Theresa May's Conservatives
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour
Tim Farron's Liberal Democrats
Paul Nuttall's UKIP
2 people's Greens
Nicholas Durgeon's Scottish Nationalists
Satan's Sinn Fein
Dr Ian Paisley's DUP
Some other bunch of nonces
I'm foreign, but I wish I were an Englishman
The alternative for the Tories would be to slash things back further, which would - of course - lead to riots and outright seething. It comes back to what I said previously - people aren't prepared to face reality and make hard choices. They want free stuff and other people to pay for it.
The Labour government basically offered people a completely unsustainable programme for the country, and the Tories weren't prepared to properly grasp the nettle because it was too politically toxic / Nick Clegg was too busy vetoing it.
You're right, but I think that would apply to a proper socialist programme as well if it started threatening things that Alarm Clock Britain holds dear. If house prices (particularly in the South) started tumbling people would seethe every bit as much as the 24 hours to save the NHS maniacs do.
It depends which study you want to read and / or believe. The key is debt, rather than deficit. The UK's debt as of 2016 was almost 90% of GDP. Higher debt (particularly when pushing towards 100% of GDP) has a negative impact on long-term economic growth. There is some discussion of cut-off points here. Higher debt levels can create issues around interest repayments (higher interest costs, therefore reduced flexibility for government spending), future borrowing ability, and economic growth. We're already paying tens of billions in interest repayments (net £28b was the most recent figure I've read)
Therefore, given our current debt levels, if we borrow more, growth is likely to be lower, your tax revenues will go down, and your deficit inevitably increases. Thus it leads to further debt increase, further growth slowdown, lower investment, fewer jobs, more welfare spending, more deficit etc. etc. etc.
Corbyn's policies are inherently anti-business, so you'd have reduced international confidence in the UK market for investment. Increasing the CT rate would probably lead to reduced tax take as companies move operations to less onerous tax regimes, and you'd end up with job losses and significant unemployment which you would have to fund welfare payments for (by borrowing more, no less).
In short, he's basically advocating massive unfunded spending increases, a direct 'attack' on the private enterprise that pays for it (through new union laws and an overnight significant increase in taxation on corporations / the wealthy) - and he's doing so at a time when the debt is already sky high and there's significant uncertainty over the life of the parliament owing to the departure from the EU.
It's a toxic programme for government - and highly irresponsible, because it will end up needing cleaned up at some point and you're just off the back of young voters being told that none of this matters and all we need to do is repossess a few mansions to pay for it all.
We've infantilised public discourse to such an extent that Wor Jez can get through an entire campaign without any serious scrutiny of his economic policy. If he had a chance to implement it, we'll be looking at a Tory Chancellor desperately slashing back tax rates and implementing swingeing cuts in the first year of the following parliament to try and restore some semblance of common sense.
Cheers for the link. Will have to check the actual studies, because that summary makes it seem like those studies are merely observational. Coming from the Heritage Foundation immediately turns me skeptic, but that is the kind of stuff I was looking for.
Surely that depends on what you use the money you borrow for, no?
The biggest problem we heard from Corbyn was that he was 'unelectable.' Then we had a situation like one were in a public setting people are asked to put their hands up. Getting the first couple up is the hard bit, then other people see this as okay and do it themselves. Now he's had a decent/good result, he may swing even more votes.
Plus you've now got the situation wherein May will literally sell her soul to keep hold of power.
I imagine he'd gain even more seats back in Scotland if he promised there'd be no Indyref2. That's how I see it anyway.
I imagine he'd lose more than he gained if he promised indyref2. People are sick of that shit both sides of the border, hence the SNP's collapse.
I would have thought GS would have dropped the condescending tone and calling people literally clueless when every piece of political analysis he's posted since 2015 has been wrong.
PS. the superior governing option that GS has nailed himself to the mast of this time has apparently collapsed and the Cons will not be getting in bed with the DUP. Another masterclass from GS.
Just because your posts are longer than everyone's doesn't make them right. Hang on, are you Pavel?
Corbyn absolutely nailing it on Andrew Marr.
I keep saying this but Boris needs to knife May and then do a humble cross-party Brexit tea party and £100 million a week for NHS.
He hasn't got the minerals.
The entire cabinet and every Tory MP will be telling him to do it as we speak. It'll become irresistible. He's the only person of significant enough stature and charisma to be able to keep the show on the road.
He has many flaws but we've reached a point where the country needs him.
I've always said confidence and supply, which is what they're discussing. Some of the commentary on the DUP on here has been misguided at best, or outright wrong at worst. Henry, it seems, has even taken to making quotes up to try and discredit them.
There is no other deal available given the mathematics of the parliament, and the Tories aren't going back to the country yet.
Johnson and Trump. So this is how it ends.
Getting into bed with any Northern Ireland party is idiotic. You're all absolute spastics of one sort or another.
Our country needs Boris Johnson?
