Brexit matters

[DynamicSpirit]

An argument could be made that it also affected the latter - the UK’s influence on the world stage has certainly diminished post-Brexit.

Evidenced by the fact Putin met with Macron and Scholz in the run up to the war but not Johnson. Had we remained in the EU I’m certain that the British Prime Minister would also have had a face to face meeting with the antagonist prior to a major global event.

I'd certainly question that interpretation. It is almost certain that Putin would have been willing to meet with Macron and Scholz, but would have been less interested in seeing Johnson, because at the time Macron and Scholz were cosying up to him, trying to downplay Russia's likely intentions and basically to some extent being Putin's 'useful idiots', whereas Johnson was being brutally honest about Putin's likely plans. I really don't think you can plausibly use those meetings as evidence that the UK's influence has (supposedly) declined because of Brexit. (Besides, at about the same time, Sergei Lavrov met Liz Truss, so it's not like the UK was not having any meetings with Russia).

 

[Intercity 225]

Assist the italian economy by the Eu budget, take Poland, Poland receives 3 Zloties from the Eu budget for every two Zloties from Poland, is that not what the Eu is about? While a Euro currency member state is attached to the Euro currency and the Eu Growth and Stability framework there is minimal wiggle room for a member state in trouble to self-dig its way out by internal measures. How else can a member state adjust its economy towards growth? Isn't that the policy of the Eu, Policies to pursue mutual growth and development ?

You’re massively overestimating the size of the EU budget - to continue using the example of Poland only around 1.5% of their GDP comes directly from funds in the EU budget.

The main economic benefits of the EU come from access to and a role in the running of the single market. Something that all members enjoy, but broadly speaking the larger the economy, the larger the influence the country has during decision making at the quarterly EU summits.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 May 2023 ==

I'd certainly question that interpretation. It is almost certain that Putin would have been willing to meet with Macron and Scholz, but would have been less interested in seeing Johnson, because at the time Macron and Scholz were cosying up to him, trying to downplay Russia's likely intentions and basically to some extent being Putin's 'useful idiots', whereas Johnson was being brutally honest about Putin's likely plans. I really don't think you can plausibly use those meetings as evidence that the UK's influence has (supposedly) declined because of Brexit. (Besides, at about the same time, Sergei Lavrov met Liz Truss, so it's not like the UK was not having any meetings with Russia).

Whether they’d have seen eye to eye or not isn’t particularly relevant - we since know that Putin was going to go ahead with his barbarism regardless of the diplomacy beforehand.

What’s important from a UK standpoint is that our Prime Minister wasn’t even invited to Putin’s (ridiculously long) table for a discussion. The Truss/Lavrov meeting kind of backs up my point - that our views on the crisis were only worth considering on the next tier down of the hierarchy.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Whether they’d have seen eye to eye or not isn’t particularly relevant - we since know that Putin was going to go ahead with his barbarism regardless of the diplomacy beforehand.

What’s important from a UK standpoint is that our Prime Minister wasn’t even invited to Putin’s (ridiculously long) table for a discussion. The Truss/Lavrov meeting kind of backs up my point - that our views on the crisis were only worth considering on the next tier down of the hierarchy.

I believe that you'll find President Lukashenko of Belarus has met with Putin on a number of occasions before and since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I guess by your logic that means that Belarus must be an extraordinarily influential country.

Or we could get real. Putin meets people first and foremost if he believes he can use those meetings for his own purposes. His not meeting Johnson had very little to do with our own level of influence or otherwise. And if you want to make up some kind of argument for the UK's influence being lower because of Brexit then you'd well advised to stay away from Ukraine as an example - since even the most cursory glance at what happened over the invasion shows that the UK was very influential in terms of persuading other countries to oppose Russia and (eventually) to support Ukraine militarily. To be fair, that was also not because of Brexit - it appears to be because from the start, we took a much more principled and active stance in helping Ukraine fight the invaders, eventually contributing to shaming other countries into doing likewise. The lesson there appears to be that our influence probably has much more to do with our own actions on whatever the issue at hand is, rather than to do with our membership or otherwise of the EU.

 

[tomuk]

Well, yes. The UK hasn't exactly weathered either storm particularly well, and there's a definite case to be made that EU membership would have helped with the former* if not the latter.

*Note that the oft-quoted "vaccine success" happened while we were still following EU medical regulatory rules.

No worse than anywhere else. We had a much better rollout of the vaccine than the rest of the EU. It was all to do with procurement of the vaccine rather than any regulatory rules.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 May 2023 ==

An argument could be made that it also affected the latter - the UK’s influence on the world stage has certainly diminished post-Brexit.

That is just incorrect.

