Scottish Referendum / Independence - Vol 8
Discussion
When the FT is posting articles like this, you know the jig is up for the Union
https://www.ft.com/content/e4b113f0-5552-11e9-91f9...
FT said:
During the spring of 1975 the Wall Street Journal ran a powerful headline. “Goodbye Great Britain”, the American business newspaper declared.
The UK was known as the sick man of Europe. Investors were taking flight in the face of its ruinous economic performance and endemic industrial strife.
Greatness had made way for spiralling decline. The prediction proved premature. Britain was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund and subsequently saved by North Sea oil and, some would say, by Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution. In any event, a decade later Thatcher was dancing on the world stage with US president Ronald Reagan. Britain faces another existential moment. The Brexit story was supposed to be about leaving the EU.
It has turned into a runaway national crisis. The forces driving Brexit look set to sweep away much more than the institutional machinery, economic relationships and political ties created during decades of EU membership. Goodbye to Brussels is shaping up as the first act in a two-part drama. The second may well wave goodbye to the UK.
The other day I listened to Mervyn King say that the government should dispense with further talks with Brussels and opt for a no-deal Brexit, albeit after a six-month period of preparation. The costs, the former Bank of England governor said, would be manageable and temporary. Given Lord King’s complacency about the stability of financial markets before the 2008 crash, many will discount his economic judgment.
What struck me, however, was his insistence that Brexit was really about identity and culture. Though he sits on the opposite side of the European debate, the former Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke agrees. The impetus for Brexit, Mr Clarke says, comes from a resurgence of the rightwing English nationalist wing of his party.
The project reflects a strain of Conservatism that has never come to terms with the loss of empire. Leaving the EU — Independence Day, the Brexiters call it — is rooted as much in nostalgia as in the populist revolt against elites and outsiders that has supplied the European debate with such visceral anger. Hence the Brexiters’ fantasy of a new “Global Britain” and the ubiquitous allusions to the second world war and Winston Churchill’s readiness to stand alone.
The bluster conceals a cry of pain. Brexit is an English rather than a British enterprise. More specifically, it belongs overwhelmingly to provincial England.
With the exception of Birmingham, the nation’s great cities — London, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle among them — were on the side of Remain. They were outvoted by Leavers in smaller English cities and towns and in rural areas.
Scotland backed Remain by a large margin. Pace the Brexiters of the Democratic Unionist party, Northern Ireland voted for continued EU membership. Wales followed England out. Scotland voted in 2014 to stay in the union of the UK. It is hard to imagine it would do the same in another referendum. Five years ago, unionism offered proud Scots two supplementary identities.
They could be at once British and European. After Brexit it will be either/or. The 1707 union with England handed Scotland an international role as a partner in empire. Outside of the EU it will be cut off from the rest of Europe. Theresa May’s government insists that powers returned from Brussels will be hoarded at Westminster rather than shared with the Edinburgh parliament and other devolved administrations. The prime minister wants sharply to reduce immigration.
Scotland wants more newcomers to oil the wheels of the economy. Why would that nation, with a political culture steeped in social market centrism, shackle itself to the rule of English nationalists? Nor can Northern Ireland’s place in the UK any longer be taken for granted.
The DUP has made a great fuss about ensuring that a settlement with the EU27 does not differentiate between the province and the rest of the UK. But their hostility to the EU is a minority position in Northern Ireland itself. Nothing has done so much as Brexit to reopen the question of Irish unification. Britishness is an invented identity.
It is deliberately expansive, calculated during the 19th century to cast empire as a joint project of the four nations of the UK. More recently, as the empire came home, it has provided a welcoming mantle for immigrants from former imperial outposts. British citizens of overseas heritage overwhelmingly identify as, well, British.
Allegiance to England is seen predominantly as the property of the nation’s white communities. The Leave side understood this during the 2016 referendum. It made two promises: to spend more money on the National Health Service and to shut out an (entirely imagined) influx of migrants from Turkey. Better to spend money on the health service, the less than subtle message ran, than see hospitals overrun by foreigners.