"Hello darkness my old friend"
Borrowing for capital investment is much less of a problem, but we've been plugging holes in current spending since 2002 with borrowing and would end up having to do that to an even greater extent under Corbyn. His tax rises won't generate the income they think, and there's some pretty sketchy justifications for other tax rises in there too.
We'd be up shit creek by the end of the parliament. The last two Labour governments have brought with them the financial crisis and an IMF bailout, so you can only imagine what the hard left would do.
Maybe after the summer, when the dust has settled a little bit and they can get on with the regicide properly.
I would suggest that this is somewhat ominous for her:
I want at least 3 more elections before Christmas.
PMQs is in about ten days, isn't it?
Good fucking grief.
Wor Jez isn't suddenly going to start offering effective opposition either, but some of the questions from competent parliamentarians could be gruesome.
The Labour government allowed London to become relevant in the financial world and helped create the environment where we are today.
That's a bit like saying they 'allowed' the Premier League to become massive.
Yep, they did that also.
Well not quite. They deregulated and made sure a light touch was in place which meant private equity, hedge funds and investment banks wanted to trade here. It all went to shit because the CDS wasn't actually removing risk in the system and banks found that liquidity is always king.
Like how the US allowed 9/11 to happen.
Jet fuel doesn't melt steel.
I would have thought that most of it was in place already ('Big Bang', London Docklands Development Corporation, centuries of then-suppressed expertise) to accommodate what was incoming at that time. Not ballsing it up is great, but not particularly genius.
The quote is from Paisleys daughter, an elected representative (obscure lol) about a bombing in Dublin. And her father spent decades inciting and flirting with loyalist terrorists, repeatedly blaming their attacks on the victims. There are a lot of other such quotes out there, so I have no need to be inventing anything.
Well can of course revisit your false claim that SAS killings in Gibraltar involved armed IRA members, if you want to get sticky on details.
Paisley's daughter left politics in the mid-nineties, for fuck sake. So not only is she obscure (or, if you will, completely irrelevant) in the context of the current DUP team, but her statement was in relation to incendiary devices by the UFF in 1991 and nothing to do with the Dublin or Monaghan bombings in the seventies. You've basically taken a quote from someone who left politics 20+ years ago and applied to a murder. That was wrong, so you transferred it to to the Dublin / Monaghan bombings. That was wrong too. You've made it up, basically. Well done.
I'm not prepared to defend some of the DUP's unpalatable views, nor will I pretend that they're whiter than white. But there is a huge difference between the Conservatives doing a confidence and supply arrangement with legitimately elected representatives of the Westminster parliament (particularly where the Tories aren't making any concessions to the DUP's social policies implemented in devolved areas) and Jeremy Corbyn meeting IRA bombers and Martin McGuinness / Gerry Adams when they were running the IRA and masterminding a campaign to kill British citizens.
Still, austerity. So it doesn't matter.
There's a survation poll out that has remaining in the EU in the majority now.
What a fucking mess.![]()
They're going to be rather disappointed when they realise Labour also support chucking the single market.
Since it's apparently okay to defend bombs in Dublin, can anyone identify these two gentlemen?
Or this guy?
And why did Arlene Foster meet the leader of the UDA during the election campaign, two days after they'd murdered someone? Was it to discuss the support that the UDA offered to the DUP?
Oh, and a crucial question here. Who did you vote for in this election GS?
You will never get a straight truthful unbiased answer here, or anywhere else probably, to that one.
The main thing to know is that every politician there is a terrorist, ex terrorist, or involved with terrorists. And that every person thinks that only the 'other side' ever did anything wrong.
What bigotry do I espouse? And what do you know of where I grew up?
I didn't say what she she said was okay - I accused you of making it up by ascribing it a completely different incident, which you've been unable to disprove. At best, you've got it mixed up in your head, at worst you've outright lied.
I voted for the DUP in the 2016 Assembly Election. I didn't vote for them in 2017 Assembly Election, because their handling of RHI was diabolical. I voted for the UUP and transferred to other moderate parties (Alliance, SDLP, Greens). The result was a massive increase in the Sinn Fein (not SDLP) vote from the nationalist side, and reinvigorated calls for a border poll. I thus voted for the DUP at the general on the single issue of the union, although to say that I regretted feeling the need to do so would be an understatement.
Sinn Fein were the political wing of the IRA - so up until the ceasefire in the mid-nineties and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, high-ranking Sinn Fein officials were also moonlighting as IRA commanders. McGuinness was northern commander of the IRA whilst a high-ranking Shinner.
They still are the political wing of the IRA, although the organisation itself is pretty much disbanded at this point.
Right so we've now confirmed that you repeatedly vote for a party which associates with terrorists despite loudly berating Jeremy Corbyn for the same thing.
And just to put it out there again, I'm not a Sinn Fein voter, and won't be in the future, specifically because of their being murdering bastards.
You voted for them in the past didn't you? Didn't you know that then?
I did on one occasion when I was about 18. I'd like to think I've grown up somewhat since then.
The absolute state of that.