Theresa May will now be required to present MPs with a new Brexit plan within three days if her current proposal is voted down next week. There is no indication that any such Plan B exists.
The amendment to the business motion for the plan, sponsored by the Conservative MP and former attorney general Dominic Grieve, forces May to meet a three day deadline to put forward new plans if she loses the main Brexit vote, as is expected, next Tuesday (UK time).
Grieve’s amendment was passed by 308 votes to 297 after furious scenes in the house, as Tory loyalists tried to browbeat the speaker, John Bercow, into refusing to allow the amendment to be out to the vote.
Bercow ultimately refused to be swayed, saying, in effect, that Parliament had the final say, not cabinet.
If the Tuesday vote on the May plan ends in defeat for the embattled PM, she will have three days to put forward alternatives.
If May can’t do so, then her resignation seems inevitable.
The most recent polling on Brexit is astonishing. Now that the reality of leaving the European union is better understood, a whopping 63% of those asked said they wanted the UK to remain, if the Tory deal was the only way out of Europe.
YouGov questioned more than 25,000 people over the Xmas/New year period. It put up two referendum scenarios. One was Remain versus the government’s withdrawal agreement.
Remain leads by 26 points: 63% to 37%.
If the choice is Remain versus leaving the EU without a deal, a hard Brexit, Remain wins by 16 points: 58% to 42%.
The difference in the gap is that it reflects those who voted Leave in 2016. Many of them voted for a clean break with Brussels, and reject an agreement that doesn’t “take back control”, as they were promised at the time of the referendum.
However, the news is no better for Labour. Jeremy Corbyn is likely to lead Labour to their worst electoral defeat in a generation if May decides to tough it out by calling a snap election.
Corbyn, a Brexiteer leading a remain minded party, has been hopelessly ineffective battling May, a Remainer leading a Brexit minded party.
YouGov say that Labour are trailing in the polls anyway, 40% to 34%. This is a piss poor for an opposition that should be monstering the divided and shambolic Conservatives.
YouGov report that when voters were are asked how they would vote if Labour didn’t effectively resist Brexit, the Tories would leap to a 17 point lead (43% to 26%). That would see Labour do worse than when Margaret Thatcher’s thumped them in 1983, post the Falklands war.
The key reason for this swing is that voters will reject Labour if they are seen to be helping Brexit in any way. YouGov’s polling says that Labour would be deserted by millions of Remain voters, and gain no support from Leave voters.
Both Corbyn and May have big choices to make in the next few days.
The best bet would be to politely ask Europe to taihoa, call a second referendum, and never mention Brexit again.
Or, to put it another way:
Keep Calm
and
Do Not Carry On
Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ... 
Voters are definitely underwhelmed by both leaders. Corbyn refrains from being a real leader due to the quagmire of doubt in voterland, I suspect. This thing about leaders being supposed to follow the public mood has become widespread. Real leadership has been missing in most western countries for so long you can’t blame younger generations for deciding that it no longer exists.
I agree the poll is highly significant. My take is that the Brexiteers have performed so poorly that their original support base has lost faith in them. Doesn’t mean voters will choose subservience to Brussels bureaucrats though. I reckon alienation from that shit will still prevent remaining – unless the eurocrat mandarins agree to ditch their mini-hitler attitude. Brits aren’t good at being servile.
Brexit was always stupid. Why was it needed? Business is harmed, citizens are harmed, as we move to a climate economy near is better than far..
So no surprise the Labour Party aren’t for picking up the hot potato. May tried to lose an election and save her party from oblivion. Yes, you simple cannot argue now tgat the Tories are competent on the economy…
The British need to do a classic muddle, ignore they ever had a referendum, and just wipe the Tory party of the face of the world, these ducks don’t deserve diddly. I meanfurst tgey dont do any work on what yes would mean, and then when they do win, they still dont do any detailed work on what it means.
The only way I can fathom the UK needing brexit, is to reverse out of all the gunk Tories have piled on top of the relationship with the eu, both Thatcher and Blair, that they need a clean slate to build a proper integrated eu with the UK inside.
good by pound.
