Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

A balance has to be struck on genocide?

[Tamas]

 I wonder how much longer I'll be seeing that Hamas bastard saluting something as the first thing when I open the Guardian.

[Barrister]

A balance has to be struck on genocide?

The issue here though is genocide in PRC.

On one extreme is - do nothing.

On the other extreme - invade China, overthrow the government, stop the genocide.

I think everyone would agree that instead the West needs to find some middle ground.  A "balance" if you will.

Of course what I fear we are doing is pretty darn close to "nothing".

[Barrister]

To an extent.
It is important not to fall into the trap of just cutting red tape and calling it a day. You do need to set up new regulation to replace the old- rather than saying you need a 500 page binder on local bat's mating habits say you need a one pager (not how things actually work, but just for example).
Rather than shooting for heaven or accepting hell, put in place the bare minimum that does 70% of the perfect one with a few hours of work.

This is where Labour being the ones to do this is promising whilst the Tories doing it would be frightening.

This is just so on-brand for you it's amazing.

[Josquius]

To an extent.
It is important not to fall into the trap of just cutting red tape and calling it a day. You do need to set up new regulation to replace the old- rather than saying you need a 500 page binder on local bat's mating habits say you need a one pager (not how things actually work, but just for example).
Rather than shooting for heaven or accepting hell, put in place the bare minimum that does 70% of the perfect one with a few hours of work.

This is where Labour being the ones to do this is promising whilst the Tories doing it would be frightening.

This is just so on-brand for you it's amazing.

Never heard "only Nixon could go to China?"

A party with an ideological hard on for cutting the state is a lot less trustworthy when it comes to bureaucratic reform than one which doesn't have this baggage and broadly supports the public sector.

[garbon]

A balance has to be struck on genocide?

The issue here though is genocide in PRC.

On one extreme is - do nothing.

On the other extreme - invade China, overthrow the government, stop the genocide.

I think everyone would agree that instead the West needs to find some middle ground.  A "balance" if you will.

Of course what I fear we are doing is pretty darn close to "nothing".

I think the first extreme is do nothing and kiss China's ass instead which seems to be what Sheilbh described.

I don't think any sane person has invade China on the board.

[Josquius]

A balance has to be struck on genocide?

The issue here though is genocide in PRC.

On one extreme is - do nothing.

On the other extreme - invade China, overthrow the government, stop the genocide.

I think everyone would agree that instead the West needs to find some middle ground.  A "balance" if you will.

Of course what I fear we are doing is pretty darn close to "nothing".

I think the first extreme is do nothing and kiss China's ass instead which seems to be what Sheilbh described.

I don't think any sane person has invade China on the board.

That's where finding a balance comes in.
It's not a case of either
1: China is so utterly reprehensible we have to invade them right now.
2: China is perfect and fine and we won't hear a bad word about them. We will do whatever they say.

We need to try and find that middle ground where we can get away with pushing them just far enough but at the same time not completely trashing trade with China whilst at the same time trying to wean ourselves off it, hopefully in collaboration with the rest of the west.

[Grey Fox]

How can we? We are a morally corrupt capitalist society. They know that after the usual berating about human rights, the West is ready to make a deal.

[Josquius]

How can we? We are a morally corrupt capitalist society. They know that after the usual berating about human rights, the West is ready to make a deal.

I suppose that depends on how much of an optimist you are.
I'd like to hope that the stars might align and give us western governments that are a mix of people with morals in some countries and nationalist scum who hate China for other reasons elsewhere.
Then there are fairly logical reasons for anyone to disengage a little. Alas much like the lessons of 2008 the lessons of covid seem set to be soon forgotten.

[garbon]

A balance has to be struck on genocide?

The issue here though is genocide in PRC.

On one extreme is - do nothing.

On the other extreme - invade China, overthrow the government, stop the genocide.

I think everyone would agree that instead the West needs to find some middle ground.  A "balance" if you will.

Of course what I fear we are doing is pretty darn close to "nothing".

I think the first extreme is do nothing and kiss China's ass instead which seems to be what Sheilbh described.

I don't think any sane person has invade China on the board.

That's where finding a balance comes in.
It's not a case of either
1: China is so utterly reprehensible we have to invade them right now.
2: China is perfect and fine and we won't hear a bad word about them. We will do whatever they say.

We need to try and find that middle ground where we can get away with pushing them just far enough but at the same time not completely trashing trade with China whilst at the same time trying to wean ourselves off it, hopefully in collaboration with the rest of the west.

Because neither needs to be an option and Britain is basically at 2.

[Sheilbh]

Totally agree with this piece on Salmond - why I think there's more than a little of an overlap with him and Farage (except English liberals who wouldn't be seen dead with Farage/UKIP often quite like the SNP ).