Evidenced by the fact Putin met with Macron and Scholz in the run up to the war but not Johnson. Had we remained in the EU I’m certain that the British Prime Minister would also have had a face to face meeting with the antagonist prior to a major global event.

No that's because us and the EU (through France and Germany) were playing different roles. With the UK taking a much stronger line against Russia (bad cop) allowing France and Germany to act as mediators (good cop) this goes back to the security guarantees the UK and US gave to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum and the role France and Germany took under Hollande and Merkel took in mediate the Minsk Agreements following the war in the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.

 

[najaB]

We had a much better rollout of the vaccine than the rest of the EU.

I wish people would stop saying this. Yes, the initial roll-out was smoother here than in most of Europe, but they caught up and exceeded our rates fairly quickly

No worse than anywhere else.

We had a higher rate of deaths per capita than most of our peer nations.

But I wasn't referring to the health outcomes, but rather the economic. We literally threw billions of pounds on a fire with our pandemic emergency PPE procurement. Of the G20 countries we were the slowest to return to 2019 GDP after the pandemic. We are the only one where our central bank has said we need to "accept that we are poorer". We are the only large economy, other that Russia, that expected to shrink over the next couple of years.

 

[Annetts key]

I believe that you'll find President Lukashenko of Belarus has met with Putin on a number of occasions before and since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I guess by your logic that means that Belarus must be an extraordinarily influential country.

Or we could get real. Putin meets people first and foremost if he believes he can use those meetings for his own purposes. His not meeting Johnson had very little to do with our own level of influence or otherwise. And if you want to make up some kind of argument for the UK's influence being lower because of Brexit then you'd well advised to stay away from Ukraine as an example - since even the most cursory glance at what happened over the invasion shows that the UK was very influential in terms of persuading other countries to oppose Russia and (eventually) to support Ukraine militarily. To be fair, that was also not because of Brexit - it appears to be because from the start, we took a much more principled and active stance in helping Ukraine fight the invaders, eventually contributing to shaming other countries into doing likewise. The lesson there appears to be that our influence probably has much more to do with our own actions on whatever the issue at hand is, rather than to do with our membership or otherwise of the EU.

My opinion is that our level of support for Ukraine is most likely linked to our historical relationship with Poland. Poland (along with other nearby E.U. and/or N.AT.O. members) strongly backs Ukraine.

Secondly, Russia’s airforce and navy have over the past five (or more) years, have regularly aggressively been flying or sailing right up to our territorial boundaries.

Thirdly, there is the poisoning and attempted assassination attempts.

So our relationship with Putin / Russia was poor to start with.

 

[Intercity 225]

I believe that you'll find President Lukashenko of Belarus has met with Putin on a number of occasions before and since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I guess by your logic that means that Belarus must be an extraordinarily influential country.

Or we could get real. Putin meets people first and foremost if he believes he can use those meetings for his own purposes. His not meeting Johnson had very little to do with our own level of influence or otherwise. And if you want to make up some kind of argument for the UK's influence being lower because of Brexit then you'd well advised to stay away from Ukraine as an example - since even the most cursory glance at what happened over the invasion shows that the UK was very influential in terms of persuading other countries to oppose Russia and (eventually) to support Ukraine militarily. To be fair, that was also not because of Brexit - it appears to be because from the start, we took a much more principled and active stance in helping Ukraine fight the invaders, eventually contributing to shaming other countries into doing likewise. The lesson there appears to be that our influence probably has much more to do with our own actions on whatever the issue at hand is, rather than to do with our membership or otherwise of the EU.

Ok, you made me laugh with the Lukashenko jibe

Regarding the core point, our membership of the EU gave us an additional way to wield British influence and power that we’ve since relinquished - that’s why our standing on the world stage has decreased since Brexit.

Following the Suez crisis we lost our position as a superpower in our own right and needed to forge a new position for ourselves on the world stage. We achieved this through:

1. Being America’s best mate

2. Creating the Commonwealth and subsequently aiding our former colonies’ development

3. Being a major player in the development of the new economic superpower being forged in Europe

4. Being the point of contact for America and the commonwealth nations when they’re wanting to transact with Europe

Since Brexit, we can’t conduct any of the final two points at all and as our economy declines we’ll ever increasingly lose our ability to conduct the second point. China are already muscling in on us regarding Commonwealth nation development. I’m also not convinced that in the medium term future Washington’s first call won’t be to London but rather Paris or Berlin.

That may sound gloomy and do you know what, I hope I’m wrong and that we thrive on our current trajectory. As the next set of global events unfold, whatever they may be, we’ll start to get a clearer picture but the signals so far don’t look promising.

