Who will come crawling out of the woodwork?

Boris and his Ban the Burka has stepped up to the plate, Hurrah!

One good thing about a GE if we have one would be a shake up in the HoC. - some new MP’s might unlock the current log jam and we could move forward.

E M Forster blamed Britain’s political fiascos on its privately educated men, callow beneficiaries of the country’s elitist public school system. These eternal schoolboys whose “weight is out of all proportion” to their numbers are certainly overrepresented among Tories. They have today plunged Britain into its worst crisis, exposing its incestuous and self-serving ruling class like never before.

From David Cameron, who recklessly gambled his country’s future on a referendum in order to isolate some whingers in his Conservative party, to the opportunistic Boris Johnson, who jumped on the Brexit bandwagon to secure the prime ministerial chair once warmed by his role model Winston Churchill, and the top-hatted, theatrically retro Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose fund management company has set up an office within the European Union even as he vehemently scorns it, the British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.

Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over “Oxford chums” who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.” “Britain,” the magazine belatedly lamented last month, “is governed by a self-involved clique that rewards group membership above competence and self-confidence above expertise.” In Brexit, the British “chumocracy,” the column declared, “has finally met its Waterloo.”

www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/sunday/brexit-ireland-empire.html?imp_id=190096475&action=click&module=trending&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer

Lily65 Fri 18-Jan-19 09:14:34

Boris and his Ban the Burka has stepped up to the plate, Hurrah!
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Did you read his article on the wearing of the burka or are you making that statement because you believed the 'spin ' that followed that was an untruth created by those who dislike him and do not care about honesty.

He had written that they looked liked "letter boxes" or "bank robbers" , which was a particularly stupid thing for somebody to say given his gravitas and the point he was making.

Johnson was not advocating ' Ban the Burka' as you state he was doing the exact opposite !

Johnson was arguing ' against ' banning full-face veils as other countries have done such as Denmark.

Let that not worry those who ridiculously turned his article into the lie he was calling for ' Ban the Burka ' and chants of racism to further their political ends .

Well I always like to hear Nigel Farage. He speaks it as he sees it and he knows more about the EU than most of us. When he’s on TV. I turn up the volume. When it’s Dominic Greive or Barry Gardiner I mute it...

Varian

Part of your post says this :-

" Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over “Oxford chums” who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.” “
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Who is the Economist who wrote those words? Your link to the article takes me to look up Walter Bagehot who died in 1877. It would be interesting to look at the educational background of the writer who wrote the above or was it Bagehot?.

On the basis of that point of view does for example Labours Sir Keir Starmer who is an Oxford Graduate ' coast through life on ' bluff rather than expertise' ?

According to the article you are promoting that would be the conclusion unless of course it is not the ' principal ' but the dislike/partisan stance of the reader who can come up with a hypocritical view it only applies to one political class .

I accept the Conservative Party has more Cambridge/Oxford graduates but the ' Sauce for the Goose should be the same for the Gander' and using the old divide and rule using Class Warfare has regained a resurgence and it is used for no other purpose than to cause divisiveness by hypocrisy usually.


Forster himself was educated at CAMBRIDGE!

lily65 not only is that a ridiculous comment but it bears no resemblance to what was actually said.
If this is the level of research and thought that determined a brexit vote, then it's no wonder we're in this mess.

Diane Abbott went to Cambridge !

Abbott was born to Jamaican parents in Paddington, London, in 1953. Her father was a welder and her mother was a nurse.[3] She attended Harrow County School for Girls (a grammar school), and then Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read history.

Well done that girl!

No-one should be criticised for having graduated from Oxford or Cambridge. There is no doubt that these two universities, along with the four other ancient universities in the UK - St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, are all excellent seats of learning.

The point of the article is more to do with the power of a privileged elite who moved smoothly and easily on to Oxford or Cambridge from one of the very expensive so-called "public schools" (which means schools in England originally founded for the public, including the sons of poor families, but long ago became the breeding ground for the attitudes and right-wing politics of a very wealthy elite).

mcem, my point exactly. That is the level of research that determined how some people voted.

Isn't this how all MPs further their political ambitions? They wait until others are weakened and step in for the kill. And who's in the wings waiting - only right wing nutters and turncoats - previous Remainers turned Brexiteers for their own career. Even the Prime Minister falls into this category.

varian. Tony Benn was educated at Westminster School and Oxford

varian a much more recent piece from The Economist:

Brexit, mother of all messes
Solving the crisis will need time—and a second referendum

Print edition | Leaders
Jan 17th 2019

No plan by any modern British government has been so soundly thrashed as the Brexit deal thrown out by Parliament on January 15th. The withdrawal agreement, the centrepiece of Theresa May’s premiership, which she has spent nearly two years hammering out with the European Union, was rejected after five days’ debate by 432 votes to 202. Her own Conservative bankbenchers voted against her by three to one.

