Starmer's resigned

[Sadcafe]

So the admittedly boring but truly decent PM has announced his resignation and the egotistical, pompous Burnham will doubtless become PM. God help the country

Being unpopular with the voters for a politician is like a plumber who can"t fix pipes, it is basically not much use to anyone. KS seemed to have convinced himself that he had a "duty" to fulfil, but he couldn"t bring the country into his vision (whatever it was?)

My opinion recently has been - be very careful what you wish for.

If that makes you feel better, so be it.
I'm sure that's what Starmer is telling himself too.

He’s not going to “act hard” with the bond market. He’s quite clearly said he’s going to stick with the existing fiscal rules. There’s nothing to stop him using the equivalent of war bonds to raise money for defence. I’d buy them.

No, being unpopular with voters is like being a plumber who’s not very liked by his clients. Means nothing about his ability to do the job. It could affect his opportunities to do it.

Appointing Mandy was the equivalent of installing a toilet in the shower, he doesn"t have the ability to do the job properly.

And again, these posts evidence perfectly why there should never have been a referendum. My grasp of economics is absolutely fine thanks (MBA from a very good business school). Good enough to know that I don't have nearly enough expertise to even start to quantify the impact of leaving the EU and also good enough to know that it was a very, very daft thing to do.

Graphs, eh? Bloody hell. Imagine that. What a crazy approach.

🙄

So you can"t quantify the impact but you know it was a very very daft thing to do? My earlier comment about economists and business degrees still stands.

Do you have a graph of the harm Brexit has done to the average poster on here?

No, I don’t. Why on earth would I? I just thought your post was remarkably silly.

It is true you need to be okay with graphs to do an MBA. That would clearly be enough to put you off. And all the lecturers would be talking shite.

Hypothetically - if we rejoin the EU and after 10 years, there is no evidence that rejoining has improved our economy/productivity - and in the meantime a whole host of new annoyances with EU membership is evident - would you be fine with yet another referendum to come out again?

I think I have made it very clear that I don't believe such matters should be decided by referendum. Rejoining is far from straightforward and it is a very different prospect from not having left in the first place. Nobody is saying that everything was/is perfect with the EU but we actually had good terms before and that position has been squandered whatever happens in the future.

For it to have real world relevance you have to be able to draw conclusions that you can act on or that actually are conclusions, otherwise it is just financial philosophy or worse political ideology.

Only squandered because the current EU leadership don"t believe in democracy, they believe in using economic threats to assert their political will, they will run out of road with that at some point but in the meantime the UK has to be "punished" for daring to Leave. I really hope the public in France or Germany tell them to fuck off soon.

You two are perfect examples of Dunning-Kruger principle. @KeepPumping has a little knowledge but not enough to appreciate how much is she doesn't know, while @LaurelWillow understands the complexity of an issue that is beyond the grasp of lay people like us. @LaurelWillow is talking a lot of sense.

People despise the man. You cannot liken him to a plumber ffs. His main job is to lead. Lead his country and his party. He is not a leader, by any metric.

Completely agree.
I also agree that Brexit shouldn't have gone to a referendum. It was simply too complex for people to understand the implications of either staying or leaving. Independent political experts and people whose job it was to know about trade, economics, trends etc. didn't all agree which was the best course of action. And they had more of the boring smallprint details in front of them.
If they didn't know what we should do, how the hell was I supposed??! /

So to round up many of the continuing posts, recently, on this thread. The person who should be judged the worst PM in recent times should be David Cameron. Whichever way you judge Brexit - Cameron was arrogant, self-assured and oh so very wrong.

When you look at it like that, yes I suppose you are right. He will certainly be in the history books for this.

The trouble is all the parties are shit and none can ever make a real difference due to the 4 year time period and so pander to the public popularity rather than making decent change.

I think most people understood the trading benefits, i.e. what people voted for when we first joined the EEC.

What came next is the problem, i.e. free movement of people, European courts, prospects of single currency, prospects of common EU armed forces, talk of common/aligned taxation policies, etc.

Most people would have been happy to go back to an EEC style of trading agreement as a result of Brexit. I don't know the detail, but isn't that what May tried to get through Parliament, i.e. a "soft" Brexit which the MPs repeatedly voted against!

But didn't he win his GE with one of his manifesto promises being a referendum?? If I remember that rightly, then the people voted for a referendum.

Yes, that is what I remember and that it was another jumping to the tune that Farage was setting.

Perhaps our politicians need to get ahead of the game then if Farage is calling the shots. How about they start listening to people and actually tackling things themselves?