Brexit

Obviously we trust polls at our peril these days, but this UK election might be interesting...

It was interesting, indeed it was a riveting election. In hindsight it looks like the right wing of the Conservative party took control of the party after the referendum on the EU, with the right wingers of the party believing the country had moved to the right, and that they could mop up the UKIP voters with an early election, and take out some labour heartlands at the same time. Unfortunately the country hadn't moved to the right, the brexit vote had been about the fears of uncontrolled immigration, and although the conservatives took much of the UKIP voters back, they lost the more moderate left and center of their own party to Labour, because of the hopeless right wing message.

Meanwhile Corbyn judged his campaign perfectly, and adopted a position of hope and tolerance, galvanized the young, and his offer was the only viable option for anyone who rejected the conservatives hopeless right wing offer.

The country now seems to have split right and left, with strong right wing and left wing agenda's. It seems a pretty immovable situation to me. The problem I see is that the conservatives are a bit more dependent on the older voters, whereas Labour are a bit more dependent on the younger voters. Therefore Labour has age on its side... their appeal to younger voters will add more Labour voters to their party as new people reach voting age, whilst the conservatives will shrink a bit more as their older voters die off.

Either the conservatives move back to the centre, or I think over time they will simply become less and less relevant. The Libdems killed themselves off by joining a coalition, and that leaves the whole stage wide open to Labour.

Everything is shifting in the UK... I think Corbyn is right, too many people in the UK have just rejected continued austerity, and the hard times the conservatives promised with a hard brexit. There is no going back to austerity, its finished, its an unwinnable agenda. Labours one member one vote, and the left wing control of the National Executive mean things can't change in Labour whilst Corbyn remains Leader... if they simply wait out the conservatives they will win. I think the conservatives will either have to reject the right, or tear themselves apart trying.
 
Maybe it was just my ignorance and poor monitoring of the situation but I'm kind of amazed at Corbyn rising up to make up so much substantial ground. I thought he was finished in his own party!

For now I'll hold to my bet that Brexit will be reversed in my lifetime, yet everything feels so in flux globally it's not a prediction I make with any real confidence....
 
One point on the demographic factor of age: As the older, conservative voters pass away there are typically younger, liberal voters aging into middle aged centrist, even conservative leaning voters.

Those kids with flowers in their hair during the 60's sure didn't look like right wing conservatives then. Right?
 
One point on the demographic factor of age: As the older, conservative voters pass away there are typically younger, liberal voters aging into middle aged centrist, even conservative leaning voters.

Those kids with flowers in their hair during the 60's sure didn't look like right wing conservatives then. Right?

If you look at the ONS figures, the massive UK population bump of post 2nd World war baby boomers are reaching an age where they are just beginning to die at the higher mortality rates of older people... this is a big bump of aging people in the U.K. population which will take about 13-17 years to work through... once the post war boomers are gone, the UK population will be much more evenly distributed between young and old.

We've really reached a period where amongst the voting age group, the disparity between the numbers of young and old is about as wide as it will ever get...

Birth rates turned around after 2001... (they had fallen to unprecedented levels)... this new influx of children at much higher birth rates will be reaching 17 years old about next year... just around the same time the bump of the baby boomers start dying at faster rates.

I spent a long time studying this with the figures available from the ONS in 2002... and projecting mortality rates... things have altered since I did my work, because successive governments have had to react by allowing more foreign migrants into the country to smooth the bump. But back then, I projected a noticeable increase in property coming onto the housing market from old people dying, starting around 2020.

If average mortality rates for each age group have decreased since I did my projections, then my projections will be delayed by the same number of years.

Either way... the UK is irrevocably locked into a period of - I think - major demographic change as the baby boomers start to die. That can't be stopped. It should help Labour, and disadvantage the conservatives, based on their current policies.
 