Therein lies the problem. The Brits don’t want an integrated EU, that’s why there was a movement to leave it. Most could tolerate the old arrangement, but they certainly didn’t want MORE Europe.
If they stay in now, the EU will never integrate, as one of the key countries will be sitting there stalling and rejecting integration measures.
Both sides are now better off with Britain out. Europe will be the main beneficiary in the long term, they should just let them go.
I disagree, the right was always using the eu as a whipping boy and the joke was someone gave them a referendum. most have benefited by the eu, travel, relative moving their, time shares… ..Spain without UK holiday homes…
sorry better together, the fringe view of Europe was always that, a fringe.
“Why was it needed?” I gathered from the media accounts at the time that a groundswell of disgust with EU governance had been building for many years.
This was rationalised as a loss of sovereignty, with Eurocrats getting the blame for their bad decisions. In terms of mass psychology, British people felt the disrespect strongly, and developed antipathy to the cause. Not rocket science.
The pattern of socialists acting in contempt of the people when they achieve power has been evident to perceptive observers over the past century. Not all, but many feel exceptions prove the rule. Exceptions in EU governance haven’t been identified in the media, so conformity in poor performance has become total.
first off, I’m of the opinion that it does not follow anger at Europe was at Europe. bad outcomes for less than half of the UK that turned out coz so many thought it would not pass… …look most who voted for brexit were Labour voters fed up with the class system and so given the chance gave the Tories some of their own medicine, burn it down don’t worry the market will deal with it.
brexit is stupid, by the stupid few, to serve the stupider fewer. The UK still needs eu, will still need trade, economic integration, cultural interpolation everything the far right leaders of brexit hate, tgey will never win on my sausages need more fat than meat totems.
“The pattern of socialists acting in contempt of the people when they achieve power has been evident to perceptive observers over the past century. Not all, but many feel exceptions prove the rule. Exceptions in EU governance haven’t been identified in the media, so conformity in poor performance has become total.”
No idea at all what this is supposed to mean if anything??? Are you a bot commenter by any chance? Or perhaps a ‘perceptive observer’ in your own mind? Must try harder.
I don’t normally waste time trying to explain stuff to simple-minded folk, but here goes: bureaucrats stuff systems up, those in the EU do that better than most, and the Brits got pissed off with being unable to change that.
Not my view – just reporting the gist of what the media reported at the time of the Brexit campaign. You’d already know that if you’d been paying attention.
Unfettered immigration forcing down wages. The loss of jobs in the traditional manufacturing North of England are the 2 main reason’s Britain supported Brexit. But Brexit will and is damaging more manufacturing jobs,London is loosing its financial capital Status in the process £800 billion of financial business. The UK economy has had a short term boost so every business can stockpile for the worst case scenario. If No deal or Brexit continues it will be a disaster for the UK.
Corbyn on Brexit, November 09, 2018 06:00 PM.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-labour-leader-corbyn-we-can-t-stop-brexit-a-1237594.html
“Or, to put it another way:
Keep Calm
and
Do Not Carry On”
—
So not really democracy at all then.
People had a choice and they made their decisions. Just because the current government didn’t have the faintest idea how to manage Brexit doesn’t mean it is a bad idea.
They should have made a clean break from the outset instead of all this pussyfooting around as all it has achieved is to let the EU play them and make it as difficult as possible, probably in the hope that if they make it bad enough they will call another referendum and people will vote the other way.
This is the bind that Corbyn is in, Kevin. He doesn’t want his party to be seen as ignoring the referendum result, but, equally, his party is suffering because they are not reflecting the changing mood in England. And I do say England deliberately. The rest of the UK were never that sold on it.
There is also the lingering doubt that the referendum was fair in the first place. While a certain amount of puffery is allowed in advertising, the Leave campaigners appear to have outright lied, and in some cases, broken the law around financing. It could be argued that referendum was never legitimate.
The brexit referendum was badly designed and unfairly won so why is there so much deference to it ?
One of the clearest analyses of the current situation from Wren-Lewis’ blog ‘Mainly Macro’.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/01/brexit-referendum-was-badly-designed-and-unfairly-won-so-why-there-so-much
Corbyns main support base is in the North of England where Brexit has the most support so if he called for a referendum and May called an election saying she is still following through with Brexit he would loose that core support. He is better to wait it out and let the Tories destroy themselves.