The distance between such sentiments and the overt racism of extremists such as the English Defence League is perilously short. To watch Britain’s descent into chaos in recent times has been to see the threads of Britishness, woven over centuries, unravel.
Identity politics has elbowed aside common purpose. The tears in the fabric run alongside borders and within them. It is hard to imagine how they can be repaired
The UK was known as the sick man of Europe. Investors were taking flight in the face of its ruinous economic performance and endemic industrial strife.
Greatness had made way for spiralling decline. The prediction proved premature. Britain was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund and subsequently saved by North Sea oil and, some would say, by Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution. In any event, a decade later Thatcher was dancing on the world stage with US president Ronald Reagan. Britain faces another existential moment. The Brexit story was supposed to be about leaving the EU.
It has turned into a runaway national crisis. The forces driving Brexit look set to sweep away much more than the institutional machinery, economic relationships and political ties created during decades of EU membership. Goodbye to Brussels is shaping up as the first act in a two-part drama. The second may well wave goodbye to the UK.
The other day I listened to Mervyn King say that the government should dispense with further talks with Brussels and opt for a no-deal Brexit, albeit after a six-month period of preparation. The costs, the former Bank of England governor said, would be manageable and temporary. Given Lord King’s complacency about the stability of financial markets before the 2008 crash, many will discount his economic judgment.
What struck me, however, was his insistence that Brexit was really about identity and culture. Though he sits on the opposite side of the European debate, the former Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke agrees. The impetus for Brexit, Mr Clarke says, comes from a resurgence of the rightwing English nationalist wing of his party.
The project reflects a strain of Conservatism that has never come to terms with the loss of empire. Leaving the EU — Independence Day, the Brexiters call it — is rooted as much in nostalgia as in the populist revolt against elites and outsiders that has supplied the European debate with such visceral anger. Hence the Brexiters’ fantasy of a new “Global Britain” and the ubiquitous allusions to the second world war and Winston Churchill’s readiness to stand alone.
The bluster conceals a cry of pain. Brexit is an English rather than a British enterprise. More specifically, it belongs overwhelmingly to provincial England.
With the exception of Birmingham, the nation’s great cities — London, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle among them — were on the side of Remain. They were outvoted by Leavers in smaller English cities and towns and in rural areas.
Scotland backed Remain by a large margin. Pace the Brexiters of the Democratic Unionist party, Northern Ireland voted for continued EU membership. Wales followed England out. Scotland voted in 2014 to stay in the union of the UK. It is hard to imagine it would do the same in another referendum. Five years ago, unionism offered proud Scots two supplementary identities.
They could be at once British and European. After Brexit it will be either/or. The 1707 union with England handed Scotland an international role as a partner in empire. Outside of the EU it will be cut off from the rest of Europe. Theresa May’s government insists that powers returned from Brussels will be hoarded at Westminster rather than shared with the Edinburgh parliament and other devolved administrations. The prime minister wants sharply to reduce immigration.
Scotland wants more newcomers to oil the wheels of the economy. Why would that nation, with a political culture steeped in social market centrism, shackle itself to the rule of English nationalists? Nor can Northern Ireland’s place in the UK any longer be taken for granted.
The DUP has made a great fuss about ensuring that a settlement with the EU27 does not differentiate between the province and the rest of the UK. But their hostility to the EU is a minority position in Northern Ireland itself. Nothing has done so much as Brexit to reopen the question of Irish unification. Britishness is an invented identity.
It is deliberately expansive, calculated during the 19th century to cast empire as a joint project of the four nations of the UK. More recently, as the empire came home, it has provided a welcoming mantle for immigrants from former imperial outposts. British citizens of overseas heritage overwhelmingly identify as, well, British.