For what it’s worth I agree that our stance towards the war in Ukraine has by and large been excellent - I’d have liked us to have imposed tougher sanctions on Russia initially and started training the Ukrainian military/supplying them with arms even earlier than we did but that’s only really with the benefit of hindsight.

 

[ainsworth74]

I’d have liked us to have imposed tougher sanctions on Russia initially and started training the Ukrainian military/supplying them with arms even earlier than we did but that’s only really with the benefit of hindsight.

Plus chuck in doing something about all the dark Russian money sloshing around London and things like sons of KGB agents sitting in the House of Lords...

 

[Intercity 225]

No that's because us and the EU (through France and Germany) were playing different roles. With the UK taking a much stronger line against Russia (bad cop) allowing France and Germany to act as mediators (good cop) this goes back to the security guarantees the UK and US gave to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum and the role France and Germany took under Hollande and Merkel took in mediate the Minsk Agreements following the war in the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.

I can see your logic but at the point these meetings were taking place it was clear that Putin was on the verge of breaking both the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk Agreements come what may. Those final meetings with Macron and Scholz were pure brinksmanship and the fact our Prime Minister didn’t have one to set out our position in person before the war kicked off is telling in how much our stock has fallen.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 May 2023 ==

Plus chuck in doing something about all the dark Russian money sloshing around London and things like sons of KGB agents sitting in the House of Lords...

Yes, and those!

 

[Cloud Strife]

Perhaps I exaggerated, I considered that Italy prior to the Great Recession of 2008/9 to be an Eu powerhouse, a member state exhibiting strong year-on-year growth in GDP and rubbing shoulders in the economic clubhouse of Germany/France/ UK.

Honestly, it was never a European powerhouse. The country depended on various tricks economically, none of which actually worked beyond making the numbers look reasonably good in the books. In 2002 and 2003, it was growing by not even a full 0.2% annually. After 1980, it really didn't have any stellar years. They might have been rubbing shoulders, but they were never at the top table. Their main job in the euro was simply to ensure that it didn't become the DEM v2, because a euro without the lira and peseta would have been horrendously expensive.

As for banking, the Italians as considered to be the mother country of modern banking, historians of banking point to the Italian merchant banks all the way back to the 14th century.
Italy has still not recovered the GDP figures of 2008, more than a decade of negative and non-growth in GDP, stagnation and structural unemployment, have you noticed the number of young Italians employed in London ?

Italy didn't even exist as a country until the 19th century, and you can't compare the wealthy northern states to the mess that was in the south prior to unification. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was a great example: a poor, backwards and oppressive place. The Papal States weren't much better.

Italy still hasn't recovered for the simple reason that they point blank don't want to reform. It's not the EU to blame, it's Italy to blame.

My puzzle is about the EU not coming to the rescue of the economy of Italy, Any answers?

What can the EU do here? Economic policy is still very much in the hands of nation states, and the EU doesn't have much of a say over national taxation. They can't force Italy into improving VAT collection or introducing a system where the company contracting a service must pay the tax owed directly to the tax office (as in Spain), the only thing the EU can do is provide support and assistance *if* Italy wants it. And judging by the voting patterns in southern Italy, they most definitely don't want it.

There is a very real argument that there should have been a 'Euro-Nord' and 'Euro-Sur'. The Euro-Nord would have included countries with stable economic policies like Germany and Estonia, whereas the Euro-Sur would have included those where tax dodging is a way of life. This would have allowed for the steady devaluation of the Euro-Sur against the Euro-Nord, while still offering countries like Italy and Greece the benefits of a single currency.

 

[edwin_m]

1. Being America’s best mate

Which led us to support the Iraq invasion 20 years ago, the consequences of which are still being felt on many fronts (arguably including Ukraine). And left us in an awkward position when Trump came to power, with the risk of him or someone with a similar outlook being back next year.

 

[najaB]

Which led us to support the Iraq invasion 20 years ago, the consequences of which are still being felt on many fronts (arguably including Ukraine).

That wasn't a consequence of being America's best mate it was, if anything, a failure of that relationship. Part of being a best mate is talking them out of rash, self-destructive action.

 

[jfollows]

The ludicrous, obnoxious and unworkable "retained EU law bill" (Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3340) is going to be abandoned by the government, reports The Observer (https://www.theguardian.com/politic...rom-brexit-bill-to-scrap-thousands-of-eu-laws).
It was clearly never going to work, so at least Rishi Sunak has seen sense in abandoning it rather than allowing Jacob Rees-Mogg (or his successors, apparently Kemi Badenoch, whom I neither like nor trust, but who seems to be relatively popular) to plough on dogmatically.
This was the bill which would automatically scrap EU laws on the statute book at the end of 2023, unless specifically exempted, in a stupid demonstration of "sovereignty", rather than modifying the statutes in a controlled and sensible manner, which will of course take time and effort.
One option might be to change the date to the end of 2024, which would then mean that it's extremely unlikely that the bill would ever come into force, given that a Labour government would prevent it from doing so.

