UK Politics Thread IX: The Masses Against the Classes

[Ostroeuropa]

Pretty simple way to start would be setting a close deadline for compliance, any corporations or elites found to be non-compliant after that stage get on the shitlist and are told their wealth is ephemeral and will be totally and completely confiscated so they are left with nothing but their debts when the people who take environmentalism seriously take over. Use that policy as a litmus test for environmentalism, and don't support those who don't have it.

And these policies make "environmentalists" so much more likely to get elected to a position of any power.

I think you underestimate outgrouping dynamics. They can't ignore you and your demands if you're actively rallying society to consider them the outgroup and hold their rights in contempt, and for environmentalsim they can't cry and claim you're being hateful and mean to polluters. It's also a matter of shifting the overton window and the centrist position.


There's "Let's do nothing" "Let's do enough." and the result is "Let's do not enough.".


Shifting that to;
"Let's do nothing" and "Let's fix it and get vengeance against those who broke it." and the result will be "How about we fix it."

The republican party strategy.


610 MPs didn't turn up because they see no reason to.
If doing that cedes time to a group using parliament to call for asset forfeiture and the civil death penalty for traitors to the species and this is framed as the mainstream environmental position, they'll turn up to oppose that.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Pretty simple way to start would be setting a close deadline for compliance, any corporations or elites found to be non-compliant after that stage get on the shitlist and are told their wealth is ephemeral and will be totally and completely confiscated so they are left with nothing but their debts when the people who take environmentalism seriously take over. Use that policy as a litmus test for environmentalism, and don't support those who don't have it.

And these policies make "environmentalists" so much more likely to get elected to a position of any power.

And any country dumb enough to elect them will get so much investment. I mean, who wouldn't want to set up shop in a country which is quite willing to confiscate all your wealth.

[Ostroeuropa]

And these policies make "environmentalists" so much more likely to get elected to a position of any power.

And any country dumb enough to elect them will get so much investment. I mean, who wouldn't want to set up shop in a country which is quite willing to confiscate all your wealth.

God forbid we disincentivize the type of people who cause global warming while seizing their cash to invest in green alternatives. This always bugs me about capitalists.

There are in fact some types of people whose business you simply do not want, and disincentivizing them is perfectly fine.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

And any country dumb enough to elect them will get so much investment. I mean, who wouldn't want to set up shop in a country which is quite willing to confiscate all your wealth.

God forbid we disincentivize the type of people who cause global warming while seizing their cash to invest in green alternatives. This always bugs me about capitalists.

There are in fact some types of people whose business you simply do not want, and disincentivizing them is perfectly fine.

So when you hear about car plants closing down in the UK, you celebrate?

[Western Vale Confederacy]

God forbid we disincentivize the type of people who cause global warming while seizing their cash to invest in green alternatives. This always bugs me about capitalists.

There are in fact some types of people whose business you simply do not want, and disincentivizing them is perfectly fine.

So when you hear about car plants closing down in the UK, you celebrate?

I’d certainly be nice for everybody to have electric cars if they weren’t so prohibitively expensive.

[Ostroeuropa]

God forbid we disincentivize the type of people who cause global warming while seizing their cash to invest in green alternatives. This always bugs me about capitalists.

There are in fact some types of people whose business you simply do not want, and disincentivizing them is perfectly fine.

So when you hear about car plants closing down in the UK, you celebrate?

The skillbase remains to be utilized by entrepeneurs. If the capitalist class weren't so selfish, that'd be an opportunity to make an investment in an electric car company, but they'd rather let orthodoxy and sure things prevail with the government covering their losses if they fuck up.

[The Archregimancy]

OP written; thread poll up.

Also, the Liverpool-born Gladstone clearly had a Northern accent...

[The Blaatschapen]

The last one ...

I will venture to say that upon the one great class of subjects, the largest and the most weighty of them all, where the leading and determining considerations that ought to lead to a conclusion are truth, justice and humanity—upon these, gentlemen, all the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

William Ewart Gladstone, 1886


Anyway, it was occurring to me the other day the extent to which Ireland has been involved in so many of our major party political realignments since the 1832 Great Reform Act.

1840s: Corn Law repeal splits the Conservative Party, and leads to the formation of the Liberal Party out of the Peelites, Whig rump, and Radicals. Immediate catalyst? The Great Famine in Ireland.