Allegiance to England is seen predominantly as the property of the nation’s white communities. The Leave side understood this during the 2016 referendum. It made two promises: to spend more money on the National Health Service and to shut out an (entirely imagined) influx of migrants from Turkey. Better to spend money on the health service, the less than subtle message ran, than see hospitals overrun by foreigners.
The distance between such sentiments and the overt racism of extremists such as the English Defence League is perilously short. To watch Britain’s descent into chaos in recent times has been to see the threads of Britishness, woven over centuries, unravel.
Identity politics has elbowed aside common purpose. The tears in the fabric run alongside borders and within them. It is hard to imagine how they can be repaired
https://www.ft.com/content/e4b113f0-5552-11e9-91f9...
Strocky said:
Oh my the humanity, I dared to post the odd WOS article and called someone a Yoon a few times, you're not really comparing apples with apples here, are you?
At the risk of repeating myself, Wings is an arrogant arse with a sense of his own self importance with repugnant views on Hillsbourough etc, however it doesn't mean that he doesn't post a decent debunking article on occasion
Play the ball, not the man appears to be apt here
I await your non-response with much trepidation
At the risk of repeating myself, Wings is an arrogant arse with a sense of his own self importance with repugnant views on Hillsbourough etc, however it doesn't mean that he doesn't post a decent debunking article on occasion
Play the ball, not the man appears to be apt here
I await your non-response with much trepidation
Strocky I truly have no interest in your opinions either about me or anything else. For you to state "play the ball, not the man" is apt since you rarely give an answer to any question you are asked by anyone, and instead desperately seek to take offence at anything that you can twist to suit your own agenda. I suggest you go and find yourself a safe-space if you are so easily offended.
Evercross said:
Edinburger said:
How long before Mrs Sturgeon announces another referendum on independence?
Burgerbot strikes again.You trolled exactly the same question a few pages back and the answer is still the same ie. never because she has no legal authority to do so.
Edinburger said:
technodup said:
That's a helluva brass neck from the poison dwarf, even by her standards. She's the expert on kicking cans down the road.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-po...
To be fair, it's hard to argue with her!https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-po...
Oh, right......
You know a lot in your four months, eh? ;-)
I'm not asking about having legal authority to hold a referendum, as you well know.
Strocky said:
When the FT is posting articles like this, you know the jig is up for the Union
https://www.ft.com/content/e4b113f0-5552-11e9-91f9...
That's a good extract.FT said:
During the spring of 1975 the Wall Street Journal ran a powerful headline. “Goodbye Great Britain”, the American business newspaper declared.
The UK was known as the sick man of Europe. Investors were taking flight in the face of its ruinous economic performance and endemic industrial strife.
Greatness had made way for spiralling decline. The prediction proved premature. Britain was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund and subsequently saved by North Sea oil and, some would say, by Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution. In any event, a decade later Thatcher was dancing on the world stage with US president Ronald Reagan. Britain faces another existential moment. The Brexit story was supposed to be about leaving the EU.
It has turned into a runaway national crisis. The forces driving Brexit look set to sweep away much more than the institutional machinery, economic relationships and political ties created during decades of EU membership. Goodbye to Brussels is shaping up as the first act in a two-part drama. The second may well wave goodbye to the UK.
The other day I listened to Mervyn King say that the government should dispense with further talks with Brussels and opt for a no-deal Brexit, albeit after a six-month period of preparation. The costs, the former Bank of England governor said, would be manageable and temporary. Given Lord King’s complacency about the stability of financial markets before the 2008 crash, many will discount his economic judgment.
What struck me, however, was his insistence that Brexit was really about identity and culture. Though he sits on the opposite side of the European debate, the former Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke agrees. The impetus for Brexit, Mr Clarke says, comes from a resurgence of the rightwing English nationalist wing of his party.
The project reflects a strain of Conservatism that has never come to terms with the loss of empire. Leaving the EU — Independence Day, the Brexiters call it — is rooted as much in nostalgia as in the populist revolt against elites and outsiders that has supplied the European debate with such visceral anger. Hence the Brexiters’ fantasy of a new “Global Britain” and the ubiquitous allusions to the second world war and Winston Churchill’s readiness to stand alone.