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It was interesting, indeed it was a riveting election. In hindsight it looks like the right wing of the Conservative party took control of the party after the referendum on the EU, with the right wingers of the party believing the country had moved to the right, and that they could mop up the UKIP voters with an early election, and take out some labour heartlands at the same time. Unfortunately the country hadn't moved to the right, the brexit vote had been about the fears of uncontrolled immigration, and although the conservatives took much of the UKIP voters back, they lost the more moderate left and center of their own party to Labour, because of the hopeless right wing message.

Meanwhile Corbyn judged his campaign perfectly, and adopted a position of hope and tolerance, galvanized the young, and his offer was the only viable option for anyone who rejected the conservatives hopeless right wing offer.

The country now seems to have split right and left, with strong right wing and left wing agenda's. It seems a pretty immovable situation to me. The problem I see is that the conservatives are a bit more dependent on the older voters, whereas Labour are a bit more dependent on the younger voters. Therefore Labour has age on its side... their appeal to younger voters will add more Labour voters to their party as new people reach voting age, whilst the conservatives will shrink a bit more as their older voters die off.

Either the conservatives move back to the centre, or I think over time they will simply become less and less relevant. The Libdems killed themselves off by joining a coalition, and that leaves the whole stage wide open to Labour.

Everything is shifting in the UK... I think Corbyn is right, too many people in the UK have just rejected continued austerity, and the hard times the conservatives promised with a hard brexit. There is no going back to austerity, its finished, its an unwinnable agenda. Labours one member one vote, and the left wing control of the National Executive mean things can't change in Labour whilst Corbyn remains Leader... if they simply wait out the conservatives they will win. I think the conservatives will either have to reject the right, or tear themselves apart trying.

IMO, you have it upside down. The Tories are already in the middle: they're practically New Labour. Corbyn's Labour is practically Marxist. There's hardly such a thing as a genuine Conservative these days. And lots of those who voted Labour still want Brexit -- as, probably, does Corbyn himself. Brexit is largely unrelated to political affiliation: that's why the leavers won.

As regards conservatism dying off, remember that young people get older. Today's young leftist leaners are tomorrow's centrists, and the day after's conservatives with a small "c". There's a strong conservative streak in many labour voters, who only bought Corbyn's rhetoric because of promises of lots of freebies conjured up out of thin air. In a way, it's a pity he didn't win, because soon enough, his supporters would have found him out, thus accelerating the natural tendency of the young to shift rightwards as they grow older.

"Austerity" is a code word for not borrowing as much as we already are. The UK is already in hock to the tune of around 87% of its GDP or approx. £26,000 per citizen (http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/unitedkingdom) and inexorably rising: how can this be called austerity? At what point does one say enough is enough? Oh, it doesn't matter. Just borrow an additional 500 billion and take the debt over 100% of GDP. No matter that we aren't even reducing the debt right now, just borrowing at a slower rate than Corbyn alleged he would have had he won the election.

The US is in even deeper doodoo: debt is already 106% of GDP, i.e. every citizen (be they man, woman or child) is saddled with $61,256 (c. £48,000) of debt. The West is not living within its means. Even Germany is 79% in debt, France very nearly 100%, Spain 105%, Greece 184%, and so on. At some point, the gravy train will stop. When it does, those countries with smaller debts will for the most part do better, though all will be affected to some extent because global markets are interconnected.

What price compassion when profligacy results in worldwide economic depression? The young can't appreciate what it means to be hungry. What attracts them now is the immediate enticement of no tuition fees; but if they were to get them, and everyone else their portion of the windfall, the ones who'd eventually suffer most could be their own children.

For lagniappe, let me say that a lot of our expenses are probably unnecessary. Everyone goes on about the NHS, but to what extent are we wasting money on big Pharma drugs for fairly common ailments rather than researching less harmful remedies? Do we really need universities when they aren't educating the young to think for themselves? Jordan Peterson spends 25 minutes discussing this here:


Part of the reason we're spending more than we can afford is, in the end, down to the things we take for granted, such as that a better health system equates to a more expensive one, that for everyone to get a university level education, we need for more people to go to university -- and so on. These are examples of unthinking assumptions based on existing paradigms.

