Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

Started by Josquius, February 20, 2016, 07:46:34 AM

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How would you vote on Britain remaining in the EU?

British- Remain
12 (12%)
British - Leave
7 (7%)
Other European - Remain
21 (21%)
Other European - Leave
6 (6%)
ROTW - Remain
34 (34%)
ROTW - Leave
20 (20%)

Total Members Voted: 98

Josquius

#25275
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 25, 2023, 10:13:58 AMSo we haven't yet entered the time when cutting a deficit will lead to a decrease in credit rating, but you're fairly confident it will happen.  You do realize this goes directly against economic theory and historical evidence, right?

I never mentioned the credit rating. I was speaking about the actual state of the country.
You're the one flying against economic theory with the idea you can cut yourself out of a deficit and never have to invest.

And yeah. As gups said... Credit ratings certainly have been downgraded by countries in austerity.
QuoteWe simply must have totally different understandings of Keynesian stimulus.  As I already said virtually every developed country I can think of is currently running a deficit.  Please either direct me to a link that shows they are in fact running surpluses or explain your alternate understanding of stimulus to me.

Keynsian stimulus doesn't mean "has a deficit.". It refers to government intervention to maintain and improve the economy.
This can involve loaning money where need by but it can also involve running a surplus. Likewise nations can be completely non keynsian and have a surplus or be in debt - the latter being most common in the world.

QuotePeople think of high debt/GDP as a disaster because that is what it has proven to be.  Time and time again.  People didn't stop buying Greek bonds because the Greeks are hairy and smelly.  They stopped lending because they thought they wouldn't get repaid.
Except it hasn't.
At the top of the debt to gdp ratio table you have Japan who have no trouble getting loans. Not too far below Greece you have Singapore and the US. Also doing fine.

Meanwhile on the low debt to gdp ratio table you find economic powerhouses such as Afghanistan and the DRC...
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Admiral Yi

"Keeping your credit rating as high as possible in the short term at the expense of both the same rating in the long term and everything else in the country  is pretty shit prioritisation."

Yes you did.

I stand corrected on Britain's credit rating.

More later.

OttoVonBismarck

#25277
UK population to overtake France for the first time in history due to record migration

QuoteUK population to overtake France for the first time in history due to record migration

The record immigration statistics puts the UK on track to overtake France's population by 2025

By Hugo Gye, Arj Singh

May 25, 2023 6:45 pm(Updated 9:05 pm)

The population of the UK is on course to overtake that of France for the first time in recorded history after net migration hit more than 600,000.

The gap in population between the two countries has been closing for decades, but France remains the second-largest country that is wholly within Europe.

In mid-2021, the last figure for which comparable figures were available, the UK had about 700,000 fewer residents than France. Britain's net migration was 606,000 last year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Thursday, while France's statistical agency estimates its net migration at 161,000.

The last comparable figures, from mid 2021, showed the UK had a total population of 67,026,292, and France 67,710,000. Germany had a population of 83,129,285 in mid-2021.

The UK's population is already larger than that of "metropolitan France" – the part of the country located within Europe. However, France has more people when counting its overseas regions, such as Guadeloupe and French Guiana, which have the same legal status as the rest of the country.

Both the UK and France have similar levels of "natural change", the number of births minus the number of deaths. The figures suggest that within two years, the UK's population will be larger than France's if migration levels remain roughly stable.

Maxwell Marlow of the free-market Adam Smith Institute told i: "Today's record immigration stats puts the UK on track to overtake France's population by 2025. It should be noted that we have elevated incoming migration owing to our leading support for Hong Kongers and Ukrainian refugees, as well as very high numbers of students because of our flagship education sector."

Jonathan Portes, a former top civil servant and senior fellow at the UK In A Changing Europe think-tank, added: "The UK, like almost all European countries, has fertility well below replacement levels, but migration means that unlike lots of European countries we don't have a falling population.

"On the whole, my view is that is a good thing in the sense that rising population is a problem, but it's not as big a problem as falling population. Rising population is a problem as you have congestion, where do you build the houses, we are more dense, and that's bad.

"But falling population is a much worse problem where you get deserted villages, an older population with fewer workers, places where there are no or few kids which does not feel like a dynamic, vibrant country."

Turkey and Russia, which have larger populations than the UK, France or Germany, are not included in the comparison as they are not wholly in Europe.

The record high for the year 2022 has forced Rishi Sunak to all but ditch the Conservative 2019 manifesto pledge to bring down overall numbers of immigration.

The rise was driven by 1.2 million immigrants, the majority (925,000) of whom were non-EU nationals who mainly arrived for work, study and humanitarian reasons, the ONS estimate showed.

People arriving on study visas were the largest group of immigrants, with 361,000 students arriving after the reintroduction of a two-year post-study work visa and a Government-sponsored strategy to boost numbers, compared to 235,000 workers.