“They should have made a clean break from the outset instead of all this pussyfooting around…”
I don’t know how they would have achieved that given that the referendum was called for party political purposes to try to appease the euro-sceptics that had been plaguing the Tory party for close to two decades. Given their history, there was no way the Tories could have agreed en masse how brexit should proceed.
The fundamental problem with the Brexit referendum vote was that the leave side had absolutely no plans about how to achieve the desired result or even what the desired result was. .
So consequentially the promises made a by the leave side ranged from getting something like a Norway type deal of being in the EU regulations without being part of the EU all the way to simply dropping out to WTO level. Similarly many of the advocates on the Leave side were the equivalent of errant fathers. The rough equivalent of running away with a wet dick and accepting no responsibility for their actions.
It was a pretty clear case of how to never run a referendum process. It simply wasn’t an informed referendum where there were two clear alternatives. It was one where there was a leave plan mishmash (and a ‘plan’ for every possible alternative) against a clear plan of staying in the EU.
The usual way of proceeding with this kind of process responsibly would always be to have several referendums like we did when we looked at changing our electoral process back in the 90s. First determine if there was a mood to look at a change (FPP and secondly the preferred one of several types of plan – MMP, STV, SM, or PV). Then present a runoff of the existing and the preferred alternative in another referendum.
Which is why they have a problem now. There are too many ideas about what ‘leave’ meant. And what voters are seeing is that whatever they wind up actually doing – May’s plan, the May ‘B’ plan, the Corbyn plan is he has one (seems unlikely), the crash out WTO plan, the wet dick an d no responsibility plan of the extreme leavers – the support for whatever leave plan they follow will be lower than remain.
Basically the fuckwits who put up a simple yes/no referendum are those ultimately responsible. Closely followed by the irresponsible opportunistic fools promising different and conflicting leave plans.
I’d anticipate that the stupidity of how the referendum was handled in this particular debate is going to fracture the UK society and political process for a number of generations. It is also detrimental because it means that the UK is unlikely to ever run a referendum again.
/agree
and now I’m finding it a little hard to feel any sympathy, especially when we’ll probably be faced with a number of ‘refugees’ (read economic immigrants) that’ll get preferential treatment over the genuine, or those that have already suffered the effects of all this muppetry
I’m sure that we will continue to get a lot of those. But you can guess my views on migrants.
Outside of our obligations under the UN refugee agreements that we signed up for (and which we should do far more for), I only look at what migrants to NZ can do for NZ and if we are putting enough infrastructure in place to support them.
Apart from anything else NZ needs migrants with skills. We lose way too many of our locally trained skills offshore, and there are skilled swathes of the economy that we can’t train people for because or market is simply too small. We have to either train them in or poach them from larger societies.
For instance one skilled person I know of is over here working on skin materials for rockets. His partner is a specialist in operating large cranes (rather her than me). Both are trained in those areas and there is literally no place to train them here. But they could be in the UK.
But otherwise I really don’t think that I feel much sympathy for the UK. Somewhere in the last 5-6 generations the ‘mother country’ thing disappeared. And I have some pretty vivid recollections of the attention that the UK paid to us when they entered the EEC.
lol. Tories doing democracy when they can obfusacate the processes to favour the few. lol.
No,it’s the cynical position, that something bad happened, so bad that the UK had to jump ship, maybe allegedly Blair was up for the eu courts, or the troika broke the UK so they had to jump… …and someone saw the new shape of the relationship would help them, and their power otherwise would crumble.
coz can’t see there was ever a mainstream reason for brexit. maybe that’s it, radicals and radicalism was so pressing in the UK that the elites need to humiliate them with association with brexit. Geez look what the radicals made us do.
“Basically the fuckwits who put up a simple yes/no referendum are those ultimately responsible. Closely followed by the irresponsible opportunistic fools promising different and conflicting leave plans.”
You have go it in one pal with that sentence. Best comment I have seen that sums up this farce.
“The fundamental problem with the Brexit referendum vote was that the leave side had absolutely no plans about how to achieve the desired result or even what the desired result was.”