The mother of parliaments is suffering the mother of all constitutional crises (see article). Three years ago, in the biggest poll in the country’s history, Britons voted in a referendum to leave the eu. Yet Parliament, freshly elected a year later by those same voters, has judged the terms of exit unacceptable. The eu shows little willingness to renegotiate. The prime minister ploughs obdurately on. And if this puzzle cannot be solved by March 29th, Britain will fall out with no deal at all.

To avoid that catastrophe, the priority must be to ask the eu for more time. But even with the clock on their side, mps seem unlikely to agree on a solution to Brexit’s great riddle: what exit terms, if any, truly satisfy the will of the people? With every week in which mps fail to answer this question, it becomes clearer that the people themselves must decide, in a second referendum.

The rout this week was the result of two years of political misjudgment. The referendum of 2016 was won by just 52% to 48%. Yet rather than consult the defeated side, Mrs May pursued a hardline Brexit, hurriedly drawn up with a handful of advisers and calibrated to please her Conservative Party. After she lost her majority in 2017 the need to build a consensus became clearer still, but she doubled down. Even after Parliament established its right to vote on the final deal, she didn’t budge, instead trying (and failing) to frustrate Parliament’s vote by running down the clock. The doggedness that has won her many admirers now looks like pig-headedness. The prime minister’s promise after this week’s crushing defeat to work with opposition mps comes two years too late.

But the crisis is not just about poor leadership. Brexit has exposed two deeper problems. One concerns the difficulties that will face any country that tries to “take back control”, as the Leave campaign put it, in a globalised, interconnected world. If you take back the right to set your own rules and standards, it will by definition become harder to do business with countries that use different ones. If you want to trade, you will probably end up following the rules of a more powerful partner—which for Britain means the eu or America—only without a say in setting them. Brexit thus amounts to taking back control in a literal sense, but losing control in a meaningful one. Leavers are right that the eu is an increasingly unappealing place, with its Italian populists, French gilets jaunes, stuttering German economy (see article) and doddery, claret-swilling uber-bureaucrats in Brussels. But they could not be more wrong in their judgment that the eu’s ominous direction of travel makes it wise for Britain to abandon its seat there.

The second essential problem Brexit has exposed concerns democracy. Britain has a long history of representative democracy, in which mps are elected by voters to take decisions on their behalf. The referendum of 2016 was a rarer dash of direct democracy, when the public decided on a matter of policy. Today’s crisis has been caused by the two butting up against each other. The referendum gave a clear and legitimate command to leave the eu. To ignore it would be to subvert the will of the people. Yet the people’s representatives in Parliament have made an equally clear and legitimate judgment that Mrs May’s Brexit deal is not in their constituents’ interests. To sideline mps, as Mrs May has all along tried to do, would be no less a perversion of democracy.

The prime minister has piled moral pressure on mps to back the deal anyway, arguing that even if they don’t much like it, it is what their constituents voted for. It is not so simple. Mrs May’s deal is not as bad as some of her critics make out, but it is far from what was promised in 2016. Ejection from the single market, the decline of industries ranging from finance to carmaking, the destabilisation of Northern Ireland and an exit bill of some $50bn: none of this was advertised in the campaign. Voters may be entirely happy with this outcome (opinion polls suggest otherwise). But there is nothing to say that the vote to leave must entail support for Mrs May’s particular version of leaving. That is why all sides can claim to represent the “real” will of the people. For mps to back a deal that they judge harmful out of respect for an earlier referendum which issued a vague instruction would be neither representative democracy nor direct democracy—it would be one doing a bad impression of the other.

The first step to getting out of this mess is to stop the clock. Because Mrs May’s deal is dead and a new one cannot be arranged in the ten remaining weeks, the priority should be to avoid falling out on March 29th with no deal, which would be bad for all of Europe and potentially disastrous for Britain. If Mrs May will not ask for an extension, Parliament should vote to give itself the power to do so. This desperate measure would up-end a long convention in which government business takes precedence over backbenchers’. But if the prime minister stays on the road to no deal, mps have a duty to seize the wheel.

With more time, perhaps a deal might be found that both Parliament and the eu can agree on. Either a permanent customs union or a Norwegian-style model (which this newspaper endorsed a year ago as the least-bad version of Brexit) might squeak through. But both would demand compromises, such as Britain relinquishing the right to sign its own trade deals or maintaining free movement, that contradict some Leave campaign promises.

That is why the path to any deal, whether Mrs May’s or a revamped one, must involve the voters. The give and take that Brexit requires mean that no form of exit will resemble the prospectus the public were recklessly sold in 2016. It may be that voters will accept one of these trade-offs; it may be they will not. But the will of the people is too important to be merely guessed at by squabbling mps. Parliament’s inability to define and agree on what the rest of the country really wants makes it clearer than ever that the only practical and principled way out of the mess is to go back to the people, and ask.

Annie Tony Benn used to be Anthony Wedgewood Benn but found it politically convenient to change his name.

Anja I agree good for her but it raises the question of how she did it when we keep hearing how hard it still is for black children to get into university let alone an Oxbridge one. I suspect there is more to this story.

Yes Nonnie he also inherited a peerage

If you take back the right to set your own rules and standards, it will by definition become harder to do business with countries that use different ones.