The number of family members of foreign students arriving in the UK more than doubled to 85,000, according to the ONS.

More up-to-date Home Office figures suggesting the number had increased even further to 149,400 in the year ending March 2023, suggesting the Government's crackdown announced last week would have some impact, if not a decisive one.

The large increase in the number of work visas coming to the UK was largely driven by the recruitment of health and care, and seasonal agricultural workers to cover labour shortages, Home Office statistics showed.

The estimates also included about 172,000 people who came to the UK on largely temporary refugee resettlement schemes, for example from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan, as well as, for the first time, 76,000 applicants for asylum.

Jay Lindop, director of the centre for international migration at the ONS, said a series of "unprecedented world events throughout 2022", together with the lifting of restrictions following the Covid-19 pandemic, led to record levels of international immigration to the UK.

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford suggested the numbers had "peaked".

Rishi Sunak vowed to bring down the number from the level he inherited when he took office last year, when net migration was estimated at 504,000.

The Prime Minister told ITV's This Morning: "Numbers are too high, it's as simple as that. And I want to bring them down."

Separate figures published yesterday by the Home Office showed the backlog of asylum cases in the UK has hit a new record high, with a total of 172,758 people waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application in the UK at the end of March 2023, despite Mr Sunak's pledge to bring down the backlog.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "The Conservatives' chaotic approach means that work visas are up 119 per cent, net migration is more than twice the level ministers were aiming for, and the asylum backlog is at a record high despite Rishi Sunak promising to clear it this year."

Interesting trend comparisons. Based on broad historical estimates, in 1345 near the beginning of the Hundred Years War, France is estimated to have had around 15 million people. England (which obviously isn't 1:1 modern UK) had around 4.8 million. [Both France and the UK would see population net declines in the following 100 years due to pandemics etc.]

By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, France's population in 1811-1816 was around 30 million. England in that same era was right under 10m. (The Great Britain census, which included Wales & Scotland, was pegged at 12.6 million people in 1811.)

Sheilbh

Finally, the right populist pitch for higher immigration.
Let's bomb Russia!

Jacob


Admiral Yi

Quote from: Josquius on May 25, 2023, 04:55:58 PMKeynsian stimulus doesn't mean "has a deficit.". It refers to government intervention to maintain and improve the economy.
This can involve loaning money where need by but it can also involve running a surplus. Likewise nations can be completely non keynsian and have a surplus or be in debt - the latter being most common in the world.
This is totally incorrect.

QuoteExcept it hasn't.
At the top of the debt to gdp ratio table you have Japan who have no trouble getting loans. Not too far below Greece you have Singapore and the US. Also doing fine.

Meanwhile on the low debt to gdp ratio table you find economic powerhouses such as Afghanistan and the DRC...

Yes it has.  I didn't say every time, I said time and again.  Japan and the US are special cases, Japan because the Japanese people are voracious savers and are perfectly happy to park their money in postal savings accounts paying essentially zero interest.  The US is a special case because of the (IMO irrational) belief that when things go to shit world wide the one safe place is the dollar.

Admiral Yi

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/feb/22/uk-credit-rating-downgraded-moodys

"George Osborne has insisted Britain will not "run away" from its problems after Moody's downgraded the country's AAA credit rating.

The chancellor said the coalition was determined to stick by its plan for economic recovery after the rating was lowered by a notch to AA1.

The agency warned that "subdued" growth prospects and a "high and rising debt burden" were weighing on the economy."

No mention of austerity.  The opposite.

Valmy

Well that is bullshit. Just shows the evil anti-French propaganda of the perfidious Albion.

The UK had 42 million people in the 1911 Census. France had 39.5 million.
1921 UK 44 million, France 39.1 million
1931 UK 46 million, France 41.6 million
1951 UK 50.2 million, 1950 France 41.6 million
1961 UK 52.8 million, 1960 France 45.5 million
1971 UK 56 million, 1970 France 50.5 million
1981 UK 56.3 million, 1980 France 53.7 million
1991 UK 57.5 million, 1990 France 56.5 million
2001 UK 59.1 million, 2000 France 58.8 million
2011 UK 63.1 million, 2010 France 62.7 million
And then to the numbers cited in the article.

And I remember the moment in the 2010s when the population of France exceeded that of the UK, making France #2 in the then EU behind Germany. So the first time in history is just...a lie. A misrepresentation. The UK exceeded France sometime around the death of Queen Victoria, with France only briefly overtaking the UK for less than a decade recently.

Fake news. Anybody with access to the publicly available census data of both countries should know this.

BUT...