I'd also add that while he was found not guilty (and on one charge, not proven) twelve women alleged sexual assault. I've certainly noticed the male journalists of a certain age eulogising Salmond as "controversial" but a fantastic expensed lunch, which is believable:

Independence was everything, so Alex Salmond's failings were hidden
For all his generosity and for all that many of the young people who worked for him were devoted to him, his personal behaviour was often appalling
Alex Massie
Wednesday October 16 2024, 6.00pm, The Times

Enough. Let us cease hiding behind euphemism. Figures of real substance are almost always "complicated". There is no shame in noting as much. But let us at least properly acknowledge the complications instead of waving them away or sliding past them as though they were of no great account.

Alex Salmond was a political giant in the sense Gulliver bestrode Lilliput and his achievements were real and lasting and of great significance. But he was also a bully who too frequently privileged symbols and ephemera above matters of real substance. In his later years he made a fool of himself, cutting an increasingly marginal figure as he rejected the suggestion he was yesterday's man even as his every action confirmed he was.

The addiction to symbolism and status was real, though, even if it was often revealed unwittingly. For instance, I do not believe Salmond was a great admirer of President Putin (even though in his later years he happily took the Kremlin rouble) but it was telling that he once suggested that Putin had restored "a substantial part of Russian pride" and that this "must be a good thing". Must it?

But then nationalists are often prone to believing in confidence fairies, forever assuming that a country is held back by a lack of belief, a wilful refusal to believe in all we could, and should, be. Facts and troublesome reality are to be dismissed for if we can summon the mighty power of faith, truly we might move mountains. Not for nothing do the nationalists ask us to "Believe in Scotland", an injunction freighted with significance in their view but in reality of no greater weight than "Believe in the sky".

At his best, though — and his best was pretty good — Salmond could understand why people might disagree with him. At his best, he had a breadth of imagination that stretched far beyond the nationalist norm. Yet the ease with which today's fashionable slogan could be ditched tomorrow leaves one wondering how serious or substantial any of it ever was.

Consider the "social union" that, Salmond said, would survive the great disruption of Scottish independence. We would, in this reading, still share an island with our southern neighbours. Ties of kin and friendship would endure. Unionists should appreciate that at some level less would change after independence than they might fear.

There was something to this. Scotland and the rest of what remained of the United Kingdom would never be foreigners to one another in the way Norway or Turkey are forever abroad but, nevertheless, much must be altered. However sugar-coated Salmond's "social union" might be, there would be a gradual but significant distancing.

Yet, for all that, the concept still mattered. It recognised the reasonable nature of unionist anxiety and it went some way, perhaps as far as could be expected, towards addressing that trepidation. Yet no sooner had the referendum been fought and lost than all talk of the "social union" disappeared. In the years since it has neither been seen nor heard of again. Hence this question: was it ever real or was it only ever just for show?

It is hard to avoid the thought it was just a tactic and nothing more than a means by which a few more votes might be secured. For, ultimately, Salmond was a "Here are my principles and if you don't like them I have others" kind of politician. A member of the left-wing 79 Group who was never a socialist; a monarchist who seemed to become a republican in his final years; a man so opposed to nuclear weapons he promised to shelter Scotland beneath a nuclear umbrella; an admirer of neoliberal Irish politics who also suggested an independent Scotland might copy the so-called Nordic model that is, let us note, completely different from the Irish model we might also simultaneously emulate.

In this imaginary Scotland of an imaginary future, hard choices would never need to be made for we could have all the upside with never a trace of any downside. This is the politics of Neverland where everything may be paid for on the never-never too.

Only one thing was ever truly constant: independence. How you got there didn't matter at all and what you might do after it didn't matter very much either. The prize justified itself and the cause was the only thing which could never be sacrificed.

So be it, you may think. The ends justify the means. If that meant peddling lies to the public, then so be it. "It's Scotland's pound" and we can have our cake — a currency union with the rump UK — even when it isn't actually, in point of tedious fact, our cake at all. In like fashion and against all the available evidence Salmond insisted that his independent land would automatically be a member of the European Union.

Balderdash is no less dishonest for being optimistic. Much of what the Yes campaign promised in 2014 could easily have been plastered across a campaign bus in 2016. "Scotland's Future in Scotland's Hands" is just a fancy way of saying "Take Back Control".

And because the prize was all that mattered, Salmond's personal shortcomings had to be kept a secret. Because come on, let's be honest: Salmond could be an awful man too. For all his generosity and for all that many of the young people who worked for him were devoted to him, his personal behaviour was often, beyond peradventure, appalling.

Salmond was never much of a moralist which is why his infidelities are of little public concern but some of his supporters now appear to believe that any behaviour which is not criminal must be wholly acceptable. This is an interesting, and generous, yardstick by which to measure a man.

