Seven PMs in 10 years, what's gone wrong with the UK?

[supercrone]

As an outsider, it's kind of fascinating to watch. The PMs span both parties, so you can't really blame one party or another. What's the problem guys?

Non EU citizens in the EU do not have freedom of movement to the UK. Never have done as the UK has remained out of Schengen.

No he won’t, agreed. It was a last chance sell in but it didn’t work.

Big Brother.

Everything's a game show, so we just vote people out to get our little high. Then it drops and we need another one. What got us excited? Voting someone out. Let's do it again! This pm is unpopular, according to what I've read online, so let's vote him out.

Hmm. Don't like this one either. They're telling me/ not telling me what to do. They're simultaneously being a nanny state but letting companies charge me too much for things. Vote them out!

This one has stopped the boats. But now they're telling me i can't have any rights in work. And they haven't cut my taxes. Vote them out!

And so it goes, faster and faster each time, with no one ever given the time to try and change things and the idiots in their own parties jumping on the bandwagon instead of holding the line.

Under EU rules, it was free movement of labour, not people. Any country could remove people who were not working after a fixed period of time. The UK didn't manage that because its people had a pathetic aversion to ID cards - we were too incompetent to track who was actually here.

Newcomers were also not entitled to housing and benefits.

Fact are so inconvenient.

Freedom of movement flows both ways

That’s got nothing to do with what I said.

You are just being another Vitalstatistix “the sky will fall in” poster.

Brexit was not a good thing, IMO. But it wasn’t the end of the world. I do wish thinking people would calm down about it.

MPs turned on Starmer due to pressure from their constituents - the public. They are desperate to keep their jobs.

In practice yes, but there were loopholes.

Out of the 6.4 million EU citizens who opted to settle post-Brexit, 541k were non-EU who had come in via EU loopholes.

Stupidly, the UK never kept proper records of EU citizens living here.

Brexit isn't quite as bad a expected, what a win.

Brexit.

Whichever way we may have voted back in 2016, most people can now agree that leaving the EU has been a complete disaster. As a result of Brexit, the UK is poorer, more divided, less influential & weaker than we were as full members of the EU. Our economy has basically flatlined ever since.

It’s not just about economics, though. Brexit exposed & created fault lines in our society which divide us more now than ever. The end of free movement of EU citizens plus the continued addition of service, distribution & care sectors of the economy to limitless cheap migrant labour caused a massive influx of people from third world countries which has caused so much anger & resentment, particularly in white working class communities.

Under EU rules, it was free movement of labour, not people.

Retirees? Students? Non-working spouse?

Any country could remove people who were not working after a fixed period of time.

With some difficulty;

Economically inactive EU citizens
Can you be requested to leave or be deported?

In exceptional cases, your host country can deport you on grounds of public policy or public security - but only if it can prove you represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/residence-rights/inactive-citizens/indexen.htm

Newcomers were also not entitled to housing and benefits

2015 - An EEA citizen who moves to the UK and is determined to be a ‘worker’ is immediately eligible for in-work benefits like tax credits and housing benefit.
However, their work must be considered ‘genuine and effective‘.

An EEA citizen who arrives without a job and is still looking for work cannot receive means-tested jobseekers’ allowance, child tax credit or child benefit within the first three months, under new regulations that came into force during 2014. These jobseekers must also pass the ‘habitual residence test‘ in order to claim. This test considers various factors including the measures they have taken to establish themselves in the UK and find work here.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/election-2015-briefing-migration-and-welfare-benefits/

It wasn’t a win. But it doesn’t warrant the catasprophising either.

Similar to what happens with cricket coaches and football managers.

Our economy has basically flatlined ever since Brexit @SpottyAlpaca

This is fake news. It has been sluggish, but not flatlined.

Germany's economy has flatlined though, is that what you meant?

What we have lost in GDP would have made people's lives easier

Self inflicted damage.

It happened

On the day before the Brexit referendum someone pointed out that whatever happened it wouldn't be the end of the world and it wasn't. We cannot know for certain how our lives would have been in the parallel universe because we are not there, still in the EU. I get weary of the drama over the Brexit vote. All the time, in the political life of any country, all sorts of things happen which might send everything haywire. We have to pick up as best we can and carry on and hope that laws get tweaked. I'm thinking of the fishing industry, without knowing big details.

People have become used to instant everything. The parcel MUST arrive yesterday. We can't possibly drink water until we go shopping at the end of the week. We MUST have Red Bull now, in flowing abundance. The PM has not fixed everything perfectly. He MUST go.

What we want, and used to have, were conviction politicians who had the whole country’s interests at heart and stuck up for the UK.

Whatever anyone thinks of Thatcher, Major, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak that was their core. Whether good, rubbish, incompetent or embarrassing, they did work to the end of making the country as a whole better off, economically and generally.

Starmer’s problem, or at least one of them, was that there was no sense that he ever cared about the country as a whole, just his favoured little metropolitan slice of it.

Let’s hope Burnham’s better.

One of the reasons Brexit went badly was because many of the remainers fought to have a rerun and /or disputed much of the new legislation - Boris got in to ‘get Brexit done’ because of the infighting that was stopping it - T May was getting nowhere despite her best efforts - this prolonged the angst for 4 years which did t help matters

Just compare the number of Prime Ministers before and after Brexit….

But as agreed earlier, the overall wealth of the UK has increased.

So someone is doing OK

Yes that didn’t sound right, it was FOM not labour.

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/democracy-eu-citizenship-anti-corruption/free-movement-and-residence_en

The rules are here, including some scenarios. No, you can't just walk in, claim a house and benefits. And individual countries set their own rules within the framework, which the UK signally failed to do. The problems the UK had with the EU were of its own making and could have been sorted. But of course blaming the big bad EU is easier.

No other PM is going to be able to do a better job at this point so ousting Starmer isn’t gonna save them. Labour is out at the next election and that would be the same if Starmer stayed or left.

Yes, that looks likely.

What Labour MPs have done is to try to save their positions and salaries by getting shot of Starmer. It had nothing to do with political beliefs or ideas, let alone ideals. They’re just public sector Labour machine hangers-on.

Labour is a sad party now. It’s all shouty fools, middle-class ex-trade union executives and special interest groups. The days of Wilson and Callaghan, i.e. days of principle and an understanding of the country as a whole, are long gone.