The bluster conceals a cry of pain. Brexit is an English rather than a British enterprise. More specifically, it belongs overwhelmingly to provincial England.
With the exception of Birmingham, the nation’s great cities — London, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle among them — were on the side of Remain. They were outvoted by Leavers in smaller English cities and towns and in rural areas.
Scotland backed Remain by a large margin. Pace the Brexiters of the Democratic Unionist party, Northern Ireland voted for continued EU membership. Wales followed England out. Scotland voted in 2014 to stay in the union of the UK. It is hard to imagine it would do the same in another referendum. Five years ago, unionism offered proud Scots two supplementary identities.
They could be at once British and European. After Brexit it will be either/or. The 1707 union with England handed Scotland an international role as a partner in empire. Outside of the EU it will be cut off from the rest of Europe. Theresa May’s government insists that powers returned from Brussels will be hoarded at Westminster rather than shared with the Edinburgh parliament and other devolved administrations. The prime minister wants sharply to reduce immigration.
Scotland wants more newcomers to oil the wheels of the economy. Why would that nation, with a political culture steeped in social market centrism, shackle itself to the rule of English nationalists? Nor can Northern Ireland’s place in the UK any longer be taken for granted.
The DUP has made a great fuss about ensuring that a settlement with the EU27 does not differentiate between the province and the rest of the UK. But their hostility to the EU is a minority position in Northern Ireland itself. Nothing has done so much as Brexit to reopen the question of Irish unification. Britishness is an invented identity.
It is deliberately expansive, calculated during the 19th century to cast empire as a joint project of the four nations of the UK. More recently, as the empire came home, it has provided a welcoming mantle for immigrants from former imperial outposts. British citizens of overseas heritage overwhelmingly identify as, well, British.
Allegiance to England is seen predominantly as the property of the nation’s white communities. The Leave side understood this during the 2016 referendum. It made two promises: to spend more money on the National Health Service and to shut out an (entirely imagined) influx of migrants from Turkey. Better to spend money on the health service, the less than subtle message ran, than see hospitals overrun by foreigners.
The distance between such sentiments and the overt racism of extremists such as the English Defence League is perilously short. To watch Britain’s descent into chaos in recent times has been to see the threads of Britishness, woven over centuries, unravel.
Identity politics has elbowed aside common purpose. The tears in the fabric run alongside borders and within them. It is hard to imagine how they can be repaired
The UK was known as the sick man of Europe. Investors were taking flight in the face of its ruinous economic performance and endemic industrial strife.
Greatness had made way for spiralling decline. The prediction proved premature. Britain was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund and subsequently saved by North Sea oil and, some would say, by Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution. In any event, a decade later Thatcher was dancing on the world stage with US president Ronald Reagan. Britain faces another existential moment. The Brexit story was supposed to be about leaving the EU.
It has turned into a runaway national crisis. The forces driving Brexit look set to sweep away much more than the institutional machinery, economic relationships and political ties created during decades of EU membership. Goodbye to Brussels is shaping up as the first act in a two-part drama. The second may well wave goodbye to the UK.
The other day I listened to Mervyn King say that the government should dispense with further talks with Brussels and opt for a no-deal Brexit, albeit after a six-month period of preparation. The costs, the former Bank of England governor said, would be manageable and temporary. Given Lord King’s complacency about the stability of financial markets before the 2008 crash, many will discount his economic judgment.
What struck me, however, was his insistence that Brexit was really about identity and culture. Though he sits on the opposite side of the European debate, the former Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke agrees. The impetus for Brexit, Mr Clarke says, comes from a resurgence of the rightwing English nationalist wing of his party.
The project reflects a strain of Conservatism that has never come to terms with the loss of empire. Leaving the EU — Independence Day, the Brexiters call it — is rooted as much in nostalgia as in the populist revolt against elites and outsiders that has supplied the European debate with such visceral anger. Hence the Brexiters’ fantasy of a new “Global Britain” and the ubiquitous allusions to the second world war and Winston Churchill’s readiness to stand alone.
