Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

Our health system will get the resources it needs, but we must have a conversation about what it does. Slowness of response on some things has cost people their lives. Now not all of the resp for that attaches to Johnson, public health is of course a local responsibility

No it won't, he hasn't the money and neither will he address the staff shortages, no extra pay for already low paid nurses and social care workers.
Council services have been hammered since 2010, inc Public health, who don't have the powers to deal with a global pandemic, their role is usually local food poisoning etc plus Bojo sidelined them very early on.

He dithered, boosted of shaking hands, toyed with herd immunity and wasted weeks messing about, he is ultimately responsible for many additional deaths.

Worse: he made fun of and criticised both Nicola Sturgeon and Sadiq Khan for trying to take action while he was procrastinating on a formal lockdown.

And despite what LouiseCollins said, it was very difficult for businesses and the devolved administrations to take stronger unilateral action earlier as WM holds control over welfare.

Brexit delivery (tax in post). Finally some of the shower of contemptible shysters who utterly failed as our elected representatives during 2016-2019 were elbowed aside for a new majority government. Finally setting us on the path to leaving the EU.

Would you care to name them? Was an MPs function only to support Brexit? How about scrapping Parliament altogether and ruling by referendum?
Some I would call shysters: Priti Patel, Gove, Raab, Johnson himself.

Others who are people of integrity but were chased out of the party:
Ken Clarke, who was going to retire anyway.
Nicholas Soames, Rory Stewart, Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening - all conscientious MPs who believed it was their duty to act in the best interests of their constituents and the country, and if they thought the course of action was wrong to say so.

Consider the rest of the current Tory mob - remember that it was a Manifesto pledge to maintain our food standards in any deal with the USA. How did the Tories vote - every last one to vote down an amendment to make sure that Parliament could scrutinise any deals to make sure this commitment was held to. Taking back control, hey, or being spineless apparatchiks?

What Peregrina said. Shame on you, Louise. MPs are not just there for the 52%. The rest of us are also entitled to see our views represented.

Thanks red

Good. Erm. Well lockdown has got my DD out of school for 4 months and away from her disablist bully of a teacher, which has meant we've got her mental health back on track.

Bad. Well I'm not sure I've the time to list that

@pointy - I think we all know by now that as far as the 52% are concerned the other 48% don't count at all.
I hope Louise is still hanging around over the next few years , to explain how great it is that the nhs has been dismantled , manufacturing and farming is all but decimated, food standards are destroyed.......

Peregrina it would be a very long list so I won’t, but basically, if an MP voted to hold the referendum and then subsequently voted other than to enact the result they are in the group I was talking about. Ken Clarke did not do this, and so isn’t in said group. A lot of the ERG membership, would for example have found themselves in this group on that measure during thre period 2016-2019.

MPs are absolutely not just there for the 52% I agree with you. Pre 2019 election no Brexit deal acceptable to a majority of MPs could be found.

Good sides:
BJ is making a pretty good job at ensuring that will not be elected again for a very long time
BJ has shown his true incompetence whilst handling Covid.
The EU will be able to work on rebuilding their economy wo the U.K. trying to stop them constantly
Covid has shown me how crap my life has been in the past 10 years or so. And that I shouldn’t settle for that.
Newspapers sttarting to be more critical again of the government. I take great pleasure in seeing articles screaming about the slight issue of Russian interference et paying the eTories...

Bad:
Long list of attacks on democracy, human rights, lies, paying fuck load of money for nothing etc...

@ICouldHaveCheckedFirst

Louise you wrote "Covid: I have been so heartened to see that if necessary our government (any colour) can intervene in such a major way".

I expected better from you. The intervention could and should have been so much better. The delay in locking down has cost thousands of lives and the consequence is a lengthy lockdown that has done untold damage to the economy and to school children (some reckon the effects on education will be felt for 65 years).

But, 'not Corbyn', so it's all good, isn't that your baseline?

I actually agree on the delay of lockdown. I think it was probably too slow. My point was that I wasn’t confident pre-Covid that a government (any government) could actually do this and have citizens and businesses actually comply. I was and remain pleased to see that they can do this if required. Credit for the compliance (by and large) attaches to the people rather than the government.

Not Corbyn wasn’t my “baseline”, no. though I’m pleased he didn’t become PM. I am also pleased that the government chose to intervene massively in the economy to support people’s livelihoods (in a very Labour type way to my eyes) Just for info, I live close enough to Leicester that I am currently still in lockdown!

"if an MP voted to hold the referendum and then subsequently voted other than to enact the result they are in the group I was talking about."