Your expectations seems pretty out of whack with the possible here. There is simply no way the EU would execute negotiations of an exit position before a referendum and with people who had no mandate to implement it.
and the exit plan has always been well enough defined by the TEU, in fact that treaty agrees that once a member state has notified the European Council of its intention to leave, a period begins during which a withdrawal agreement is negotiated. So a prior agreement of the exit terms would have violated that treaty.
The vote should never have happened Putin funding pro Brexit campaigns to weaken EU and UK. Ukraine Wars Skripal poisonings Syrian War. Putin is pushing Back on Many Front’s using the National Front to do his dirty work.
This is a deeply reactionary post. Corbyn, a socialist, leading a party of half a million members, has not been ‘hopelessly ineffective’ at battling May. It only makes sense if the first thing you care about is polling over this neoliberal trade pact, it’s a totally warped perspective.
The pro-EU grouping in the Party of Labour is overwhelmingly right-wing, and the whole debate around the EU is often used as a pretext to undermine and attack the left. This blog post is an example of that. You have to understand that there are very good reasons why Corbyn opposes the EU. The EU is fundamentally hostile to the project of ‘left social democracy’ which Labour is seeking to achieve.
If you don’t care about transforming society, then campaign for a second referendum (in which, remember, leave might win again). If there’s a second vote to remain, I’m sure the EU would happily allow the tories to revoke article 50. But, it could be nothing less than a defeat for the working class.
The Labour Party is a mass party, meanwhile the Conservatives have an aging membership and a dwindling activist base. Labour, and its allies, have been preparing for a general election since last year. I wouldn’t be so scared of a snap election.
The second referendum is a distraction. The only way to guarantee the interests of labour are respected, is through a strong labour movement and a government of the left.
I mostly concur with your view, Pierre, except for the first bit. Are you French? I’m interested to know the social niche and/or life experience that forms the context for your view.
I’m puzzled that you see TRP’s essay as reactionary. If you self-identify as a Corbyn supporter, can you explain why Labour, in front in the polls last year, now lags? When the Tories are a shambles? I’ve supported Corbyn around half a dozen times here, and been critical of him almost as many, but I’d like to see him become PM. I still expect that to happen.
there Wil be no wind referendum. break or muddle, brexit will roll on. only after the dust settles will the party that argues for end to the pound, full intergration with eu, emerge to have a referendum. landside stick it to the right radical stupid.
I agree.
There is no shortage of left wing and Democratic reasons to leave the EU.
A project which has benefited, mostly, German and British financiers, to the detriment of almost everyone else.
Tony Benn was correct.
I’m with you here too, Pierre – one of the main reasons that Jeremy Corbyn wants to leave the EU is because of the EU rule around nationalization: the EU rule states that if an industry has been privatized, it cannot be re-nationalized, and re-nationalizing the railways, electricity, water, health etc. was a cornerstone of Jeremy Corbyn’s election manifesto in the last election and resonated significantly with the electorate.
We didn’t even have to join the EU to lose that right.
The TPPA makes the subsequent lawsuit too expensive, for any Government to contemplate renationalisation.
All the FTAs and other ‘trade’ agreements have made it so that we can’t govern ourselves. Time we dropped them.
True. The trick will be whether Labour can make the next UK election about things other than Brexit.
/facepalm
Corbyn: I’m ‘seven out of 10’ on EU
Probably has something to do with all those unwarranted attacks on Corbyn.
So, you’re saying that the best option is to be anti-democratic?
Brexit should already have happened. Should have been done within weeks of the referendum.
But it appears that no one in the UK actually knows how to do anything any more.
Couldn’t have been. At the time that the referendum was held, there was no specific plan for what the exit would look like. There were merely contradictory vague hand-waving by different people and groups about what ‘Leave’ would look like..
Basically it was the most piss-poor and irresponsible design for a referendum that was possible to be created. Democracy is about allowing the voters to make informed decisions based on reasonably specific choices. It isn’t about promising 15 or 20 vague pie in the sky assertions about what may happen.
so nobody will now dare to write a bad referendum question… …benefits of brexit?
key flag ref, howard republic convention… ..their hearts were never in it coz they lost.