The bluster conceals a cry of pain. Brexit is an English rather than a British enterprise. More specifically, it belongs overwhelmingly to provincial England.
With the exception of Birmingham, the nation’s great cities — London, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle among them — were on the side of Remain. They were outvoted by Leavers in smaller English cities and towns and in rural areas.
Scotland backed Remain by a large margin. Pace the Brexiters of the Democratic Unionist party, Northern Ireland voted for continued EU membership. Wales followed England out. Scotland voted in 2014 to stay in the union of the UK. It is hard to imagine it would do the same in another referendum. Five years ago, unionism offered proud Scots two supplementary identities.
They could be at once British and European. After Brexit it will be either/or. The 1707 union with England handed Scotland an international role as a partner in empire. Outside of the EU it will be cut off from the rest of Europe. Theresa May’s government insists that powers returned from Brussels will be hoarded at Westminster rather than shared with the Edinburgh parliament and other devolved administrations. The prime minister wants sharply to reduce immigration.
Scotland wants more newcomers to oil the wheels of the economy. Why would that nation, with a political culture steeped in social market centrism, shackle itself to the rule of English nationalists? Nor can Northern Ireland’s place in the UK any longer be taken for granted.
The DUP has made a great fuss about ensuring that a settlement with the EU27 does not differentiate between the province and the rest of the UK. But their hostility to the EU is a minority position in Northern Ireland itself. Nothing has done so much as Brexit to reopen the question of Irish unification. Britishness is an invented identity.
It is deliberately expansive, calculated during the 19th century to cast empire as a joint project of the four nations of the UK. More recently, as the empire came home, it has provided a welcoming mantle for immigrants from former imperial outposts. British citizens of overseas heritage overwhelmingly identify as, well, British.
Allegiance to England is seen predominantly as the property of the nation’s white communities. The Leave side understood this during the 2016 referendum. It made two promises: to spend more money on the National Health Service and to shut out an (entirely imagined) influx of migrants from Turkey. Better to spend money on the health service, the less than subtle message ran, than see hospitals overrun by foreigners.
The distance between such sentiments and the overt racism of extremists such as the English Defence League is perilously short. To watch Britain’s descent into chaos in recent times has been to see the threads of Britishness, woven over centuries, unravel.
Identity politics has elbowed aside common purpose. The tears in the fabric run alongside borders and within them. It is hard to imagine how they can be repaired
https://www.ft.com/content/e4b113f0-5552-11e9-91f9...
My view is that, the United Kingdom will cease to exist within my lifetime. Ireland will be reunited. It'll be messy and violent but it will happen. Great Britian will also cease to exist within my lifetime. Scotland will gain independence.
And it's all down the Brexit.
ETA This is beiing discussed widely on the 'How to we think Brexit negotiations will go?' thread
Edited by Edinburger on Thursday 4th April 12:12
What a drama queen; it's bad enough the news being filled with pearlclutchers trilling about how the police have magicked a preposterous number of extra bodies 'in case of unrest'. Nothing is going to happen; the British don't riot for important things like this, they riot for consumer goods and because a scumbag got shot by the police. Unlike the french who have been doing unrest properly for months over nothing more onerous than a tax hike; tear gas, riot police, shops looted and set ablaze, cars overturned and generally behaving badly.
That article's a load of s
te.
Theresa May wants to sharply reduce immigration? Who are they trying to kid? (Well apart from Strocky but he's so simple he doesn't count). She's been PM 3 years and Home Sec for 6 before that, in charge of erm... immigration. She's taking her fking time doing anything about it. She's also doing everything she can to keep us within the EU's clutches thus retaining free movement, so where is the evidence? I know she said something along those lines, but she has said a LOT of things which have turned out to be hot air. Show, not tell.