Now confirmed that the blanket deadline will be replaced by a specific list of 600 laws to be replaced by the end of 2023, as an amendment to the Retained EU Law Bill next week (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65546319). So the bill will continue, but amended, because otherwise it would probably not have made it into law.

Brexit: Ministers to ditch deadline to scrap retained EU laws​

Published 15 minutes ago

By Paul Seddon
Politics reporter

The government has ditched its plan for thousands of EU-era laws to expire automatically at the end of the year.
The plan - dubbed a post-Brexit bonfire - would see laws that were copied over to the UK after Brexit vanish, unless specifically kept or replaced.
Critics of the bill had voiced concern that it could lead to important legislation falling away by accident.
But the climbdown is likely to trigger anger from Brexit-backing Conservative MPs.
Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch said the cut-off point would be replaced with a list of 600 laws the government wants to replace by the end of the year.
In a statement, she said the change would be made through an amendment when the Retained EU Law Bill returns to Parliament next week.

• MPs push back against timeline to scrap EU laws
• Senedd votes against plan to scrap EU-era laws
• Plan to scrap EU laws undermines NI deal - report

Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who introduced the bill when he was in government, called the move an "admission of administrative failure".
It showed an "inability of Whitehall to do the necessary work and an incapability of ministers to push this through their own departments," he added.
He said the move to ditch the deadline represented the triumph of "the blob" - a term used by some Tory MPs to describe the Whitehall establishment.
The UK incorporated an estimated 4,000 EU laws into UK law to minimise disruption to businesses when the UK officially left the EU in 2020.
Since September 2021, it has been reviewing this body of legislation to identify opportunities to give British firms an edge over European competitors.
The Retained EU Law Bill, which began its journey through Parliament during Liz Truss's premiership, would have introduced a 31 December cut-off date for most of these laws to expire, unless ministers replaced or decided to retain them.

'Humiliating u-turn'​

However opposition parties, trade unions and campaign groups cast doubt on whether the deadline was realistic, given the huge workload in reviewing the legislation.
In a statement on Wednesday, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch acknowledged the deadline had created "legal uncertainty" for businesses.
She added that the "growing volume" of EU laws identified during an ongoing audit of laws carried out by civil servants meant the process had started to prioritise reducing legal risk over "meaningful reform".
Labour called the move a "humiliating u-turn," accusing ministers of trying to "rescue this sinking ship of a bill".
"After wasting months of parliamentary time, the Tories have conceded that this universally unpopular bill will damage the economy," said Jenny Chapman, Labour's shadow Cabinet Office minister.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Fox said the Conservatives had "dug themselves into a hole" with the bill, adding: "While they may have stopped digging, they're still in the hole".
The bill was passed by MPs in January, but was expected to run into significant opposition when it faces further scrutiny in the House of Lords.
Peers were meant to start debating the bill last month, but the government was reported to have put it on hold until last week's local elections in England were over.
The government is still expected to face opposition from peers over new powers for ministers to amend or replace EU laws using secondary legislation, a fast-track process that attracts less scrutiny in Parliament.
Some Conservative MPs say this would rob Parliament of a meaningful say over what is changed.
EU laws covering financial services had been exempted from the deadline as they have been carved out into another bill making its way through the Commons. The same is expected for EU legislation affecting VAT and customs.

Environmental laws​

However, the footprint of EU-era legislation is particularly large when it comes to environmental regulation.
Campaign groups have warned about a loss of rights and legal protections in areas including water quality, air pollution standards and protections for wildlife.
However, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had faced pressure from some Brexiteers not to change the end-of-year deadline.
He promised during his unsuccessful leadership campaign last summer to publish a list of which EU laws would be retained or scrapped within 100 days of taking office.
However, he did not keep the pledge after taking office in October after he was chosen to replace Liz Truss as prime minister by Conservative MPs.

 

[tomuk]

I wish people would stop saying this. Yes, the initial roll-out was smoother here than in most of Europe, but they caught up and exceeded our rates fairly quickly

What timescales are you looking at?

We had a higher rate of deaths per capita than most of our peer nations.

The rates in Italy, Belgium and Poland were higher. They were higher in many other countries too including the US. What do you define as peer nations?

But I wasn't referring to the health outcomes, but rather the economic. We literally threw billions of pounds on a fire with our pandemic emergency PPE procurement. Of the G20 countries we were the slowest to return to 2019 GDP after the pandemic. We are the only one where our central bank has said we need to "accept that we are poorer". We are the only large economy, other that Russia, that expected to shrink over the next couple of years.

