The UK will not re-join the EU in the lifetimes of most on here, even EFTA/EEA membership is unlikely due to the FOM requirement, that is the reality.
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To be perfectly honest, as a French citizenI donât want the UK in the EU. Nowt but whingers and moaners.Keep well out and let the rest of us enjoy the benefits.
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Not so sure about that.
First, itâs very hard for a lot of people to admit they were wrong, even when presented with overwhelming evidence - probably especially true of leave voters. My guess is that large numbers of them, while telling opinion pollsters they havenât changed, would be secretly very happy to go along with small steps to return.
Second, the long-term trend towards rejoin is very clear (see my post The worm has turned... Update: turn accelerating - #20 by Geof_Cox) and will be gradually further reinforced not only by more leave voters changing their minds, but also demographics - 16-year-olds will be voters in 2 yearsâ time, when figures like this start to really matter, and over three-quarters of them will be rejoiners - and the only demographic in favour of leave by similar margins will have gone to the sunlit uplands in the sky. Or not.
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Although I have some sympathy for your arguments, a 52:48 for Remain conclusion is in line with current Rejoin/stay out polling.
UK public opinion on EU membership remains balanced on a hair, despite the obvious damage done by Brexit.
That might change given the increasing view that it was a mistake to leave (though this is not the same as thinking it would be right to seek to return), there might even be a sudden âflipâ in public opinion - but right now: nope.
Itâs all a bit academic though - we arenât coming back any time soon.
Good point.
Sadly, also a good point.
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But who will they vote for?
Lhe Tories definitely wonât pursue rejoin, they wonât even pursue closer alignment.
Labour wonât pursue rejoin, though at least they have sort-of said they will be less antagonistic towards the EU than the current government
Even the LibDems are being quiet on the matter.
The Green Party manifesto talks confusingly of âreforming Europeâ from a position of not being a member, they did talk about âremainingâ but in 2019 when weâd already left (though at that point we were still effectively members).
OK, the manifesto is two years old and an awful lot has happened since then but it does illustrate the confusion that reigns in most parties on the issue.
Labour are taking 2024 as a given, probably true but they could still take too much for granted.
The problem is that they will need four or five terms - the first to sort of try to fix Brexit, the second to start to say âwell we tried but it really is a bad ideaâ, the third to try to form public opinion and get a consensus to rejoin, the fourth to approach the EU and the fith to make it happen.
The reality is they run the risk of getting one and being kicked out in 2028/9 because thereâs too much damage to fix in one term and political memories are very short.
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Well, I wasnât really seeing it in those terms - I think itâs more about the weight of public opinion gradually registering more and more with all of the parties.
I tend to have a much broader view based on economics rather than what each party says it will do - and I still donât see anything to change the analysis Iâve so far seen unfolding in reality over many years, which isâŠ
Large sections of electorates across the developed world have moved away from the political centre. This has many causes, but the most significant are the 2008 financial crash - or rather the failure of economies to recover from it - and climate/ecological breakdown. Lots of people are hungry for change. The centrist ideology (things are not too bad, radical change is risky, best to tinker with incremental changes) just doesnât hack it. This is why in the UK the Tories moved rightwards and Labour moved leftwards - there was no strategy to it on either side, no choice even. If the Tories had not adopted the UKIP agenda they would have been destroyed by the split rightward-moving vote - for Labour it was the simple fact that the membership reflected the leftward-moving vote (and by moving back towards the centre, Labour has now lost a quarter of a million members). You can, I believe, see precisely similar movements throughout most of the developed world - and indeed beyond.
I think Labour will win the next general election by default - but they werenât doing at all well until the Tories imploded, and I donât really think they have any basis to be a successful government - indeed, I think they will oversee further movements of voters to political extremes precisely because they will try to stick to centrist ideology and therefore fail to adopt effective solutions to the huge problems facing the country.
I actually think there will have to be some kind of fundamental re-alignment of parties. I see strong parallels for the Tories with the âCorn Lawsâ split, and on the left with the transition at the start of the 20th century from Liberal to Labour dominance (if Starmer wins big in 2024 I think he should look very closely at exactly what happened after the huge Liberal win in 1906 (wasnât it?) - a victory, as they say, from which they never recovered).
And as for the EU, I donât think whoâs in power will make a dramatic difference - as Greta Thunberg says: nature doesnât care what you think. Regardless of ideology, the practical case for alignment to facilitate trade with the UKâs near neighbours is overwhelming, and will only get stronger as climate/ecological breakdown erodes globalisation; the economic, social and indeed constitutional issues that will press on government and media and everybody else will make it seem like a small thing - and as soon as alignment is accepted, really single market etc membership will also seem another small, logical step - as will subsequently rejoining the EU, though I agree this will take longer, and may encounter some resistance from existing members.
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No, letâs divert that ÂŁ350 million to MPsâ friends for flaky PPE contracts instead.
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Did you see the latest Private Eye exposĂ© of this Karen ? I canât remember if Iâve already posted a linkâŠ
It may be a little too late, but they may be trying to reflect the previous views of those in the redwall seats who voted conservative because their labour MPs werenât listening. Of course those same people may now wish to return to the EU, so they could still be out of touch.
Starmer was on R4 this morning, actually mostly sounding sensible, if a little uninspiring.
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not seen⊠is it firewalled?
Not firewalled but only in .pdf - itâs here:
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It is so disgraceful. I have to limit my intake of this stuff for sanity and health reasons. You steal some food from Tesco to feed your kids and they call the police, you rob the Nation and the BBC doesnât even report it.
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How do these bastards come to power, and in such numbers⊠Mogg, Patel, Hancock, Gove, Truss, Kwarteng, Dorries, too many to mention. Itâs a Government of shifty, crooked arrogant bastards supported by the shrewd, corrupt and well connected rich. But I donât blame them, they are just being their despicable selves, itâs the Alf Garnett idiots who vote for them and then whinge about the results I blame.
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Started to read the article then gave up after 3 pages before I topped myself - depressing reading.
Really interesting analysis here:
and now⊠disastrous foreign policy 
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More evidence that the Tory Party might well split:
And in todayâs Observer
"David White from Barnsley⊠was a Tory councillor⊠but then defected and joined Reform UK. He is one of 9,000 nationally who⊠have signed up over the last two monthsâŠ
âWhen I announced the switch to Reform, I looked at my Facebook page with a little bit of trepidation,â says White. âI was expecting a bit of stick, but I had massive support, even from core Conservatives.ââ
The point is that the Tories had no alternative but to embrace an extreme right agenda - if they hadnât, they would have been electorally destroyed by the split vote between themselves and the UKIP/Brexit Party. This was too much for many more centrist Conservatives, who left or were expelled. So what happens now if the Reform Party siphons off more members, councillors, voters, etc - for an even more extremist âtrue brexitâ - by which they mean something pretty indistinguishable from fascism?
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What seemed very odd to me when I read that âwe didnât vote for thisâ article is that it mentions initially that Reform UK is the latest incarnation of the Brexit Party, then spends the rest of the article talking as though itâs some new upstart. While people didnât vote for TBP en masse in elections it seems far smarter to treat them as an established experienced party who know what theyâre doing than some new rabble of incompetents. Overestimate them rather than underestimate them.