this issue as “a smear” against their almighty leader. Until they stop making excuses for him, Corbyn will never have to deal with it properly

Kinder, gentler politics my arse.
 
What’s happening to the Labour Party is far more concerning than Tory bickering about Europe.
 
When asked by reporters about the incident Dame Hodge’s response was “I didn’t use the word “f***ing”

Jeremy Corbyn reportedly set to take action against Dame Hodge. Rather than deal with Labours Anti-Semitism, he’d rather prosecute those pointing it out.

Sickening really.
 
So we find ourself in the sad situation where a Labour MP says she feels unwelcome in her own party because she is Jewish and Corbyn spends his time attacking the BBC rather than providing any kind of opposition to the government. Can any Labour supporter be comfortable with Cornyn’s leadership?
 
Mr Corbyn's defence of the Palestinian people is well known as was his opposition to Apartheid and other forms of discrimination, but I suspect it pails into insignificance compared to tory "bickering" over Europe which may well break up the United Kingdom, provoke civil unrest, and economically devastate this Nation and put back the welfare of its people by fifty years.
 
Last edited:
Mr Corbyn's defence of the Palestinian people is well known as is his opposition to Apartheid and other forms of discrimination, but I suspect it pails into insignificance compared to tory "bickering" over Europe which may well break up the United Kingdom, provoke civil unrest, and economically devastate this Nation and put back the welfare of its people by fifty years.

We do not discuss Politics in our house honest !!.
 
Mr Corbyn's defence of the Palestinian people is well known as was his opposition to Apartheid and other forms of discrimination, but I suspect it pails into insignificance compared to tory "bickering" over Europe which may well break up the United Kingdom, provoke civil unrest, and economically devastate this Nation and put back the welfare of its people by fifty years.

True, but you would think that the leader of HM Opposition might consider the Brexit mess a more pressing concern at the moment than the social make-up of the BBC or the future of journalism. As it is, this govt is being given too easy a ride as it presides over a shambles.
 
Maybe that's because he wants to see us out of the EU and doesn't agree with his Brexit spokesman, so is avoiding the issue completely
 
He wants us out because he wouldn’t be able to achieve his socialist utopia under EU membership.
 
Was interesting regarding his speech regarding the future of Journalism.

He banned the news bring cameras saying that “the Labour press office will provide footage afterwards”

Freedom?
 
Back
Top