1880s: Gladstone's support of Irish Home Rule splits the Liberal Party; Liberal Unionists walk out, forming coalition, and eventually merging, with the Conservatives. The High Victorian period of Liberal political dominance is brought to an end (notwithstanding a final brief flourish from 1906-1911).

1918-1920s: The introduction of full male and limited female suffrage following the 1918 Representation of the People Act no doubt played the major role in this realignment by facilitating the rise of the Labour Party; but Ireland still makes a contribution via the post-war collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and the Liberal Party's loss of implicit support from Irish constitutional home rule supporters (and Lloyd-George's role in negotiating the Free State Treaty).

2010s: Possible party realignment (too soon to judge) brought about by Brexit; disagreements regarding the border between the United Kingdom and Ireland are one of the main contributors to the political debacle that might in turn facilitate party realignment.


It's a bit like an unhappy arranged marriage where the two parties are still arguing over custody of the children years after the divorce was finalised.

I'm not sure I'm really offering a debate question; but it seemed as good a topic as any to start off a thread that I find myself owning even though I didn't actually start it...


Quick Poll note:

As an experiment, I'm including the Independent Group. I've also combined UKIP and Farage's new Brexit Party (which has accumulated 7 or 8 MEPs without too many people noticing) as a single poll option. I've kept the SNP and Plaid Cymru as separate poll options, but - after some handwringing - have moved the Greens to 'other', while explicitly recognising the Greens in that category; I felt it was important to continue to recognise the contexts of Scottish and Welsh politics as separate (and note that the Scottish Greens are an entirely separate pro-independence party that's not affiliated with the English and Welsh Greens). It's not an ideal solution, but we're currently accumulating more parties than the poll limits can cope with. I do particularly apologise to any Alliance supporters in NI.

Feel free to discuss how misguided my choices were on this poll; but you're stuck with it until thread X. By then we may have a better idea of whether the current political instability has led to anything, or whether the traditional semi-dichotomy has reasserted itself.

When it comes to the political realignment now, I'll stick to a previously said concept of mine. The British think they are an island, but it turns out that they aren't.

There is only one land border (two if you count Gibraltar), and the British just don't know how to deal with it.

[The Archregimancy]

When it comes to the political realignment now, I'll stick to a previously said concept of mine. The British think they are an island, but it turns out that they aren't.

There is only one land border (two if you count Gibraltar), and the British just don't know how to deal with it.

Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).

But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.

[Ostroeuropa]

When it comes to the political realignment now, I'll stick to a previously said concept of mine. The British think they are an island, but it turns out that they aren't.

There is only one land border (two if you count Gibraltar), and the British just don't know how to deal with it.

Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).

But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.

The old racism sweet spot problem. The Irish aren't foreign enough to be viewed as foreigners, but aren't respected enough to have their right to autonomy fully recognized.

[Philjia]

When it comes to the political realignment now, I'll stick to a previously said concept of mine. The British think they are an island, but it turns out that they aren't.

There is only one land border (two if you count Gibraltar), and the British just don't know how to deal with it.

Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).

But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.

I blame the weather maps on the news always having to show the Republic.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Made me laugh

Rightwing italian group has a bar themed on Irish Republicanism which is heavily left wing, including such things as Bobby Sands, the Free Derry corner, the famous painting of a gas masked youth and of the Bogside area.

[The Huskar Social Union]

When it comes to the political realignment now, I'll stick to a previously said concept of mine. The British think they are an island, but it turns out that they aren't.

There is only one land border (two if you count Gibraltar), and the British just don't know how to deal with it.

Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).

But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.

Thats because, and no offence, some English people will never fucking change in how they see the Irish, they take Ireland not doing everything Britain wants them to as a personal insult because of how bigoted and fucking hateful they are. They think they can still walk over Ireland whenever they want.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).

But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.

Thats because, and no offence, some English people will never fucking change in how they see the Irish, they take Ireland not doing everything Britain wants them to as a personal insult because of how bigoted and fucking hateful they are. They think they can still walk over Ireland whenever they want.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Thats because, and no offence, some English people will never fucking change in how they see the Irish, they take Ireland not doing everything Britain wants them to as a personal insult because of how bigoted and fucking hateful they are. They think they can still walk over Ireland whenever they want.

?