And as for this trope that 'smart people' (i.e. the cities) voted remain, well obviously. London is a city of immigrants ffs, Manchester and the others following behind it. Who'd have thought immigrants would vote for maintaining free movement? Not to mention the thousands of students brainwashed by remain professors funded by 'EU' money. fk all to do with being smart, or rich, or elite, just fking obvious.
And I'm not sure how they call 'Britishness' expansive, whilst presumably believing 'European' is less so? HTF does that work?
And as it's a lefty know all paper let's throw in an EDL reference just to underline the Brexit=racist point we're always trying to push.
No wonder nobody pays for journalism any more.
te. Theresa May wants to sharply reduce immigration? Who are they trying to kid? (Well apart from Strocky but he's so simple he doesn't count). She's been PM 3 years and Home Sec for 6 before that, in charge of erm... immigration. She's taking her f
king time doing anything about it. She's also doing everything she can to keep us within the EU's clutches thus retaining free movement, so where is the evidence? I know she said something along those lines, but she has said a LOT of things which have turned out to be hot air. Show, not tell.And as for this trope that 'smart people' (i.e. the cities) voted remain, well obviously. London is a city of immigrants ffs, Manchester and the others following behind it. Who'd have thought immigrants would vote for maintaining free movement? Not to mention the thousands of students brainwashed by remain professors funded by 'EU' money. f
k all to do with being smart, or rich, or elite, just fking obvious.And I'm not sure how they call 'Britishness' expansive, whilst presumably believing 'European' is less so? HTF does that work?
And as it's a lefty know all paper let's throw in an EDL reference just to underline the Brexit=racist point we're always trying to push.
No wonder nobody pays for journalism any more.
Like the rest of them they'll say whatever suits their outlook at the time. Remain is the key objective so everything else should align with that view.
You only need to look at the volte face the Mail did when Greig took over from Dacre not to pay any attention to any of them. I'm surprised they've got any readers left. Must be that sidebar of tits.
You only need to look at the volte face the Mail did when Greig took over from Dacre not to pay any attention to any of them. I'm surprised they've got any readers left. Must be that sidebar of tits.
Alpacaman said:
Strocky I truly have no interest in your opinions either about me or anything else. For you to state "play the ball, not the man" is apt since you rarely give an answer to any question you are asked by anyone, and instead desperately seek to take offence at anything that you can twist to suit your own agenda. I suggest you go and find yourself a safe-space if you are so easily offended.
hole, but hey hoIn regards to rarely answering the question, you're going down the Nick Robinson school of debate, not a good look IMHO
No safe space needed here, merely pointing out your world class hypocrisy on display
Edinburger said:
How long before Mrs Sturgeon announces another referendum on independence?
The Iron is hot, if she wants to take full advantage of the Brexit chaos she needs to speak soon, the HoC is in total disarray, the government lacks any authority or credibility, she will never have a better opportunity.Strocky said:
What are you trying to say?TheRainMaker said:
Strocky said:
What are you trying to say?technodup said:
That article's a load of ste.
Theresa May wants to sharply reduce immigration? Who are they trying to kid? (Well apart from Strocky but he's so simple he doesn't count). She's been PM 3 years and Home Sec for 6 before that, in charge of erm... immigration. She's taking her fking time doing anything about it. She's also doing everything she can to keep us within the EU's clutches thus retaining free movement, so where is the evidence? I know she said something along those lines, but she has said a LOT of things which have turned out to be hot air. Show, not tell.
And as for this trope that 'smart people' (i.e. the cities) voted remain, well obviously. London is a city of immigrants ffs, Manchester and the others following behind it. Who'd have thought immigrants would vote for maintaining free movement? Not to mention the thousands of students brainwashed by remain professors funded by 'EU' money. fk all to do with being smart, or rich, or elite, just fking obvious.
And I'm not sure how they call 'Britishness' expansive, whilst presumably believing 'European' is less so? HTF does that work?