The UK is all weird with four countries and lots of little territories that are like little countries. There are like 15 tiny countries and 3 small countries and one big country in the UK. It makes no sense so maybe I do not fully understand how the population of the UK works. Maybe millions of the people in the UK don't count...but yet it cites the 67 million figure from the 2021 census so...nevermind.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Sheilbh

Quote from: Valmy on May 25, 2023, 08:19:43 PMWell that is bullshit. Just shows the evil anti-French propaganda of the perfidious Albion.
Or does it show your treacherous refusal to acknowledge la France d'outre mer :o :P

QuoteThe UK is all weird with four countries and lots of little territories that are like little countries. There are like 15 tiny countries and 3 small countries and one big country in the UK. It makes no sense so maybe I do not fully understand how the population of the UK works. Maybe millions of the people in the UK don't count...but yet it cites the 67 million figure from the 2021 census so...nevermind.
It's really not that weird :P

At least for an American it shouldn't be. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are like states; all those little territories are domestically totally self-governing but covered by the UK for foreign and defence policy, I assume a little like, say, the US Virgin Islands or Guam?

I feel like that's less weird than the fact that France has, say, an overseas department that is just part of France - sending legislators, fully in the EU - in South America :lol:
Let's bomb Russia!

Admiral Yi

I'm wondering out loud if profit as a % of revenue is the right metric.

But now I'm going to get high so I will no longer be engaged in higher thought. :)

Valmy

Quote from: Sheilbh on May 25, 2023, 09:24:48 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 25, 2023, 08:19:43 PMWell that is bullshit. Just shows the evil anti-French propaganda of the perfidious Albion.
Or does it show your treacherous refusal to acknowledge la France d'outre mer :o :P

QuoteThe UK is all weird with four countries and lots of little territories that are like little countries. There are like 15 tiny countries and 3 small countries and one big country in the UK. It makes no sense so maybe I do not fully understand how the population of the UK works. Maybe millions of the people in the UK don't count...but yet it cites the 67 million figure from the 2021 census so...nevermind.
It's really not that weird :P

At least for an American it shouldn't be. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are like states; all those little territories are domestically totally self-governing but covered by the UK for foreign and defence policy, I assume a little like, say, the US Virgin Islands or Guam?

I feel like that's less weird than the fact that France has, say, an overseas department that is just part of France - sending legislators, fully in the EU - in South America :lol:

Well if you don't count the overseas departments then maybe France never exceeded the UK's population since 1903 or whatever and the article is even less true. As I pointed out they cited the 2021 UK census data which is the exact source I pulled my data from so my hypothesis about maybe the UK not counting the Caymens, or whatever, isn't even the case. The article just cited the data source straight up that proved it was false.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Jacob

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 25, 2023, 08:17:20 PMhttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/feb/22/uk-credit-rating-downgraded-moodys

"George Osborne has insisted Britain will not "run away" from its problems after Moody's downgraded the country's AAA credit rating.

The chancellor said the coalition was determined to stick by its plan for economic recovery after the rating was lowered by a notch to AA1.

The agency warned that "subdued" growth prospects and a "high and rising debt burden" were weighing on the economy."

No mention of austerity.  The opposite.

The man who implemented the austerity plan that caused the credit downgrade for ideological reasons denies that it was his austerity plan that caused it?

I'm not sure that evidence is as compelling as you think.

I think the passage that matters is this one:
Quote"The main driver underpinning Moody's decision to downgrade the UK's government bond rating to AA1 is the increasing clarity that, despite considerable structural economic strengths, the UK's economic growth will remain sluggish over the next few years due to the anticipated slow growth of the global economy and the drag on the UK economy from the ongoing domestic public and private sector deleveraging process," the agency said.

"ongoing domestic public.... sector deleveraging process" = Austerity.

So the rating agency does in fact say that austerity caused the rating drop.

Sheilbh

#25287
Quote from: Valmy on May 25, 2023, 10:56:32 PMWell if you don't count the overseas departments then maybe France never exceeded the UK's population since 1903 or whatever and the article is even less true. As I pointed out they cited the 2021 UK census data which is the exact source I pulled my data from so my hypothesis about maybe the UK not counting the Caymens, or whatever, isn't even the case. The article just cited the data source straight up that proved it was false.
To be clear I've no idea about the data and you're probably right :lol: I just find France's overseas parts of France very weird :P

Separately, I thought this piece and the data was really interesting on the Nat Con Conference and why some of its lines particularly around "faith" and "family" seem so odd (see also David Starkey and Calvin Robinson on GB News about Sunak).