The IMF forecast showed all G7 countries part from Japan will have reduced growth in 2023. They predicted that our rate of growth would would fall from about 4% in 2022 to just under 0.6% 2023. They have subsequently refined this to - 0.3% and also reduced Germany's rate to -0.1%. So far we are ahead of the forecast.

In any if your cases I'm not clear of the link to Brexit? Many of the impacts on the economy are due to either long term decisions made before Brexit or decisions that the EU have no influence over anyway.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 May 2023 ==

I can see your logic but at the point these meetings were taking place it was clear that Putin was on the verge of breaking both the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk Agreements come what may. Those final meetings with Macron and Scholz were pure brinksmanship and the fact our Prime Minister didn’t have one to set out our position in person before the war kicked off is telling in how much our stock has fallen.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 May 2023 ==

No it was because our position was already clear there was no need for a meeting, Macron and Scholz were fulfilling their roles as mediators under the OCSE structures around the conflict in Ukraine.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Ok, you made me laugh with the Lukashenko jibe

My pleasure!

Regarding the core point, our membership of the EU gave us an additional way to wield British influence and power that we’ve since relinquished - that’s why our standing on the world stage has decreased since Brexit.

I think a fundamental problem with this oft-repeated claim that our standing/influence has been damaged by Brexit is that it's untestable because there's no quantitative way to measure influence. All we can really do is look at specific things where we might want to exert influence, and see how much influence we had and then speculate about how Brexit might have impacted that. So it's all very subjective. But certainly my own impression, looking at things like Ukraine, the Aukus pact, and our diplomatic relations with various countries is that I can't perceive significant overall Brexit-related decline in our international influence. The only exception is that we clearly no longer have much influence on internal EU affairs, policy and regulation, but then we probably don't care about much about that because we no longer have to follow those decisions.

Trying to theorize a bit: It's true that, all other things being equal, you'd expect a country of 67M people to have less influence than an entity of 500M+ people (before Brexit). But the other side to that is that as a country of 67M people, we get to decide almost 100% what our stance is whereas within that 500M+ entity, we were just one of lots of countries contributing to the group decision. It seems reasonable to expect those two things to roughly cancel out, implying not much change in our overall influence - but that's obviously looking in aggregate and at a very theoretical level that might or might not match reality.

Following the Suez crisis we lost our position as a superpower in our own right and needed to forge a new position for ourselves on the world stage. We achieved this through:

1. Being America’s best mate

2. Creating the Commonwealth and subsequently aiding our former colonies’ development

The other side to that one is, as I understand it, when we originally joined the Common Market as it then was, there was some concern amongst Commonwealth countries about whether we could remain committed to supporting and having close links with the Commonwealth and integrating with Europe at the same time. I would assume that's no longer a concern!

3. Being a major player in the development of the new economic superpower being forged in Europe

4. Being the point of contact for America and the commonwealth nations when they’re wanting to transact with Europe

Being a point of contact doesn't sound to me that brilliant if we are then bound by the decisions of one of the parties we are mediating between.

For what it’s worth I agree that our stance towards the war in Ukraine has by and large been excellent - I’d have liked us to have imposed tougher sanctions on Russia initially and started training the Ukrainian military/supplying them with arms even earlier than we did but that’s only really with the benefit of hindsight.

Likewise. But I guess there's a different thread for that discussion

 

[Annetts key]

We have of course, now have a lot less influence over internal matters within the E.U., even though we may still ge affected by some of these matters.

Companies in this country which want to export to the E.U. countries will still have to comply with the E.U. laws and standards.

Companies that produce products outside of the U.K. and E.U., but want to sell the same items (*) to both markets, now have to comply with both sets of laws and standards. This is unlikely to affect the price of said goods in the E.U. market, but could result in increased prices for customers in the U.K.

(*) companies prefer to make and distribute the same product where possible, as it’s cheaper than producing different variants of the product for each market.

So, overall, we do, IMHO, lose out.

And, as you say, in terms of worldwide influence, it’s difficult to tell. But, again, given we are now a relatively small country on its own, it’s likely that in some areas, our influence is reduced.

 

[Enthusiast]

There is a very real argument that there should have been a 'Euro-Nord' and 'Euro-Sur'. The Euro-Nord would have included countries with stable economic policies like Germany and Estonia, whereas the Euro-Sur would have included those where tax dodging is a way of life. This would have allowed for the steady devaluation of the Euro-Sur against the Euro-Nord, while still offering countries like Italy and Greece the benefits of a single currency.

