How right we were

Maybe lessons were learned after Iraq; if we don't learn lessons from history what hope is there for us all. We also keep pointing out the frightening similarities about the current situation and pre was Germany, but leavers seem to conveniently ignore them...

David Cameron too if you count bombing Libya and plunging that country into chaos for years on end. I just find the hypocrisy and duplicity of politicians of all partys unbelievable and deeply depressing! I suppose money is at the bottom of it and what doesn't affect their piggybanks and kudos is ok, never mind the misery it brings to others often in far away lands who are conveniently out of sight and certainly out of mind! conscience and compassion are certainly dead and buried in today's brave new world!

Tony Blair, however iniquitous the Iraq war was, did not break the law. Johnson is threatening to break the law. Prime Ministers are not above the law.

All your whataboutery, Jabberwok does not change the fact that neither Blair nor Cameron broke the law.

Pre war Germany?! We want to leave the EU (which we are perfectly entitled to do,) not lock up and murder Jews, considered undesirables and the less able amongst us. I see no concentration camps, the armed forces goose stepping down Whitehall, people being threatened with arrest and imprisonment for going about their daily business (apart from Boris) our neighbours threatened with invasion?! shops looted or books burned! or people in sinister uniforms!!

That's the point! It's not perfect, but parliament has to obey the law. Agreed the law is sometimes an ass, but what's the alternative? The UK doesn't have a constitution set in stone, so the law has to be supreme. Parliament does have the power to change the law, but it needs MPs (our representatives) to agree.

That's the way Britain's democracy works. It's imperfect and quirky and causes foreigners to scratch their heads in amazement that it could work, but it's creaked along for a long time and, until an alternative is found, I'm happy for it to continue.

I know I'm repeating myself here but democracy is not, and never was about following through an ill informed decision when more information is available just because a decision was made at a point in time. As for Iraq, imo one of the biggest mistakes was not thinking it through/planning for what would happen to the country after Sadam Hussein was gone etc. And no one thought through what would happen if vote leave won. Whatever one thinks of Blair I do believe that, as with Ireland and Yugoslavia he did want to protect innocent people and it must haunt him constantly that he miscalculated.

The people who voted for the Nazis in 1933 didn't know what the outcome would be either. Germany was one of the most cultured and educated countries on the planet, but the people were conned, manipulated and bullied. France was a more anti-Semitic country at the time.

We must never forget!

I'm afraid that you are completely missing the point of the analogy with pre-war Germany, Jabberwok. No, we are not intending to do those things, though with the increase in racism and racial hate crimes which has been unleashed since the referendum seems to indicate that it could happen here.

But the analogy is with the rise of a dictatorship. Which looks frighteningly imminent in the UK.

PS. It's often said (and I believe it's true) that Hitler never broke the law - he just changed them. That's why it's so important that we have good constitutional laws laws, which must be upheld and can only be changed by a sovereign parliament.

Why did Caroline Lucas say we needed a written constitution?

But surely the reason that the House of Commons "hardly raised a murmer", was that the Conservatives were also in favour of that illegal war. Jabberwok

Did she Labaik? I haven't a clue. I'd be interested in her reasoning. There are advantages and disadvantages to any written constitution. On the one hand it sets certain principles in stone. On the other hand, you get constitutional lawyers arguing about the meaning and interpretation of one phrase, as happens in the US and France.

Has the war actually been ruled "illegal"?

No, growstuff it hasn't but you are talking about an argument put forward by those who care nothing for the truth, or for facts but just spout what the right wing press tells them.

Ken Clarke said this weekend that he would never join the Tories if he was starting out again

“If I was 20 and deciding who to vote for, the last party to get my vote would be the hard right nationalist Tory party”

Bets on next Tory to have the whip withdrawn.

I reckon John Major

Someone else who may resign

Robert Peston
@Peston
·
The Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland is staying put and will not resign unless and until @BorisJohnson breaks the law, I understand. Buckland has told the PM that honouring the rule of law is the defining issue for him.

GracesGran If the war hasn't been declared illegal, using the word "illegal" as a fixed epithet every time the war is mentioned is possibly libellous.

There must come a critical point when there are enough of them to form a new party. Between them, they must have wealthy contacts who would back them and they've certainly got the experience to form a new party.

Incredible times, totally unchartered territory :

www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/468847167304123/

Maizie, you answered my question by outlining what you think could/should have happened, and I have some sympathy with the suggestion that Cameron could have tried to renegotiate with the EU, although we have no idea what might have happened if he had done.

The analogy with Tony Blair is interesting but probably not terribly relevant, although he will remain a war criminal in my mind at least, but that’s just my opinion.

The claim that Britain is similar to pre war Germany in the 30s is ludicrous. As Jabberwok says, we do not have concentration camps, we do not euthanise mentally ill people, we don’t burn books or paint symbols on shop windows or boycott certain businesses and we don’t insist on certain ways of thinking ( although there has been a despicable suggestion on another thread, I think it’s another thread, that leave voters should be denied their medicines!) We are certainly nothing like pre war Germany at all.

Growstuff is right, we must never forget.

I've said this before; the similarities with pre was Germany are about how people can gain power over a period of time, not necessarily to put people in concentration camps etc. But UKIP etc have used racism to gain popularity. Anna Soubry didn't speak yesterday because she saw people giving Nazi salutes in the crowd. How can you defend that? A woman committed suicide recently and the coroner cited stress over Brexit as one of the causes. The argument regarding medicine is about how leave voters have put some members of society at risk but don't seem to care about it .

Can I ask you a straight question. If your child is insulin dependent and you have been told that leaving the EU with no deal might mean that he or she could die, would you still be prepared to take that risk? Yes or no [because yellowhammer does say there's a risk and it isn't even worst case scenario]. And, if your child isn't insulin dependent can you understand why someone whose child is might be angry with people that are prepared to take that risk??

Did someone defend people giving Nazi salutes?