Westminstenders: Silly Season

[RedToothBrush]

It's that time of year again when politicians seem to completely lose their marbles in order to impress the faithful. And it is beginning to feel like conference season is increasingly an exercise in religious ferver to the party rather than considering what's in the best interests of the whole country.

Labour have got off to a good start before their conference opens, by almost starting complete melt down.

The Tories have promised to break from convention and try and over shadow the others, so that's something to look forward to.

And early this week we have the supreme Court ruling which could, regardless of which direction it swings, have massive ramifications for our democracy.

Big week ahead.

MissClimpson Many Uk citizens are genuinely expats in that they may return someday

There are many who were posted there for a few years, or 10 years, or who intend to retire in the UK but spend their working life abroad

I had thought expats were in the majority, but I've no statistics, so may just be my own experiences ?

I call myself an expat because I emigrated a few days after the referendum (and literally days before my 60th birthday) because of Brexit .... and might return if sanity does

Before then, I'd worked mostly in Germany since the late 1980s, but I had intended to stay permanently in the UK after age 60

Please, please can people stop saying "expat" pensioners. We are migrants.

If we're debating semantics, then I would suggest that migrant is not the right word either. It implies a degree of agency that returning UK citizens will not possess.

Deportees might be more accurate, if less desirable for tabloid consumption ?

If (and it's still an if) it were to happen en masse from the EU27, it would be horribly reminiscent (for people of a certain age) of the Ugandans who Idi Amin deported with 48 hours notice in the 70s. (One of whom was my best friend in primary and middle school).

DG The spivs can easily make their fortunes from the #5/6/...20 ? economy in the world, a $2 trillion economy, if they are the ones making key decisions

Emily
It needs the sort of governance we used to take for granted, evidence gathering, a white paper, cross party working etc to arrive at a detailed plan not just some easy crowd pleasing promises.

Definitely. 39 months ago today, and really it seems like nothing much constructive has happened.

That three years could have been constructively spent on putting climate change plans into action, for example.

Has anyone done research on how such a long period of stasis can affect a country longterm?

Has anyone done research on how such a long period of stasis can affect a country longterm?

Hasn't Japan been sort of stuck for years ?

DG I'm sure it won't be mass "deportations" as such,
i.e. not expelling all Brits who won't / can't take out EU citizenship

The EU Commission and EU Parliament have already ruled that members must allow UK citizens resident in E27 countries to remain

However, that is a bare bones permission,
since they can't order member countries to allow Brits to have more rights than other non-EEA citizens

So, many UK citizens may simply be unable, in practical terms, to stay

That may also happen to expats living off UK pensions which have already reduced quite suddenly in value,
especially if Sterling plummets much further after No Deal

==> and also in the future, if the UK govt spitefully decides to freeze the state pension for expats living in the EU
I've heard rumours of this

Pretty I did not think residential care was covered in Scotland? Only the social care aspect at home?

Many Uk citizens are genuinely expats in that they may return someday

Id be totally on board with that distinction.

Except that British Kipper-types (I don't mean you BCF just a general observation!) draw a very different distinction: "expats" are any English people living abroad for any reason/length of time; "immigrants" are any foreign people living in the UK for any reason/length of time.

With the implicit value judgement that one is fiiiiiiine but the other is a bad thing (cf. how they always end up coming back to "immigration" as the special concern of the Willy of the People, that Brexit needs to address).

I'd imagine that a large proportion of the Eastern European young people who migrated to the UK post-expansion, probably did intend this to be a short-term career-improving, horizon-enlarging, move before heading off elsewhere.

Big Choc What I want is good governance, politicians presenting credible solutions to complex problems and then selling them to the electorate. I might disagree with a plan but I could respect it if it had a democratic mandate. I disagreed with Thatcher but I can respect that she had a credible plan to address the country’s economic problems and she implemented it and sold it to the country despite the difficult challenges and won elections even if I hated what was happening to society as a result.

It is blatantly a failure of social policy to have a generation of the elderly inadequately cared for and clogging up NHS wards as a result.

Wanting some sort of social policy implemented to address the issues isn’t populist, I may well not agree with it but if it tackles the issues I would respect it. There is no substance to the policies coming from either Bozo or the Labour Party, or should I say Cummings and Milne, that I can respect. The only reason they get away with it is that most people don’t know /don’t care / don’t want to know what is happening to the vulnerable elderly. Had my daughter not spent six days in hospital I would not have appreciated how bad it had got. We all know and care that the NHS is under threat. I didn’t quite appreciate how overwhelmed it is by the casualties of this failure of social policy.

BigChoc my understanding is that "expat" refers to people working for UK institutions / companies who are temporarily based abroad. I don't see how that can be applied to pensioners.

DG I'm sure it won't be mass "deportations" as such

"sure" is not a word for Brexit. If we were to pool all the things we were "sure" about 3 years ago, it's unlikely they have all panned out. After all, we were "sure" we'd leave on 29th March ...

There was never a golden age of cross-party agreements on most Labour - or Tory - manifesto proposals
Even / especially the controversial ones

e.g. There was no cross-party agreement before MrsT made massive changes that reshaped the country,
such as selling off Council Houses and privatising many public services

e.g. there was no cross-party agreement on the huge amounts Labour pumped into the NHS and the inflated salaries of some doctors

The Labour manifesto doesn't look that radical compared to some periods in the (distant) past before Blairism or even Kinnock
certainly not as radical as the 1945 Labour manifesto

It's more that the Overton window has shifted sharply since MrsT's first term

Michael Foot in 1983 was more radical:
e.g. Leave the Common Market & have Fortress Britain, go for Unilateral nuclear disarmament ....