That criteria, removes voting in Governments also!
True that.
Another reason for me to want to get rid of Representative Democracy.
Yep. By the looks of things even the people making all the noise about leaving weren’t actually expecting the vote to go the way it did and so simply had no plans in place for it.
Probably assumed that all the benefits of being in the EU were all self-evident and that no-one would actually vote to leave thus the referendum becomes a way to shut a few loud mouths (who are going round showing the failures of neo-liberalism) up.
And now we’ve got the present fiasco.
The loudmouths they wanted to shut up were not anti-neoliberals – they were fellow members of the Tory party.
And UKIP ers.
Cameron thought he would play the same game he had done with Scottish Nationalists – hold a referendum and the the result would shut them up – but he gambled wrong and got a result he didn’t want. Then handed the sorry mess he had created over to May. I think she has done surprisingly well to get the semblance of some sort of deal together. Of course it is far from what they have already – how could it be any other way? The EU don’t have to give the UK anything. If the UK want to trade with the EU, then they must do that on the EU’s terms and stiff bickie if it means you have to abide by their rules and not yours.
Isn’t that true both ways?
If the laws of both are similar then why wouldn’t the EU trade with the UK?
It’d be what I said here:
The UK could lead us out of the quagmire that is the WTO, the WB, the IMF and FTAs. Prove that not only are they not needed that they actually get in the way of free-trade.
Yes that’s fair enuf Draco – but the problem is that the Brits don’t want to be told what they should do (and much of UK food policy has been below that of the EU – take Mad cow disease for instance). Furthermore, it adds a requirement for customs checks. Whereas now there is no need, and goods travel freely across borders. The projections for post Brexit wrt to transport is that the queues for customs will be miles long.
And that doesn’t even address the freedom of movement between countries. If you or I fly into the UK or the EU we must pass through immigration and border control has our passports stamped, and a visa issued as to how long we may stay. If you are a holder of an EU passport you simply walk right through. The consequences for the NHS for instance has been that they have already lost thousands of EU medical staff (doctors and nurses) who see no future for them in a post Brexit Britain.
Considering that the UK has always been part of the EU since its inception then its food laws should already be the same.
I’m pretty sure that Mad Cow Disease took no note of laws. As I understand it the laws in the UK were changed after because of it.
Not necessarily. If each country’s laws are the same and enforced the same then is there any need for customs between them? Don’t need an agreement to drop customs between countries – just that one must trust the other to do what they say they’re doing.
And that seems to be the crux of why the UK voted to leave – they got sick of the free movement of people and unchecked immigration. Their culture was forced to change by the sudden influx of people.
Then the UK will have to source health professionals from elsewhere or simply train up more of their own. It’s not a catastrophe.
I’m sorry Draco – but that is not what those intimately involved in the field are telling us.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-biggest-threat-nhs-100-mps-peers-health-system-warn-open-britain-a8194166.html
And have you any idea how long it takes to train medical staff?
As for UK food policy – the reason many in the rural sector voted for Brexit is simply because they do not want to have to follow EU rules wrt food production any longer.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-presents-post-brexit-plans-for-agriculture/
All well and good. But the UK relies heavily on EU food production, and the the ability for the UK to sell their excess food production off shore will be severely limited.
That only happens if they allow it to happen. Or they could get off their fat arses and plan better.
This is nothing more than scaremongering. Trying build up fear of change that I mention down here.
Things will change – it’s not actually a disaster.
That whose scared of Freud word comes to mind.
The hardline Tories want Brexit to take the UK to the right.
And the people want to think again.
But somehow this has been framed as undemocratic by those who want Brexit.
The idea that once you vote you cannot change your mind is the language of tyrants who once elected refuse to hold new elections.
Nope.
In a democracy what gets decided gets done. After that you can change your mind.
If we do it your way then nothing would ever get done as everybody would always be changing their mind.
More to the point Draco, it makes the vote ( a referenda) principle meaningless.
Corbyn seems to want May replaced by a Brexit with no deal leader who calls elections for a mandate for this option.
Presumably hoping that this will cost the Tories remain votes to the LD party.