An MP is entitled to change their mind when the situation changes
Especially if they realise the country is facing economic / trade disaster

Most people expected some kind of Norway deal - after being told so often before the ref that
"why can't we be like Norway" and that noone was talking about leaving the Single market

Some Remainers talk about the voters being conned by fake promises:

A lot of MPs were conned
Many thought they were giving the chance to vote on 2 reasonable options, even if one (Borway) was not as good as the other

If MPs had been told they were voting for a ref on remain vs No Deal / Bare Bones tariffs & quotas deal
imo the bill would never have passed

Remember, the Tory party hadn't been ideologically cleansed back then and there would have been enough moderate Tories and Labour to join with LDems to vote it down

Borway ?
Norway !
A bit boring, true, but not a disaster

When some of us said before the ref that we feared a hard Brexit - and few of us really expected No Deal after Brexit - we were shouted down as Project Fear

Project Reality is not what most MPs thought they were voting to allow, when they voted for the ref.

Louise
If you still think that MPs are there to reflect the rabid misunderstandings of a minority of their electorate
then you are deluded

Louise
Just to reiterate
MPs represent everybody in the constituency

• those able to vote
• those too young to vote
• those not allowed to vote for various reasons

it is therefore legally incumbent on them to take account of the views of every person currently living in their constituency on all issues not just a narrow knee jerk to 24% of the residents on something 4 years ago

We have left the EU based on a vote that was in all probability influenced by Russia, yet there will be no investigation into if this did indeed happen.

Just 600k votes needed to be swung.

Either way, it is a result that Russia wanted, guided by a man who lived in post Soviet Russia for 4 years, something that pre 1989 would have precluded him from ever getting into Whitehall, much less become the PMs aide and confidant.

If the MPs wanted make the referendum binding, then they should have made it a statutory one rather than an advisory one .

The Indyref in contrast was a statutory one.

Ironically, MPs voted against the SNP amendment to make it a statutory referendum - and doubly ironically, should, in the Indyref, Yes have won by 52:48 (even with its statutory backing), I think there would have been more done by the ScotGov to reassure the concerns of the No voters (I had a conversation with Nicola Sturgeon on that very topic while I was helping with canvassing - and I've heard her since saying that she would want any vote to be won by at least 60:40).

In most (every?) countries where referendums are used regularly, changes to their constitution (which the EU Referendum in effect was) require a super majority to pass.

And that's before you get into the debate about the manipulation, misleading "promises" and the lies false claims that "no-one is talking about leaving the Single Market" that will have may or may not have swung the final result.

But as had been said many times on many of these (and other) Brexit threads: that is now water under the bridge . We. Have. Left. BJ did as he promised. He "got Brexit done".

The Conservative Government - and BJ in particular - now needs to own the consequences. All the consequences. Not the EU. Not the Remainers. Not the Tory rebels. Not the Irish.

The Government.

So the citizens of Eire are, according to yesterday's approved MFF, down to contribute 3102 euros per capita to the EU budget annually? Which is twice the contribution to be paid by German citizens and three times more than French citizens. More than any country than Luxembourg. I won't speculate but I reckon there will be some feathers flying quite soon.

All figures are per capita, for clarity and comparison.

Ireland will be getting a lot back - has been getting it back - with support for trading after Brexit

Any British efforts to stir up Irish feeling over anything are generally hampered by centuries of massacre, torture, genocide
to say nothing of the post-ref demonisation of Ireland for not rolling over for the glorious Brexit

Just popping on to let you know that in another round of 'you couldn't make it up' - Grant Shapps flew out to Spain on holiday this morning 😳

Tory Brexiters have been very surprised all along to find that Ireland's interests are not what Brexiters think they ought to be

All travellers returning from Spain to UK to quarantine from midnight

Was Grant Shapps flying on vacation ?
Even if he was, I somehow doubt he'll be quarantined for 14 days - maybe a self-isolating eye test somewhere

Even if he was, I somehow doubt he'll be quarantined for 14 days - maybe a self-isolating eye test somewhere
Two legs good
Four legs bad

My post wasn't intended to highlight what Ireland is getting back from the deal, merely the idiosyncratic allocation of cost. Which sounds at best whimsical and at worst punitive given the disparity between Irish incomes and German incomes. Surely, Ireland will get money back on the deal... but will it compensate for being asked for the 2nd highest contribution in the EU, with one of the lower average incomes? Not an economist personally, but if I saw those facts, I'd think I was being shafted.

@XingMing - don't be disingenuous- of course your trying to stir it up - it's so bloody transparent.
If you follow these threads you'll know that I spoke a couple of days ago of the very open hostility in the ROI to England - only trumped by thy towards Americans ..... which is an interesting development.