Now that is scaremongering rubbish ; all but twelve tiny island countries in the whole wide world are not members of the WTO.

ALL countries are bound by trading regulations, including the giants. To use WTO rules and regs is not a disaster. It also doesn't involve a 39 BILLION membership fee which bails out other smaller eastern European countries and those larger countries who deal in the very unstable Euro. We would be liable for the economies of other countries failing and so bailing out the Euro if we remain.

We would be free of that for a start and not bound to Brussels and it's interference. You must know many, many European countries (called "member states", as quizqueen so rightly points out) are questioning the interference of Brussels and it's dictats. All is not well on the continent and if you look at the big players, France and Germany, the citizens are revolting, and rightly so.

The EU fears that others will want to leave. Brussels NEEDS us, for our monetary contributions, if nothing else!

To remain the the EU is akin to clinging to a bit of wreckage in a very stormy sea, with a hurricane forecast, and having to pay (over and over again) for the tiny plank that keeps you afloat.

varian

Your link said :-

" Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over “Oxford chums” who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.” “
-----

Now you are saying:-

" The point of the article is more to do with the power of a privileged elite who moved smoothly and easily on to Oxford or Cambridge from one of the very expensive so-called "public schools" (which means schools in England originally founded for the public, including the sons of poor families, but long ago became the breeding ground for the attitudes and right-wing politics of a very wealthy elite)."
----

Sorry but the Class Warfare and spin behind your link and subsequent post is perfectly clear when you say
," but long ago became the breeding ground for the attitudes and right-wing politics of a very wealthy elite)."

Are you truly without knowledge that those who attended Oxford / Cambridge, came from a wealthy background, went to public school are /were from both left/right of politics? I know the answer to that question is no but it is ridiculous to try and ' tar and feather' only wealthy people who went to public school or Oxford /Cambridge as being some sort of breed that ended up as some sort of ' right wing chums who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.”

If that were the case I' m sure the likes of many a left wing politician/economist/journalist et would take umbridge at your narrow perception.

Was Tony Benn right wing for example?

Anthony Wedgwood Benn went to Westmister and Oxford, but discovered his passion for comprehensive education when Hilary Benn failed Common Entrance and went to Holland Park Comprehensive.
Corbyn has one and a half A levels, and his shadow Education Minister has no educational qualifications at all, so come the next election, the balance will be redressed.
(Ooops, sorry, sign language and counselling).

Yesterday eazybee had this to say:

Take a look at the terms of the Lisbon Treaty,

So I did. It's very long and complex document but I found this analysis of it:

www.robert-schuman.eu/en/dossiers-pedagogiques/traite-lisbonne/10fiches.pdf

It was interesting reading

That treaty commits every EU member state ( they are not considered worthy to be called countries, which must surely tell you everything about the EU's intentions)

They are called states because not every member state consists of just one country. For a start, Britain comprises four countries. Please don't confuse accurate use of language with disdain.

...to total integration in the future. This includes a combined army, no borders, the euro, all decisions about everything to be made in Brussels with no need for national parliaments. The UK will be split into regions with Scotland joining some Scandinavian areas and the south joining France, continual expansion of members of their club...and so on.

I assume, from these conclusions that eazybee has made a thorough study of the treaty and I'd be interested to know, with citations, which sections confirm each of their claims.

Lily65 Fri 18-Jan-19 14:45:18.

' mcem, my point exactly. That is the level of research that determined how some people voted"
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Come again.

It was you who posted the ridiculous lie about Boris Johnson and the' Burka Ban' was it not?

Am I missing something.?

If it is not your level of research that is to be questioned, who's is it?

Maizie d

Can I politely ask what points eazybee has raised do you have particular problems with, are challenging?

POGS my quote was from the New York Times (a liberal newspaper in the USA), in turn referencing The Economist, (a conservative UK political magazine).

I am not interested in "class war" or the "politics of envy" (accusations frequently directed by the right wing press against anyone to the left of Attilla the Hun).

I am perfectly aware that there are many examples of folk like Tony Benn (and indeed Nick Clegg) who went to very expensive private schools and top universities but do not conform to the typical conservative product of that type of education.

However it is impossible to deny the evidence of the preponderance of men (nearly always men) from this type of background who use the connexions they made at school or university to advance in business and politics, especially within the Tory Party.

irony. I know dear old Bozza didn't really say that but oh boy do we Brits love a bit of alliteration with our bacon butties and our brews.

POGS

eazybee's 'points are in the extract I posted. About no borders, the euro etc. etc. They are all held to be the ultimate consequences of the Lisbon Treaty. I am curious to know what, in the treaty, backs up these predictions.

Two of my sons were privately educated but declined to step into 3-4 years of being in the wilderness and the oft reported debauchery which sometimes sit alongside a university offer. Instead, they took their double figure A * GCSEs and 5 and 4A * levels and found jobs in tgeir6chosen sectors. When their contempories were filling in job applications and living back with mum and dad, my lads had mortgages and their feet well under the career table.
Not all privately educated persons are toffs.