He lost heavily - to be fair, possibly because a sizeable chunk of Labour split off to form the SPD
MrsT won a seat landslide, but actually got far fewer votes than Labour+the SDP / LDem Alliance

However, Blair won 3 GEs because he shifted to the centre, possibly even right of centre
Partly why he is a hate figure to many on the left and wholly why he is a hate figure to the right (since they cba about Iraq)

So to win GEs, being hard left hasn't worked in the last 4 decades

Now we'll see if being hard right works though - for a time

MissClimpson I've taken expat to mean anyone not emigrating permanently
Wiki seems to even include retired people:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriate

An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person residing in a country other than their native country.[1]

In common usage, the term often refers to professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either independently or sent abroad by their employers, which can be companies, universities, governments, or non-governmental organisations.[2]

However, the term 'expatriate' is also used for retirees and others who have chosen to live outside their native country.
Historically, it has also referred to exiles.[3]

Emily "Democratic mandate" can be taken for any policy in the manifesto of a party that wins a GE,
which in our system can be barely over 30% of about 70% who vote

Unless we have referenda though - which really does tend to populism - then that's the only system we have

Free care at home is likely very popular, more than most manifesto policies, probably gaining majority support,
since it would be universal, not just benefitting one group.
And it is something that is financially feasible, since Scotland already manages to have this

I've certainly seen from my late mum's friends that those with assets usually won't pay, for complex reasons and their health suffers - as does the NHS when they are admitted for additional falls & illnesses

re care homes - where imo assets should be used:
There is very vocal opposition - the sharp-elbowed better off again - whereas not many people seem in favour^
Maybe even those who don't own their homes believe they might do so someday

Looking even at MN threads on the topic of using assets for care homes - and MN is both much younger and more leftwing than the average voter - most folk seem against using assets for care homes

I guess it is just the evolution of language BigChoc. My DH worked a lot in Europe with expats from big American companies in the nineties. They were definitely a very different group from those who had moved permanently. We are it is true ex patria in the sense of the Latin phrase, but I still feel very uncomfortable as it feels as if expats are considered (especially by the popular press) as somehow superior to migrants.
So I will continue to self-define as migrant until I become a deportee.

Random18 - I think what happened was that the council made a contribution towards the care home costs (as she was assessed as needing full care) and her pension was enough to cover the rest. Don't think dad had to top up - but I didn't discuss it with him in detail. I do recall him telling me that he ended up getting a refund from the nursing home for the first couple of weeks, which he'd paid for himself. He did (obviously) stop getting carers' allowance once she moved into the home.

This is the current situation (although in mum's case, it was nearly 10 years ago - 2010- 2012, so it would have been slightly different). https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Support-Social-Care/Support/Adult-Social-Care/Free-Personal-Nursing-Caree*

The problem with Labour having Remain in its manifesto is that they and the LDems are then both chasing the 48% and splitting the vote.

No, not as much as you might think, because a lot of seats are Tory/Labour or Tory/potentially LibDem.

The 4-day week is something that might well get majority support from an over-stressed workforce

• not just from Labour -

but imo looks completely impractical and could bankrupt businesses or force them abroad  Lewis Goodall@lewis_goodall

A Labour commissioned study, led by Lord Skidelsky, into a mandatory 4 day working week reported only two weeks ago.
It said it would not be “realistic or even desirable.”

Thanks Pretty. I am trying to understand how it works at the moment.

That's encouraging, peregrina

However, in the North especially, there could be Labour vote losses to the BXP, letting in the Tory
Or even Lexiters voting Tory
We've seen a few Lexiters even on MN who seem inclined to switch their vote from Labour to a rightwing party, just until Brexit has happened

Depends on whether we get No Deal before a GE, as that could return Lexiters to Labour and alo change which party the BXP gets most votes from

It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of say the top 150 "marginals"

A member of my extended family is in this exact situation now, i.e. the dilemma about care at home or care in a care home. This person is resisting moving into a care home permanently . He’s a point where if it were up to me (and obviously it isn’t!) I would think the decision is a simple one and not negotiable, he should be in a care home. For him though, it isn’t, and the strength of opposition to a permanent move into one is very very powerful in my experience.

I mention this because I think it shows that a lot of the resistance to using “assets” as you are calling them for care home costs comes not from those who might inherit them in the future, but more strongly if our family experience is common, from those who’s assets they are now.

And of course, conservative Remainers possibly switching to a Remain party if Brexit hasn't happened

Centrist Remainers are quite likely to vote for whoever is the Remain candidate with the best chance in their own constituency

Lots of Labour Twitter about the 'class war' which I find very odd given that Labour don't really have any more of a working class base than any other party...

Two questions...

• When did Labour start calling each other Comrade? I don't remember it being a big thing other than the last couple of years...

It really grates. It's very petty but I can't help it.

• Why isn't John McD up for leadership after JC?

He's 'proper left' but seems to do an okay job (better than JC) at collaborating with the Tom Watson faction and he's much more statesman like and a better speaker than JC.

I believe there is something I've missed with John McD that means he wouldn't be considered but I don't know what it is as I wasn't following politics closely then...clues?

Joshua Rozenberg
@JoshuaRozenberg
·
7m
I understand the
@UKSupremeCourt
will indeed be giving judgment in the Miller/Cherry prorogation cases at 1030 tomorrow Tuesday.

Stand by!