For of course they knew. Why, here's Alec barrelling towards you, a smile on his coupon and a glint in his eye. The thing to know, a senior female Nationalist would often say, is that you must "remember to duck". Nothing criminal there; just an overly-gregarious chap a trifle too fond of corporeal contact. As a woman told me at a lunch this week: "He never looked me in the eye; he only stared at my cleavage." Nothing illegal but, you know, a little off and the thing is there are hundreds of women across Scotland with similar recollections of being, in some sense, undressed by Salmond's penetrating stare.

"Complicated" here means many things. Noting this demands one recognise Salmond's vanity, his excessive pride, his obsessions with status and standing, his constant need for attention and comfort, his disinclination to hold himself to standards he would demand from others and much else besides. It means noting the man he was; not the man we might have hoped him to be.

A titan of Scottish politics? Sure, no doubting that. A great man? Perhaps. A good man? Well, we know that there is only so much daylight the magic can be expected to bear.

[Sheilbh]

Separately but Scottish, I know I bang on about this (because I'm a crotchetty lawyer who thinks it's infuriating) but I think we've reached a new level of virtue signalling (and I don't think I've ever seen as pure an example).

The Scottish government are introducing a National Care Service. The actual meat of the legislation is basically getting rid of the role for local authorities in providing care and nationalising it to Holyrood - which has been a theme of the SNP's time in office, they've got rid of local police forces to create Police Scotland and local NHS authorities to create NHS Scotland. It's largely branding everything as "Scotland" or "National" but also for the last 17 years while the SNP have absolutely dominated Holyrood, they haven't necessarily had the same power in local councils.

The focus of the pitch for the National Care Service though is to create a charter (like the NHS Charter). This is in s. 11(2) "to contain a summary of the rights and responsibilities in relation to the National Care Service" for individuals cared for by the national care service, individuals with a personal interest in people being cared for (like family members or carers) and a "description of the processes available for upholding the rights in relation to the National Care Service of the persons whose rights and responsibilities the charter summarises."

This is somewhat undercut by s.11(4) which states that "nothing in the charter is to - (a) give rise to any new rights, (b) impose any new responsibilities, or (c) alter in any way an existing right or responsibility." (I would add - the Scottish government has the taxing and spending powers to set up a National Care Service and to fund it, should they so wish.)

The Tories were as bad at this just in a different direction (especially under Cameron) - they kept on "enshrining" things in law. Normally it just meant putting something from common law into statute, or moving a provision from an omnibus statute into a standalone act. So "enshrining" in law was normally just repeating the existing law. There's been great work by Irish legal academics on similar trends in Ireland - so I don't think this type of expressive law-making is unique to here.

Again I'm a fuddy-duddy lawyer but we have a lot of laws being passed and I just wish they'd focus on ones that actually did things rather than laws with primarily, or only, symbolic value

[Josquius]

Totally agree with this piece on Salmond - why I think there's more than a little of an overlap with him and Farage (except English liberals who wouldn't be seen dead with Farage/UKIP often quite like the SNP ).

I did always think it a curious point, and which would piss off Scots to no end when pointed out, that the reason Scotland voted remain in the Brexit ref was because their nationalist dregs have this centre left rallying point which dragged them into ignorantly opposing brexit rather than ignorantly supporting it as elsewhere in the UK.

[Sheilbh]

As someone old enough to remember the SNP (under Salmond) supporting a referendum on abolishing the equivalent of Section 28 in Scotland, I'm always a little wary of calling them centre left. I don't think the SNP easily map onto a left-right line - I think probably I'd say they try to dominate the centre (from left to right) and are populist in style. Plus they've absolutely run through the institutions in Scotland and have scandals that are basically about corruption. I always think they resemble pre-financial crisis Fianna Fail in Ireland more than any party in the UK: jobs for the boys, populist stance and politically flexible.

The Scottish vote was interesting though - really striking is that 40% of Lib Dem voters in Scotland voted for Leave, compared to a quarter in England and Wales. About a third of SNP voters went for Leave and the Tories split 50/50. I think what's striking is that, again, Labour are the only national party and its voters behaved fairly similarly north and south of the border - the SNP are unique but also Scottish Tories and Scottish Lib Dems voted quite differently than their English and Welsh comrades.

[Josquius]

They're a big tent.
The face they put forward is undoubtedly a lovely fluffy left of centre one. On paper they do have a lot of good policies (devil is in the details of course).

But at the core of course they're nationalists which is a fundamentally right wing ideology, and they drag in many people who are identical to BNP types just for a different flag.


Unrelated. Purely small scale anecdotal for now. But I've noticed a few houses before me that were for sale and had sold signs are now back on the market. Prices are dropping and a lot is failing to sell.... Curious.