So, sort of er..two "Single" currencies? Surely a better idea would be for each country to retain its own currency (which, of course, includes control over exchange and interest rates). Then they could devalue/revalue against all the others as appropriate.

Moderator note: please can currency discussions be continued elsewhere; a thread discussing the possibility of a single world currency can be found at the link below:

Could we have a single, world wide currency across all of the world (apart from dictatorships)?

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/brexit-matters.211154 So, sort of er..two "Single" currencies? Surely a better idea would be for each country to retain its own currency (which, of course, includes control over exchange and interest rates). Then they could...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[class ep-09]

Tories - party of uncontrolled immigration ….

Tories have ‘completely lost control’ of UK migration numbers, says Starmer – politics live

Labour leader’s comments follow reports that net immigration for 2022 could almost reach one million

www.theguardian.com

Personally I have nothing against people arriving here .

 

[317 forever]

The Alternative Vote that was put to a referendum under the Cameron-Clegg government was not proper proportional representation at all. It was simply a slight modification on FPTP where if the candidate who got the most number of votes but was less than 50% of the total votes cast, then the candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated and votes redistributed accordingly until there was a candidate who reaches or passes the 50% mark.

For the 2010 General Election, the Alternative Vote would not have changed the result according to a model that was done.

Under the FPTP system used in the General Election, there are quite a lot of safe constituencies, meaning that there are a lot of wasted votes and across a region, the voters could end up with a government that was not voted for. Proper proportional representation means that all votes count (as long as greater than 5% when looking at Germany and Denmark) and voters do at least get governments that have been voted for.

Taking Scotland (and also my native West Midlands minus the SNP as they have never stood candidates outwith Scotland), in General Elections since 1979, it has not had the government it has voted for. The voting patterns are below:

1979 - Mainly Labour, got Conservatives

1983 - Mainly Labour, got Conservatives

1987 - Mainly Labour, got Conservatives

1992 - Mainly Labour, got Conservatives (only just, due to a late swing in the day to the Conservatives)

1997 - Mainly Labour, got New Labour (which were not new, and were most certainly not Labour)

2001 - Mainly Labour, got New Labour (which were not new, and were most certainly not Labour)

2005 - Mainly Labour, got New Labour (which were not new, and were most certainly not Labour)


2010 - Mainly Labour (with the only constituency changing hands was my former one of Glasgow North East from Speaker* to Labour), got Conservative-Lib Dem coalition

2015 - Overwhelmingly SNP (with 56 out of the 59 constituencies, with the remaining 3 being 1 each to Labour, Conservative, and Lib Dem), got Conservatives (only just, due to errors in the polling methods)

2017 - Mainly SNP (reduced to 41 constituencies), got Conservatives with some support from DUP

2019 - Mainly SNP (increased to 48 constituencies, including the unseating of the Lib Dem leader at the time Jo Swinson. Her lips moved with every single word she spoke which explains how Swinson lost her seat), got Conservatives

No matter what the voting pattern of Scotland is at General Elections, since 1979, Scotland has not had the government it has voted for. Although I do understand the reasons how Scottish nationalism has become fashionable nowadays, I do not support the SNP's version of independence. I would like to see the whole of Great Britain (assuming Northern Ireland is returned back to the Irish) having progressive federalism, but this topic would be better in a new thread in the General Discussion section rather than here.

*My former MP in Glasgow Springburn/Glasgow North East was Michael Martin who sold out and embraced Blair's New Labour project until 2001 when he became Speaker. He was forced to resign when he directly became a subject of MP expenses row. Also, Martin really loved Springburn so much that he did not reside there, but in Bishopbriggs which was in a different county (Dunbartonshire, with Glasgow being in Lanarkshire), and a different Constituency Labour Party (Strathkelvin rather than Maryhill and Springburn).

Leaving aside that Labour or New Labour were the same party regardless of area of the UK, Scotland was obviously not destined to get the UK government they voted for in 2015/17/19. They voted for a party that fielded no candidates outside Scotland.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

(Moved from the Tory discussion. I seem to be doing this a lot recently )

Why it's "particularly silly" to allow EU citizens with long-term residence here to vote, I don't know. They live here, they pay taxes, why should they be denied the vote? I realise British citizens probably don't get the vote if they reside elsewhere in the world, but that is no reason for the UK to follow other countries' bad example. But the comment is not unexpected from Mogg.

I have to admit to some surprise that EU citizens are still allowed to vote now we've left the EU but I guess with hindsight it makes some sense from the point of view of, where possible, not removing existing rights.