Fact is, we have no idea where or when the new paradigms will arise: we've already witnessed the effect of the Internet on human affairs, but was the Web planned, or did it grow like topsy simply because, despite its failings, people love it? Old fashioned politics may well be on its way out. It's just a question of whether or not new forms of politics will prove any better. One thing I know is that if old politics is producing clowns like Corbyn and May, Clinton and Trump and all the rest, then it's past its sell-by date. Let's just hope that we don't overreact and dig ourselves into an even deeper hole.
 
IMO, you have it upside down. The Tories are already in the middle: they're practically New Labour. Corbyn's Labour is practically Marxist. There's hardly such a thing as a genuine Conservative these days. And lots of those who voted Labour still want Brexit -- as, probably, does Corbyn himself. Brexit is largely unrelated to political affiliation: that's why the leavers won.

As regards conservatism dying off, remember that young people get older. Today's young leftist leaners are tomorrow's centrists, and the day after's conservatives with a small "c". There's a strong conservative streak in many labour voters, who only bought Corbyn's rhetoric because of promises of lots of freebies conjured up out of thin air. In a way, it's a pity he didn't win, because soon enough, his supporters would have found him out, thus accelerating the natural tendency of the young to shift rightwards as they grow older.

"Austerity" is a code word for not borrowing as much as we already are. The UK is already in hock to the tune of around 87% of its GDP or approx. £26,000 per citizen (http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/unitedkingdom) and inexorably rising: how can this be called austerity? At what point does one say enough is enough? Oh, it doesn't matter. Just borrow an additional 500 billion and take the debt over 100% of GDP. No matter that we aren't even reducing the debt right now, just borrowing at a slower rate than Corbyn alleged he would have had he won the election.

The US is in even deeper doodoo: debt is already 106% of GDP, i.e. every citizen (be they man, woman or child) is saddled with $61,256 (c. £48,000) of debt. The West is not living within its means. Even Germany is 79% in debt, France very nearly 100%, Spain 105%, Greece 184%, and so on. At some point, the gravy train will stop. When it does, those countries with smaller debts will for the most part do better, though all will be affected to some extent because global markets are interconnected.

What price compassion when profligacy results in worldwide economic depression? The young can't appreciate what it means to be hungry. What attracts them now is the immediate enticement of no tuition fees; but if they were to get them, and everyone else their portion of the windfall, the ones who'd eventually suffer most could be their own children.

For lagniappe, let me say that a lot of our expenses are probably unnecessary. Everyone goes on about the NHS, but to what extent are we wasting money on big Pharma drugs for fairly common ailments rather than researching less harmful remedies? Do we really need universities when they aren't educating the young to think for themselves? Jordan Peterson spends 25 minutes discussing this here:


Part of the reason we're spending more than we can afford is, in the end, down to the things we take for granted, such as that a better health system equates to a more expensive one, that for everyone to get a university level education, we need for more people to go to university -- and so on. These are examples of unthinking assumptions based on existing paradigms.

Fact is, we have no idea where or when the new paradigms will arise: we've already witnessed the effect of the Internet on human affairs, but was the Web planned, or did it grow like topsy simply because, despite its failings, people love it? Old fashioned politics may well be on its way out. It's just a question of whether or not new forms of politics will prove any better. One thing I know is that if old politics is producing clowns like Corbyn and May, Clinton and Trump and all the rest, then it's past its sell-by date. Let's just hope that we don't overreact and dig ourselves into an even deeper hole.

Obviously I don't agree with your summary.
 
Maybe it was just my ignorance and poor monitoring of the situation but I'm kind of amazed at Corbyn rising up to make up so much substantial ground. I thought he was finished in his own party!

For now I'll hold to my bet that Brexit will be reversed in my lifetime, yet everything feels so in flux globally it's not a prediction I make with any real confidence....