Whether he can win depends on whether Labour retains both its Remain and Brexit support or not.
His best bet might be to then declare he would negotiate a better deal (most likely in the single market with free movement of labour on New Zealander in Oz terms but not the EU) and then hold a referendum to let voters choose between this, Remain and a no deal Brexit. The option May refused to provide.
PS the demographics of this is very clear those under 50 want Remain.
Those under 50 have no experience previous to the Neo-liberal project.
In fact the division was more on class, than age, lines.
I’ll show you mine
https://www.statista.com/statistics/567922/distribution-of-eu-referendum-votes-by-age-and-gender-uk/
Behind paywall.
Yes, people have a tendency to be afraid of that which they don’t know or understand.
https://www.talkspace.com/blog/2018/04/fear-of-change-why-life-adjustments-are-difficult/
This Is the Reason Why People Resist Change
I’d say that’s what we’re seeing. People know that the UK staying in the EU is bad for the UK but they’re afraid of the unknown consequences of leaving.
“Those under 50 have no experience previous to the Neo-liberal project.”
wrong, those under 50 have no experience of anything else. That is your problem. They actually don’t know your sky in the pie fantasy of hte good old days that literally were only good for certain people and their enablers. Brown people – oh well, they knew their place, women – oh well, just keep sweet and make dinner, sick, disabled, gay, ‘other’…..oh well just try harder.
Everyone under 50 has no idea what people who whinge about Neo Liberalism talk about cause they don’t know anything else. Maybe its those above 50 that finally need to understand that. Cause it is them for hte largest part that fucked it up for everyone else, and mainly they did so in order to have more, cheaper, and fuck everyone else. Greed is Good, i have mine and yours too thank you very much, and hey, just try harder, pull those bootstraps on your gumboots and you too can have what i got thanks to state houses, free education, limited population etc etc etc.
Did you even read what I said?
I ask because the bit you quoted was from KJT.
The economic system was better, more egalitarian, than what we have today. Being capitalist it also didn’t work though.
True but the majority didn’t actually want it. They protested against, they changed governments about it and yet we still got it and no amount of pointing out how deleterious it is has managed to get our elected dictators to change the system.
As I say, we don’t have a democracy.
” DER SPIEGEL: Your answer is a sharp turn to the left?
Corbyn: What we’re offering here are coherent policies. It’s the values behind it that are so important. The values that you work for the entirety of society and don’t blame minorities, that you invest in education, but above all, that you give people hope. I really think many people across Europe need the perspective that they will be able to achieve something in their lives because the levels of depression in post-industrial areas is huge. The levels of underemployment, short-term employment and insecure employment are huge. And I think that is very dangerous to society. What we’re saying is that there has to be a realignment of wealth within our society.”
The elegant side-step. Politicians adept at finessing media questions instead of answering them are selected by the design of representative democracy.
Leftists here may wonder why he chose not to say yes. Saying yes would have been telling the truth. Representative democracy ensures that the pathway to power requires faking it.
How does Corbyn do that? By providing a substantive answer to the question. Instead of the obvious answer. Obfuscation, on the superficial level. Explanation, at the level below that. Suggesting a sharp left turn without promising it. Clever. He’ll prosper as PM!
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-labour-leader-corbyn-we-can-t-stop-brexit-a-1237594.html
Partnership between govt. AND referenda = Strong
Dictatorship of govt OR referenda = Weak
Weak or Strong to what?
Economic demand & supply
Economic to what?
Value systems
Value systems for what?
Resource Management of prosperity and efficiency
Prosperity and Efficiency to Who?
Nature
Nature provides what?
A Home
A Home provides what?
A place to live.
What is a civilisation if it has no experience?
A ruin.
Yes, that’s where we’re at. Younger generations too busy looking at the smartphone. There’s a certain amount of transmission of wisdom required to ensure the continuity of civilisation.
Otoh, maybe partial degeneration of social systems is what nature requires, to regenerate. Clueless youngsters trending into victim lifestyles may be Gaia’s method for dealing with the problem of humanity…
Capitalism, once it arises in a civilisation, destroys it.