Personally, I don't have any real problem with the idea of someone who is committed to living long term in the UK voting here. The concerns I would have are:

1. Why only EU citizens? Why not citizens of other countries too? It seems unfair to grant the right to vote only to citizens of certain countries. (I realise that you could ask the same question about Irish and Commonwealth voting rights. In the case of Ireland it's arguably explained by a reciprocal agreement).
2. I assume those EU citizens will also retain the right to vote in their own countries. That means they would have twice as many votes as everyone else. That seems unreasonable. Surely, any granting of the right to vote here should be conditional on their giving up that right in other countries (may be tricky to enforce without the agreement of the Governments concerned but as a point of principle it seems right)

 

[tomuk]

(Moved from the Tory discussion. I seem to be doing this a lot recently )



I have to admit to some surprise that EU citizens are still allowed to vote now we've left the EU but I guess with hindsight it makes some sense from the point of view of, where possible, not removing existing rights.

Personally, I don't have any real problem with the idea of someone who is committed to living long term in the UK voting here. The concerns I would have are:

1. Why only EU citizens? Why not citizens of other countries too? It seems unfair to grant the right to vote only to citizens of certain countries. (I realise that you could ask the same question about Irish and Commonwealth voting rights. In the case of Ireland it's arguably explained by a reciprocal agreement).
2. I assume those EU citizens will also retain the right to vote in their own countries. That means they would have twice as many votes as everyone else. That seems unreasonable. Surely, any granting of the right to vote here should be conditional on their giving up that right in other countries (may be tricky to enforce without the agreement of the Governments concerned but as a point of principle it seems right)

Election Act 2022

The Act removes the rights of some EU citizens to vote and stand in elections in England and Northern Ireland. The changes apply to:

• local elections in England and Northern Ireland
• elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly
• elections for Police and Crime Commissioner in England and Wales

EU citizens where the UK Government has negotiated agreements with EU Members States to allow its citizens living in the UK to vote, in return for the same right for UK citizens living in that country, will still be able to vote and stand in elections.

So far these agreements have been made with:

• Spain
• Portugal
• Luxembourg
• Poland

Other EU citizens who were living in the UK before the end of the EU Withdrawal Agreement Implementation Period (up until 1 January 2021) will also still be able to vote and stand in elections.

The changes will not affect citizens of the Republic of Ireland or citizens of Commonwealth nations.

 

[JamesT]

(Moved from the Tory discussion. I seem to be doing this a lot recently )



I have to admit to some surprise that EU citizens are still allowed to vote now we've left the EU but I guess with hindsight it makes some sense from the point of view of, where possible, not removing existing rights.

Personally, I don't have any real problem with the idea of someone who is committed to living long term in the UK voting here. The concerns I would have are:

1. Why only EU citizens? Why not citizens of other countries too? It seems unfair to grant the right to vote only to citizens of certain countries. (I realise that you could ask the same question about Irish and Commonwealth voting rights. In the case of Ireland it's arguably explained by a reciprocal agreement).
2. I assume those EU citizens will also retain the right to vote in their own countries. That means they would have twice as many votes as everyone else. That seems unreasonable. Surely, any granting of the right to vote here should be conditional on their giving up that right in other countries (may be tricky to enforce without the agreement of the Governments concerned but as a point of principle it seems right)

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...oting-rights-for-eu-citizens-living-in-the-uk probably explains most of this.
There's no blanket right for EU citizens to vote in our elections. Those who were here before Brexit keep their right to vote and some other countries we've negotiated reciprocal agreements.
Though even before Brexit, EU citizens could only vote in our local elections, not general ones. As I understand it the suffrage for Ireland and Commonwealth countries is effectively a reciprocal agreement.

 

[RT4038]

(Moved from the Tory discussion. I seem to be doing this a lot recently )



I have to admit to some surprise that EU citizens are still allowed to vote now we've left the EU but I guess with hindsight it makes some sense from the point of view of, where possible, not removing existing rights.

Personally, I don't have any real problem with the idea of someone who is committed to living long term in the UK voting here. The concerns I would have are:

1. Why only EU citizens? Why not citizens of other countries too? It seems unfair to grant the right to vote only to citizens of certain countries. (I realise that you could ask the same question about Irish and Commonwealth voting rights. In the case of Ireland it's arguably explained by a reciprocal agreement).
2. I assume those EU citizens will also retain the right to vote in their own countries. That means they would have twice as many votes as everyone else. That seems unreasonable. Surely, any granting of the right to vote here should be conditional on their giving up that right in other countries (may be tricky to enforce without the agreement of the Governments concerned but as a point of principle it seems right)

Only citizens should be entitled to vote in National elections. If long term residents wish to vote then they should take out citizenship - how much they might have paid in tax has got no bearing. You can't have foreign nationals voting on something (such as National Service for citizens) which is then not going to affect them. If they are not committed to the country by citizenship then there is no entitlement to vote. They take their choice.