And as it's a lefty know all paper let's throw in an EDL reference just to underline the Brexit=racist point we're always trying to push.
No wonder nobody pays for journalism any more.
FT a lefty paper. You really are thick.te. Theresa May wants to sharply reduce immigration? Who are they trying to kid? (Well apart from Strocky but he's so simple he doesn't count). She's been PM 3 years and Home Sec for 6 before that, in charge of erm... immigration. She's taking her f
king time doing anything about it. She's also doing everything she can to keep us within the EU's clutches thus retaining free movement, so where is the evidence? I know she said something along those lines, but she has said a LOT of things which have turned out to be hot air. Show, not tell.And as for this trope that 'smart people' (i.e. the cities) voted remain, well obviously. London is a city of immigrants ffs, Manchester and the others following behind it. Who'd have thought immigrants would vote for maintaining free movement? Not to mention the thousands of students brainwashed by remain professors funded by 'EU' money. f
k all to do with being smart, or rich, or elite, just fking obvious.And I'm not sure how they call 'Britishness' expansive, whilst presumably believing 'European' is less so? HTF does that work?
And as it's a lefty know all paper let's throw in an EDL reference just to underline the Brexit=racist point we're always trying to push.
No wonder nobody pays for journalism any more.
B210bandit said:
FT a lefty paper. You really are thick.
I understand it has supported the Tories and Labour over the years, but in the context of what we're talking about i.e. Brexit, supporting the big government, big regulation, big taxes, no borders EU is imo the leftist position. I know some lefties (including historically Corbyn) believe the opposite, that because that big regulation is best achieved (and the EU funded) by big business he's against membership, but he's a chump.Being a business/financial paper doesn't make you right wing, or even pro business generally. There's a massive difference between being 'pro business' in the global, corporate, establishment sense, and pro business in the sense of the thousands of mom and pop outfits which the country relies on, which will tend to be much more right wing than London hedge fund managers. I suspect the chip shop owners in Darlington, or the florist in Swansea have little interest in the FT, as much as the FT has little interest in them.
technodup said:
understand it has supported the Tories and Labour over the years, but in the context of what we're talking about i.e. Brexit, supporting the big government, big regulation, big taxes, no borders EU is imo the leftist position. I know some lefties (including historically Corbyn) believe the opposite, that because that big regulation is best achieved (and the EU funded) by big business he's against membership, but he's a chump.
Being a business/financial paper doesn't make you right wing, or even pro business generally. There's a massive difference between being 'pro business' in the global, corporate, establishment sense, and pro business in the sense of the thousands of mom and pop outfits which the country relies on, which will tend to be much more right wing than London hedge fund managers. I suspect the chip shop owners in Darlington, or the florist in Swansea have little interest in the FT, as much as the FT has little interest in them.
Business does not support big taxes nor regulation. If you'd read the FT over the years you would know that. This is like that fool Johnson's "fBeing a business/financial paper doesn't make you right wing, or even pro business generally. There's a massive difference between being 'pro business' in the global, corporate, establishment sense, and pro business in the sense of the thousands of mom and pop outfits which the country relies on, which will tend to be much more right wing than London hedge fund managers. I suspect the chip shop owners in Darlington, or the florist in Swansea have little interest in the FT, as much as the FT has little interest in them.
k business". And Mom and Pop businesses are the type that need protection by regulation from the anti-competitive behaviour of large corporates, Jesus, teaching a Tory the basics of economics. No wonder the English idiot elite have blown the national debt hugely over the last 9 years.The FT article shows an editorial policy of indifference to the break up the UK. As it should for a business paper. It's all about the money. As for the future of the Union, it goes three ways. The bonds are strengthening, staying the same or loosening. Only the latter is tenable in these times. Once the great British institutions of state were dismantled and sold off to foreign interests, Britishness died, unless you are BAME in English cities or a DUP member. Nothing to attach it to apart from a tattered flag and the British Army, the last British institution.
Edited by B210bandit on Sunday 7th April 09:11
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