Apparently the life expectancy stats were partly inspired by Burn-Murdoch doing a piece on life expectancy in the UK v US generally and getting lots of pushback that part of the explanation was "genetics" - and it feels like the key factors in the UK may be class and place. It also reminds me of a left-liberal education policy specialist in the UK who's noted that when speaking in the US he's met with incredulity when discussing that Black African students have a higher education attainment than white students, but white students have a higher attainment than Black Caribbean - again it suggests that while there are issues in the UK, the whole Charles Murray angle or life expectancy just being down to "genetics" is nonsense:
QuoteBritain is not America — and the right shouldn't forget it
The US brand of national conservatism fails to resonate in the UK because it is a fundamentally different society
John Burn-Murdoch
© FT montage/Getty Images
John Burn-Murdoch 8 hours ago

When British supermarket giant Tesco withdrew from the US in 2013 just six years after opening its first Fresh & Easy store, it was criticised for failing to appreciate important differences in how Americans and Brits do their grocery shopping.

On the evidence of last week, a similar charge could be levelled at the American National Conservatism movement. Their flagship conference in London, featuring US speakers including Republican senator JD Vance and leading British conservative politicians, was met with more of an irritable eye-roll than a buzz of excitement. Critics included figures on the British centre-right, writing in rightwing publications. How did the organisers misjudge their target market so badly?

Their first mistake was a failure to appreciate quite how radical the US Republican party has become on social issues, and how comparatively moderate Britain's Conservatives are. From immigration and racial discrimination to whether to defend tradition or embrace change, UK Conservatives actually come out closer to US Democrats than Republicans.



"Britain is a Christian nation, or it is nothing at all," said one speaker at the conference. That is news to most British Conservatives, only 24 per cent of whom think being Christian is important to being truly British, compared with 25 per cent of US Democrats and 53 per cent of Republicans asked the same question about being American.

Such starkly different social attitudes don't exist in a vacuum — they have been shaped by very different histories, and are reflected in very different realities. The US fought a civil war over slavery, racial segregation was legal in living memory, and the Ku Klux Klan still exists. Today, America remains far more racially segregated than Britain, which is itself far from perfect on race.



Black Americans earn 22 per cent less an hour than their white counterparts. This compares with a black pay deficit of 6 per cent in Britain. Starker yet, while black Americans live four years fewer than whites, black Britons live longer than their white compatriots.



Another key difference is in media landscapes. The US is highly fragmented, with no single news provider consumed by more than 25 per cent of the population. Fox News and CNN have the widest reach, but each is deeply distrusted by one side of the political divide. In Britain, by contrast, almost 60 per cent of people regularly consume news from the BBC, and both Labour and Conservative supporters generally trust its output. The UK brands that do polarise — tabloid newspapers and rightwing TV channel GB News — have far less reach than the likes of Fox and CNN.



Culture war rhetoric thrives where there is a history of internal conflict, no shared source of truth, and no challenge to radical opinions. The failure of last week's conference to resonate should send a clear message to transatlantic culture warriors that US and British vulnerabilities are not always the same.

[email protected], @jburnmurdoch

The key thing that strikes me about this is just how polarised and far apart Democrat and Republican voters are on some of those issues. It might just be a fucntion of media fragmentation (and polarisation) v the BBC and ITV being most people's source of news and broadly trusted by everyone - it's why I worry that attacks on the BBC have moved from just being something the Tory right does to, increasingly, something the Labour left, and ultra-remainers do.

But it reminds me of the polling since 2019 because you can see in it public opinion shifting in response to various covid scandals or mistakes (and the odd success) in a way that you just can't with the US. You look at Trump's approval rating and it fluctuates in a really narrow band. I think there is, still, in the UK a centre ground that you need to win, there are swing voters, Tory and Labour voters in opinion polls move in the same way (but less extremely and from different starting points) to the same scandals/stories.

Sadly not a surprise to see Leicester, Bradford and Blackburn where they are.

Edit: On the other hand maybe not found this interesting on partisan trust of different media in the UK - particularly because Tory voters trust the Guardian more than the Daily Mail. It's a very different chart than the one for the US. I wonder if in part it's because the distinction here is more tabloid/broadsheet (ackknowledging press in both categories take sides)? Serious magazines, broadsheets and broadcasters (except GB News) generally have decent trust regardless of partisan bent (they're at least honestly partisan, I suppose) while tabloids and internet media rate lower?
Let's bomb Russia!

Gups

Even Tories don't trust the Tory papers. On the other hand Labour voters are blind the the pretty obvious biases of the Guardian.

Fascinating graphics.

Josquius

#25289
I'd be more concerned about The Independent's high rating.

The Guardian I honestly don't think is that bad if you bear in mind the simple rules that
1: They often let any random nutter write a silly opinion piece
2: They're left wing and write from this POV.

I'd see a big difference between something being trust worthy and supporting a side. Its perfectly possible to be all for/against one party or the other whilst at the same time sticking to the facts. In fact I'd say this is the natural way of things, point me to someone claiming to be neutral and I'm calling them a liar.

The Express used to be decent for the opposite. Generally truthful and written for adults though pro tory. Like the Independent's former quality however this has since changed. The BBC fills that role today.
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