 

[najaB]

Only citizens should be entitled to vote in National elections.

Disagree completely. Anyone who has unrestricted leave to remain (or the equivalent) should have the right to vote - they pay the same taxes and are equally affected by the decisions taken by the government of the day.

Unless you think they should also be exempted from paying tax?

 

[tomuk]

Disagree completely. Anyone who has unrestricted leave to remain (or the equivalent) should have the right to vote - they pay the same taxes and are equally affected by the decisions taken by the government of the day.

Unless you think they should also be exempted from paying tax?

I assume you mean indefinite leave to remain and to a degree I'm supportive of that but if soeone with IRL has all the rights of someone who is a citizen what is the point of citizenship?

 

[nw1]

(Moved from the Tory discussion. I seem to be doing this a lot recently )


I have to admit to some surprise that EU citizens are still allowed to vote now we've left the EU but I guess with hindsight it makes some sense from the point of view of, where possible, not removing existing rights.

EU citizens cannot vote in general elections, this related to a proposal by Labour to allow them to. They can vote in local elections.

Personally, I don't have any real problem with the idea of someone who is committed to living long term in the UK voting here. The concerns I would have are:

1. Why only EU citizens? Why not citizens of other countries too? It seems unfair to grant the right to vote only to citizens of certain countries. (I realise that you could ask the same question about Irish and Commonwealth voting rights. In the case of Ireland it's arguably explained by a reciprocal agreement).

Indeed, why not? (Can Commonwealth citizens who are long-term resident vote in UK general elections? Wasn't aware of that - but if they can, I fully support it)

1. I assume those EU citizens will also retain the right to vote in their own countries. That means they would have twice as many votes as everyone else. That seems unreasonable. Surely, any granting of the right to vote here should be conditional on their giving up that right in other countries (may be tricky to enforce without the agreement of the Governments concerned but as a point of principle it seems right)

Maybe. Haven't thought about the consequences of this so much, I have to admit. But thinking about it the other way, it does seem unreasonable for UK expats to vote in UK general elections so this is perhaps a fair point.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 May 2023 ==

Only citizens should be entitled to vote in National elections. If long term residents wish to vote then they should take out citizenship - how much they might have paid in tax has got no bearing. You can't have foreign nationals voting on something (such as National Service for citizens) which is then not going to affect them. If they are not committed to the country by citizenship then there is no entitlement to vote. They take their choice.

I completely disagree. If you are here long-term then government policy is affecting you personally. Why should you have to go through the hoops of citizenship to get the vote? And something like national service is a very obscure question, and even if there is a referendum on that you could always restrict that particular vote to citizens.

 

[RT4038]

I completely disagree. If you are here long-term then government policy is affecting you personally. Why should you have to go through the hoops of citizenship to get the vote?

Citizenship shows your commitment to the country. Of course you should have to go through the hoops to obtain citizenship and then be entitled to vote. Why wouldn't you do that for that privilege? The right to vote in national elections should go with citizenship. What else is citizenship for?

 

[WelshBluebird]

I think I'd have less of an issue with the citizenship requirement if:

• It wasn't so expensive
• It didn't entail stupid pointless trivia that most native British citizens wouldn't be able to answer anyway
• There weren't complex and different rules depending on where the person is originally from that can have some serious repercussions if they become a British citizen (some countries don't allow dual citizenship so the person would lose thier original citizenship)

 

[RT4038]

I think I'd have less of an issue with the citizenship requirement if:

• It wasn't so expensive
• It didn't entail stupid pointless trivia that most native British citizens wouldn't be able to answer anyway
• There weren't complex and different rules depending on where the person is originally from that can have some serious repercussions if they become a British citizen (some countries don't allow dual citizenship so the person would lose thier original citizenship)

Taking out another country's citizenship is no trivial matter. It is not to be made light of, or treated as some trivial, worthless task. After all, you don't have to do it, but failure to do so means that you won't get the privileges either (such as voting, such as access to certain jobs etc., the right to be treated the same as other citizens). You pay your money and takes your choice.:

• Yes it is costly, but if you want the privileges that go with it, then you'll pay it.
• Whether you think it is 'stupid pointless trivia' or not doesn't come into it. If you want the privileges, you'll learn to pass the test.
• Yes, if you come from a country that does not allow dual citizenship you are going to have a decision to take. But then it is not this country that does not allow dual citizenship.

 

[najaB]

Citizenship shows your commitment to the country.

As does going through the hassle of getting indefinite leave to remain. In fact, I would say that someone who goes to the trouble and expense to get ILR has shown more commitment that someone who just managed to fall out of the right vagina.