I’ve been wondering if it’s our way of taking the next step in evolution. Keep repeating the same old, failed, model until we realise that the old model doesn’t actually work.
Eventually we must realise that capitalism simply doesn’t work. It only enriches a few at everyone else’s expense and then trashes society.
and yet, all i said was that it was not better for all people, women who could not work in all jobs, could not own a bank account without the signature of hubby, could not access a bank loan without hubby etc etc, it was not better for people of colour. And i think these are points that you might want to consider before you are saying it was more egalitarian then what we have now. It was super egalitarian if you were a white male. Everyone else just needed a white male to sign for them. And that was valid for women until the mid 70’s.
Schooling was not egalitarian, women could not access all institutions etc.
Sexual Health was not egalitarian with women not being able to access reproductive healthcare without the signature of hubby, and certainly not as a single unmarried women.
Child care was not egalitarian, women were expected to stay home and raise the chidlren, any ambitons they had be damned, and if you were unmarried you were expected to have the child and give it up and many many times you were forced to do so.
So frankly how were the good old times more egalitarian? OH when you were pisspoor you got a state house? That is it? Your husbands job was a union job so you did not have to work as a women – cause frankly other then hair dressing shopkeeping teacher nurse there were not many jobs available, and often only until you got married or till the first child arrived.
As for your ‘the majority’ did not want this? Oh no, they did. They wanted cheap shit from elsewhere, they wanted their cars, their holidays, their keeping up with the joneses and they wanted to feel rich. They might not realised that they are screwing over their children but at the time they wanted it, that is why they voted for it.
I literally came of age in the 80’s. I don’t remember the good times you speak of, and remembering the times that i do, it sucked being poor in the sixties as much as being poor now sucks. And nothing actually has changed, really since, the poor are still poor hungry and angry, and the rich still tell everyone that if they try hard enough they are gonna be rich too. And we are still raising children to be perfect little obedient robots to help grow the country and take over from us when we are old and dead.
So frankly don’t blame the ones that have grown up with this shit and knew since the 70-80’s that they are fucked. No future, the punks knew what they spoke of when everyone else was still having a big swill of that ‘denial drink’.
I’m quite aware of that and the strides we’ve made changing those attitudes. Those are social attitudes though and neo-liberalism doesn’t a shit about them.
Neo-liberalism is all about the money.
Those strides would have been made with or without the change in economic systems.
The change in economic systems has increased poverty and deprivation. In that way the past was better.
So, if we’d kept the same economic system instead of changing it we still would have made the social advances that you’re talking about. It would just have been done without increasing poverty and deprivation.
The majority didn’t vote for it but the governments passed it anyway. The majority of the people were actually against what the 4th Labour/National governments did but there was no way, short of bloody revolution, to stop them.
And, over time, people got used to the new ways and accepted them.
Now, of course, everyone is afraid of changing the system again.
Look at what people say when I say that the government should create all the money in the system and put in place capital controls that actually prevents the importation of any other currency into NZ. That no NZ currency should ever leave the country. That private banks should no longer be able to create money.
When I do that we get all sorts of scare stories about being removed from the global financial system – the one that’s fucking us over. And yet we used to have two out of three of those.
When I say that we need to cut farms down to ~20% of our land mass to make us sustainable I get told that we need more farms to bring in more foreign currency despite the fact that the excess farms we have is killing the country.
People are terrified of changing the way things are because of the uncertainty that it brings. They’d prefer to keep the failed system we have now because they understand it, it’s certain.
if you are aware of it, then you know that your statement that the past was more ‘egalitarian’ is blatantly false. Full stop there.
Replace Neo Liberalism is a catchword that means nothing. Literally nothing. The only reason we had a somewhat decent time after the two world wars were simply that the rich ruling classes – money, aristocracy and politics – could not demand that the poor – who huddled with them in various ditches all over the planet – especially the english and their colonial slaves – go back to their hovels and die silently of rickets and pneumonia.
The returning men could not expect to keep sweet n nice and the millions of widows could not be expected to just go prostitute themselves in order to feed themselves and their children.
In NZ you had Savage who was smart enough to see this, you had some in the US and the UK that saw that. Thus you had investment in the people lest they revolt.