Corbyn is absolutely fine, it's just the establishment are terrified of him getting into power, I mean absolutely terrified, and the media launched a incredible attack on him over the months prior to the election, but labour now works almost exclusively through social media. When you watch that, you find Corbyn is a nice, caring, person with strong social principles and considerable strength.... He's has many years rowing his own boat alone on the Labour back benches, he's really tough, but fair. London just hate the tories, they ain't in tune with the at all... looks like Kensington may fall to Labour... Kensington for gods sake!
 
Everything You Need to Know About Lord Buckethead, the Spacelord Star of the UK General Election

As for the policies our Spacelord ran on, well... see for yourself. They include banning proposals of turning the city of Birmingham into a Star Base until at least 2022 (presumably so Buckethead’s dominance of space can remain intact), exiling noted right-wing media troll Katie Hopkins to DC Comics’ Phantom Zone, and selling less weapons to Saudi Arabia so we can buy more laser guns from Lord Buckethead.

 
Part of the reason we're spending more than we can afford is, in the end, down to the things we take for granted, such as that a better health system equates to a more expensive one, that for everyone to get a university level education, we need for more people to go to university -- and so on. These are examples of unthinking assumptions based on existing paradigms.

Perhaps if the western nations hadn't needed to bail out the money-grubbing bankers we might have more to spend on health and education. Perhaps if we didn't waste trillions on a ridiculous nuclear arsenal or if the US didn't spend more on the military than most of the rest of the world put together, then we could actually help more people. Perhaps those are the existing paradigms that need to change.
 
Curious - What's the probability of a second referendum at this point?
 
Perhaps if the western nations hadn't needed to bail out the money-grubbing bankers we might have more to spend on health and education. Perhaps if we didn't waste trillions on a ridiculous nuclear arsenal or if the US didn't spend more on the military than most of the rest of the world put together, then we could actually help more people. Perhaps those are the existing paradigms that need to change.

Sure. But sadly, given human nature, it doesn't seem to be going to happen any day soon. I suppose that politics is the art of the presently possible; an art in which humanity still has a lot to learn. Left and right meet round the back; in extremis, they both rely on the manipulation of fear and greed to achieve their nefarious ends. Neither could exist in a sane society, but like it or not, I think the most sane (or least insane) societies are presently more capitalist than communist.
 
Curious - What's the probability of a second referendum at this point?

Who knows... only a very small minority of MP's are up for leaving the EU, free trade and customs union etc...


...and it seems that any party which openly sets itself against the referendum is toast. All parties have to sing the same song to ensure the brexit issue is normalised. The whole referendum thing was just a fuckup by the Conservatives who wanted to stop their party fracturing. We'll see what happens to the party leader, after the Conservative 1922 committee meets on Tuesday... May's speech was interesting... she said she would form a government, but then left out any mention of herself, preferring instead to only refer to this government... the Conservative & Unionist Party takes center stage... lol... it's the first time I've heard them use that official name south of the border @3:01...

 

What the DUP want is open borders between the North and South of Ireland:

Among the price for supporting a minority Conservative government will be commitments from May that there will be no poll on Irish unity and that no hard border is imposed on the island of Ireland. Foster and her party did back a Brexit vote last year but have publicly stated that they are opposed to customs posts, border installations and roadblocks. Yet while her party is unashamedly socially conservative the DUP will avoid including any controversial social policies such as opposition to gay marriage or abortion in its shopping list of demands to the Tories, party sources said.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/11/abortion-dup-gay-marriage-election

God only knows what will happen. We may end up with another election. It's a total screw up by Teresa May. She could have avoided this by not making the mess over the "dementia tax" and by engaging in TV debates with Corbyn. She was just too complacent and reliant on a small number of personal advisors, the key ones of whom have now resigned.

All that said, Labour is acutely aware that if they don't want to alienate Labour voters who are in support of Brexit, they have to support it, as they indicated in their manifesto -- and in truth, Corbyn himself is a Brexiteer.
 
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