FFS mamamia. Look at who is pushing for this. Joint the dots.
Mummy, I posted this on another thread in response to the ‘we can just vote the bad lot out after Brexit is done” point:
You are over stating the power we have as individuals in our representative democracy. If Parliament decided to revoke A50 tomorrow what power do you have to stop this?
People generally don’t vote for a party due to a single policy, ie, if you polled everyone who voted Tory in the last 10 years to ask if they supported benefit cuts for disabled people I assume the majority would say no, but they voted Tory anyway and the cuts happened in any event.
Take for example deregulation of food standards and the privatisation of the NHS. IMO it plays out as the below:
Government to Daily Mail General Trust: US are insisting we take their chlorinated chicken and privatise some NHS services to get the trade deal over the line. Public would need to make contributions for some elective surgeries. We have identified elective joint replacement as a good starting point and could really use your support on this.
Owner of DMGT: Invests in US agricultural and healthcare companies and then runs the following stories on chicken:
A dailymail study shows 90% of the chicken on sale in our supermarkets contains harmful bacteria that could KILL you.
I almost died of salmonella poisoning from unsafe chicken (daily mail sad face).
British people are overpaying for chicken: US people pay x% less
On NHS:
Data shows that 90% of patients who had joint replacement surgery in last 5 years had a BMI of 30 or more.
Joint replacement surgery took up X amount of NHS budget in last 3 years, meanwhile people with Cancer lose out.
X% of NHS trusts are failing to meet budget requirements, this is affecting patient safety, PHE warn.
Before you know it, the average daily mail reader is saying this: “what’s so bad about chlorinated chicken? It is safer and cheaper. And people don’t have to buy it if they don’t want to, i’m sure Waitrose aren’t going to suddenly stop selling their organic corn fed chickens, they can just buy them like I do.” And “why should us thin people be penalised for the choices of obese people, they are a drain on the NHS and it’s only right they should contribute. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t have BUPA anyway, they were excellent with my FIL’s knee replacement” etc etc.
Meanwhile, average Mumsnet Tory voter is saying this, “I’m not saying i support all of their policies, but for our family they make the most economic sense and I’m going to obviously vote for what is best for us.”
Until we have much stricter regulation on who can become an MP in the first place (ie no one who has any interests/family interests in investments as they are open to creating policy for financial gain) and stronger punishments for MPs who mislead the public (ie jail time for telling us 5 weeks is necessary to prepare for Queens speech when they have just done it in a few days) then we can’t trust that MPs actually have our best interests at heart or that they will go ahead and implement any of the policies in their manifestos.