That this would not last was already seen in 1968 when you had riots all over Europe and the US for its political bullshit, you saw this in the late 70’s with the Punks and their very apt “No Future” culture, and correct they were.
What you are talking about is – like so many in very fancy slogans – is that the upper classes – the old money, the new money and all their assorted arse kissers and boot lickers – found a way to ‘buy’ back their investment. Their investment meaning our tax funds taken from our wages before we even got our wages. Our damns, roads, hospitals, schools etc etc etc and they don’t give up until we are straight back were we were in 1860 and earlier when they owned everything. You should call it Neo Feudalism as it would be a better desicrption.
People are not terrified of changing, they are too lazy. You could walk to the dairy for your milk or you could take your car. That is the decision of today. Walk or take the car. 60 years ago, you walked. Poeple are not terrified of change, they are annoyed with change. Why? Because it means that they have to get of their lazy overeducated underchallenged have not learned a single thing arses and do something.
People are not afraid, especially not the poor, and you know why? For them, nothing changes. They still have no money, they still have no cars – or if they do unwarranted, un regoed, unmaintained, no thread on the tires, they still live in hovels for which they pay to much and which make them sick, they still have not enough to feed all family members and women still use toilet paper (from the public toilet no less) to shove in their undies when they menstruate cause at the beginning of the week/month there is no money for such luxuries.
Its the wanna be rich fuckers that shit themselves at the thought that one day they can’t pull their bank owned boat to the bank owned datcha by the lake for a bank owned weekend so that they can continue to pretend they have a. made it, b. worked hard enough, c. be rich. These are the ones that are afraid of change, and these are the ones that fucked it up and will continue to fuck it up until kingdom comes.
So don’t put blame about the under 50’s and younger who have never known anything else but Neo Feudalism, who know they are too poor to own a car or use the bus, who know they will never move out of Mum and Dads basement, who don’t go study cause loans, who only work every now and then cause ain’t no good jobs about. They are not the ones afraid. They never had anything to loose to begin with.
Probably. I’ve been saying that National wants to take us back to the 15th century for some time.
And I really don’t see any difference between capitalism and feudalism.
So why aren’t they voting for change then?
Just voting Green will get some of the needed changes happening.
why should they vote for change ?
and for whom should they vote? Jacinda? 🙂
they are voting, with their feet. They are the ones living in the basements, using public transport, cycling, wearing second hand etc etcetc.
and some of them will emulate their parents and continue the folly, cause they are to afraid of changing and they are too lazy to change.
It takes more effort to take the bus then drive ones car outta three bedroom garage.
oh well, say it ain’t so
listen to this because she is just so good at it
https://www.facebook.com/Mhairi.Black.SNP/videos/2259001134316098/?eid=ARAx8tvxf1rUPGnAuH0VOnUvGolAuNfsmz2Zk2v6ZAe2VLg5TRWjV2agGEj6oldqQ_nkWPpSVPehQhkW&fref=tag
Thank you for putting that video up. Mhairi just blows me away when she speaks as she tells it as it is, as you said.
Well worth watching!
Totally unrelated to this post (sorry) but I rechecked Mhairi’s Wikipedia page to remind myself how young she is (oh, to be that age again!) and this entry jumped out at me as it had the feeling of deja vu – –
“Asked about her decision to “come out”, she replied “I’ve never been in”.[8][9]”
Why? Chloe Swarbrick mentioned this as being her own situation and her admiration for Black in a Herald article just a few days ago (6 Jan).
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12177057
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=41287
Sentiments changing in the UK. On brexit some are starting to suggest that a hard brexit is and always has been the best approach
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-hard-brexit-restructuring-specialists-richard-thomson/
also noticed a very defensible comment from Wayne Mapp the other day,
“If May’s deal doesn’t get through, it is much more likely there will be a no deal Brexit. In that case the UK and the EU will do emergency work rounds. From everything I read, that is where it is heading.
The UK is not going to be cut off from Europe as if it was WW2. Trade will continue, planes will fly, currency transfers will happen, people will travel.”
https://thestandard.org.nz/political-punditry-in-2019/#comment-1567833