I just woke up by the way so if im missing something obvious just point it out and call me stupid.

[Caracasus]

Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).

But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.

Thats because, and no offence, some English people will never fucking change in how they see the Irish, they take Ireland not doing everything Britain wants them to as a personal insult because of how bigoted and fucking hateful they are. They think they can still walk over Ireland whenever they want.

Beyond that I'd argue that there's a general weird impression that Ireland is basically just an even more devolved version of Scotland and Wales. I remember when Ireland started having their own voice when it came to Brexit (or more accurately, the papers started reporting more on what the Irish government said) there was a sort of baffled 'can they actually do that?' Response.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

?

I just woke up by the way so if im missing something obvious just point it out and call me stupid.

Why on earth did that not post...

I said 'why don't you just go for reunification with the republic, would make everything so much easier.

[The Huskar Social Union]

?

I just woke up by the way so if im missing something obvious just point it out and call me stupid.

Why on earth did that not post...

I said 'why don't you just go for reunification with the republic, would make everything so much easier.

Oh i would love that, but until brexit actually hits NI im not sure if it would pass or not.

Secretary of State has to call a border poll. And if one is called i do not want a repeat of brexit, i want several fucking years of actual negotiation and planning for different issues before it would even launch.

[The Archregimancy]

Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).

But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.

Thats because, and no offence, some English people will never fucking change in how they see the Irish, they take Ireland not doing everything Britain wants them to as a personal insult because of how bigoted and fucking hateful they are. They think they can still walk over Ireland whenever they want.

No offence taken; the comment wasn't directed personally at me after all.

And though I might have phrased things differently, we were both broadly making the same point. Undoubtedly there are some people in the UK, most of them English (though not exclusively so) who struggle to see Ireland as a fully independent nation state.

In truth, we do sometimes have a slightly odd legal relationship even outside of the EU context. There are many potential examples, but focusing on just one... There can be few countries whose citizens have the right to vote in another country's general elections when resident in the second country, as enshrined in the laws of the second country as a reaction to the full independence of the first country, and where the attempt to reciprocally grant the same right to citizens of the second country living in the first country was declared unconstitutional by the first country, requiring the passage of a constitutional amendment that granted an even broader residential franchise than initially planned.

The short version is that the long historical relationships between the constituent components of the UK and both parts of Ireland (and even before the Ulster Plantations brought so many Scots across the North Channel, Scotland had already invaded Ireland at least once) has led to some interesting legal and constitutional quirks, and we still enjoy close relationships in some areas - such as sport - to the benefit of both countries. But that doesn't change the basic fact that the Republic of Ireland is a fully independent sovereign nation state, and the United Kingdom would do well to acknowledge and respect that status. That doesn't mean we always have to agree with each other; but we should respect each other. Cavalier Brexiteer statements about how issues arising from the land border between the Republic and Northern Ireland should be easy to resolve are often lacking in the necessary basic level of respect. or any understanding that Dublin is under no obligation to agree with them.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

The Independent Group have suffered a major setback, in the form of being praised by Tony Blair.

[Ifreann]

The Independent Group have suffered a major setback, in the form of being praised by Tony Blair.

That's the final nail in their coffin, then. And also several additional, rustier nails, just to be sure.

[Kavagrad]

The Independent Group have suffered a major setback, in the form of being praised by Tony Blair.

RIP, we hardly knew ye, though I suppose that was the point.

[Vassenor]

The Independent Group have suffered a major setback, in the form of being praised by Tony Blair.

Surely all that needs is a public "your approval fills me with shame" statement?

[Fartsniffage]

The Independent Group have suffered a major setback, in the form of being praised by Tony Blair.

Surely all that needs is a public "your approval fills me with shame" statement?

Why would they lie though? They're Blairites.

[Ifreann]

Special transgender prison unit for three prisoners to open this week.

The move comes after the case of Karen White, a transgender prisoner, who sexually assaulted two women while on remand at New Hall jail in Wakefield.

White, who was born male and now identifies as a woman, was described by a judge as a "predator" who was a danger to women and children.

She was given a life sentence for sexual offences.

How will we protect other prisoners from this dangerous predator? I know, a transgender unit! That way she'll only have access to prisoners we don't care about.

Do minor crime while cis = open prison
Do minor crime while trans = special prison unit you'll share with Karen Rapesalot