It’s always the ones you most expect

I know Burnham recently said he wouldn’t hold an election in the next 12 months, but maybe the polling will persuade him otherwise. If the polling is good for Labour then surely it’s a good time to have an election. He could secure a more ambitious manifesto and keep Reform out of number 10 for at least five years.

But of course it would be a risk. In 2017, Theresa May called an election because the polling didn’t look too bad for the Tories, and then during the election campaign, the Tory vote declined while the Labour vote rose.

There’s always Ireland, they speak English and they’re still in the EU.

Not to be pedantic but I think that would be “Breenter”, just like how “reentry” has two Es

An alternative would be “Brejoin”

It’s like running with a bucket of water to a burning man and saying “I’ll douse you, but it’ll cost you 100 bucks”

I agree with you. Successful people often don’t want to recognise how much good luck they’ve had. Childhood privileges that others don’t have, job opportunities that others haven’t had, etc.

If we applied their thinking to every situation, we’d say something like “if a child in Gaza dies from an Israeli bomb, it’s the child’s fault, because they didn’t try hard enough to avoid the bomb”.

Even if a right-winger admits that children can have different circumstances, they might have an attitude of “once you hit 18, we’re all equal, and your effort is what determines your success in adult life”. But that’s not true. Some adults have a lot of privilege behind them, while others don’t. Some adults have health conditions which can be very difficult to manage in some cases, taking up time and money and effort, while other adults don’t have to worry as much about their health.

Google tells me that David Lammy said that in early 2019. Anyway, I think he was right about this bit:

Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US.

Sure it would be better if America was doing more to support Ukraine. But I think it’s good news that they are at least allowing Ukraine to have these Patriots, since they are important for Ukraine.

I’m not trying to give too much credit to the US of course. Trump’s administration is terrible. I’m just saying it could have been worse, if the US refused to allow Ukraine to have any Patriots.

You could argue it’s a deal that some Brits voted for, but definitely not all Brits of course.

Only 51.89% of those who voted in the Brexit referendum in 2016 voted for Brexit.

In 2019 there was a general election, and during that election campaign, Boris Johnson promised to “get Brexit done”, but only 43.6% of voters in that election voted for Johnson’s party, the Conservatives. So a majority of voters in that election voted against the Conservatives.

It would have been possible to leave the EU while staying in the single market and/or customs union, but the Conservatives chose a particularly hard version of Brexit, cutting more ties than necessary with the EU.

Some Brexiteers suggested that Brexit would be a softer affair, in the lead up to the referendum.

Tory peer Daniel Hannan (formerly an MEP) said in 2015: “absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market”. And yet we did leave the single market, as part of the hard Brexit pursued by the Tories.

But yes I suppose other leading Brexiteers didn’t make details explicit. Perhaps, after the Brexit referendum, we should have had a second referendum to determine what shape Brexit should take. We could have remained in the single market for many industries (similar to Norway/Switzerland/Iceland) or the customs union (similar to Turkey), or both.

Brexiteers are famously supportive of “democracy” so they shouldn’t have had any objections to a second referendum.

I wonder if it will cost them more trying to defeat the tax, than if they just paid the tax.

They’d probably be okay with that anyway. They probably enjoy paying more just to watch poor people squirm.

I’ve noticed that irony too. For example, in 2024:

Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against the UK’s Labour Party, accusing it of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election

And then, in 2026:

JD Vance backs Orbán’s re-election bid in Budapest visit

It’s funny that conservatives are all about “law and order” and then they’ll happily break the law (fleeing Brazil illegally) when it serves them

Trump on 13th June 2020:

We are ending the era of endless wars

Trump on 5th October 2024:

I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war

That second link has other examples too.

Oppressive authoritarianism? But tankies told me that China is a place of unbridled liberty. A land of milk and honey. Unlike the evil West which is always horrible and terrible.

Michel Barnier, formerly the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said earlier this year that the UK wouldn’t need to adopt the euro to rejoin the EU (source):

“I am speaking about Schengen, I am speaking about the single currency: there are other member states who are not in them. It is perfectly possible to have opt-outs in these fields.”

Coming and going over and over again would probably not be sensible. But the UK could definitely rejoin the EU if it wanted to. It just depends on whether there’s enough political will to make it happen. Currently there probably isn’t, but I think the UK could rejoin the EU during my lifetime, or at least the UK could certainly forge a much closer relationship with the EU even without membership. Similar to Norway or Switzerland, for example.

Voters chose leaving the EU by a slim margin, but the UK could have still taken part in the EU single market without being an EU member, like Norway does.

So you could say that blame for the way in which Brexit turned out lies with politicians, specifically Tory politicians who pushed through a hard Brexit without consulting the public on it. So much for “democracy”.

Very true. It would have been entirely sensible for the UK to have had a second referendum regarding which kind of Brexit should be pursued. We could have stayed in the single market, or parts of it, while still leaving the EU. We could have stayed in the customs union; Turkey is in the EU customs union while not being an EU member.

Alas, the Tories chose a hard Brexit on a whim.

Him seeming like a “weirdo” makes more sense when you look at his background. He was influenced by the hippie culture of the 60s and 70s. He travelled to India when he was a young adult and he got into Buddhism. I think all of that stuff inspired him to try things which are unconventional in western countries.

As for what you mentioned about jumping to the front of a transplant queue, yes that’s obviously selfish and wrong, if he did indeed do that.