7 ms·

What a legacy Cameron has left. Alienation of our nearest neighbours and the likely dissolution of the Union. It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause

What a legacy Cameron has left. Alienation of our nearest neighbours and the likely dissolution of the Union. It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause problems for the Northern Ireland peace arrangement.

m0nty 10y ago
Could be worse than that, at least from the viewpoint of the Conservative and Unionist Party, to give them their full (and oft-forgot) name: > "For the first time in my life, the prospect of a united Ireland is not only credible but inevitable" http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/northern-ireland-stormont-crisis-sinn-fein-dup-united-ireland-credible-inevitable-a7615756.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/northern-ireland-stormon...
- richardwhiuk 10y ago
  Unionist means union between Northern Ireland and England, not a united Ireland - the term for that is Republican.
  - m0nty 10y ago
    Yes, that's what I meant. It's coded into their DNA (and their name) to not want the union to disintegrate.
  - miceeatnicerice 10y ago
    That might have been m0nty's exact point
pjc50 10y ago
The Union has long operated as internal colonialism; this is just the next step in de-colonising the system. It'll be interesting to see how often Conservative ministers promise that there will be no border between UK and ROI but there will be a hard border between England and Scotland, despite none of this making any sense.
- biofox 10y ago
  On the point of internal colonialism: it might have been true once, but certainly not true today. All of the countries in the union have seats in Westminster, dedicate ministers and committees, as well as their own devolved parliaments. I'd say things are much worse for counties in the North of England, than for the other countries in the UK. The nature of democracy means the majority rules, which will always be problematic for minority communities. The only solutions I can see are to be more cohesive and unified in opinion, divorce completely, or accept differences as the cost of peace and stability and continue working to improve the balance.
  - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    I grew up in the north of England, Cumbria to be exact. My extended family are all in the north of Scotland. There is no doubt in my mind that the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice, publicly scorned, and they see all their talent move south or abroad. England is a lopsided country and I don't know how to fix it.
    - MagnumOpus 10y ago
      > the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice Well, they had their voice, they cast their lot, they were the deciding vote for Brexit. Now they can lie in the bed they made for themselves. No pity lost from anyone up beyond the Wall or down in the South.
      - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
        Don't be so stupid. People throwing the towel in and blaming others for everything that is wrong is how we've ended up in this political mess. No leaders. No vision. Just pity and blame. The North of England has consistently been stripped of its talent for the last fifty years. To blame them for wanting change and not being attracted to the same campaign you were is idiotic.
  - 10y ago
mtgx 10y ago
And that's before you mention that he left UK with the most mass surveillance-friendly laws of the western world [1], that would've likely been declared invalid under EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. There May also played a big role in that. And let's not forget about the "porn filter" that includes much more than just porn, and it will soon become mandatory [2]. Cameron also helped Saudi Arabia [3] become the head of UN's human rights council, and who knows what other kind of corrupt deals he made with China. Cameron was really "looking up" to the leaders in China and how they're doing things there, so to me it didn't come as a surprise that he would try to turn UK into West's China (from a surveillance/censorship point of view). [1] http://europe.newsweek.com/ip-bill-most-extreme-surveillance-law-ever-passed-democracy-516573 http://europe.newsweek.com/ip-bill-most-extreme-surveillance... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/26/porn-blocking-legislation-cement-internet-filtering-uk-law/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/26/porn-blocki... [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uk-and-saudi-arabia-made-secret-deal-to-exchange-votes-for-human-rights-council-seats-leaked-a6673491.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uk-and-saudi-arabia-ma...
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  I'm certainly no Cameron supporter but The Investigatory Powers Bill was passed under May's government. It also had no real opposition from Labour. We are still subject to EU law and there has already been a ruling in the CJEU (in December 2016) against the UK's surveillance which will have consequences for the IP Act. And the 'porn filter' (Digital Economy Bill) is still being debated so hopefully something can be done about it.
edblarney 10y ago
The people voted, not Cameron. One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself. Nationalist movements are on the rise across Europe: The Dutch are about to give their top choice a pretty hard core 'anti Muslim' guy. The French will have a runoff between Le Pen and probably Macron. The Sweden Democrats are polling at 22%. True Finns have incredible influence. Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. Brexit. Poland. Danish nationalists form government. Admittedly, Catalonia and Scotland are a different strain. And a massive division between periphery, core and Eastern Europe on 'existential' issues. For most of these issue, failure of EU leadership, and hostility and intransigence towards the will of the plebes led to this. It could have been avoided. 'For or Against' - the EU as we know it is dead - it didn't want to adapt - so Europe is adapting underneath it. I don't think it will break up, but nothing will ever be the same in EU-land.
- holri 10y ago
  * Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. * 46.21 % to 53.79 % is NOT a tiny margin.
  - jpetso 10y ago
    Those are the numbers for the second attempt, where the first attempt was 50.3% vs. 49.7%, won only after counting mail votes, and that first result got annulled because of challenged vote counts.
    - holri 10y ago
      This second attempt is a huge success of the far left wing candidate, while everybody was and is still babbling about an unstoppable right wing trend.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  >> One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself. I would argue it's the politicians. No matter what way you voted it's clear that the campaigns around the referendum were incredibly dishonest. Politicians were largely playing games to further their careers and were willing to say what they had to to succeed. We need to do something to ensure referendums deal only in fact because a large portion of voters have no interest in doing their own research and will vote on lies and propaganda.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
It's incredible when you consider Queen Elizabeth's reign. From visiting India as a British realm to overseeing the dissolution of the Union itself.
- tim333 10y ago
  I guess that's democracy for you if you let people a vote on it. I wouldn't be surprised if California left Trumpland if it was on the ballot.
  - qbfqhfhqfbh 10y ago
    I bet you that if you held the Brexit referendum 10 days in a row, you'd get different results every time
- zeveb 10y ago
  Unless she's been very active behind the scenes, and we find out later, I think she'll go down in history as one of the worst British monarchs ever. Even as a constitutional monarch, she has influence and she has some reserve powers, but from what I've seen she hasn't used any of it to prevent the disasters of the past half-century of British history. Yes, if she exercised some of her power it'd probably spark a constitutional crisis and she'd probably be overthrown — but that's her job, to act as a last-chance sanity check when the people, the aristocracy and the government itself have all gone mad. It's very, very sad. She seems like a nice lady, but she has (apparently) been extremely ineffectual. Like I noted, maybe someday we'll discover that she's actually been extremely involved, preventing one disaster after another, and that Britain's fall would have been much worse without her expert guidance. I don't expect that's the case, but maybe it'll happen.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    I disagree, in that I think everyone's long accepted that the Queen should be "above" or at least apart from actual politics, and therefore intervening would be an unpopular disaster. Ever since King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate, nominally due to marrying a divorcee but secretly due to Fascist sympathies ( https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they-could-have-had https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they... ). It's just not her responsibility and no blame attaches to her. (I'm also reminded of the line from the Australian constitutional crisis, "God save the Queen, for nothing shall save the Govenor-General!")
k-mcgrady 10y ago
>> It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause problems for the Northern Ireland peace arrangement. This is the first time I've felt a border poll in Northern Ireland is a possibility. The recent election resulted in a huge swing in power and a hard border with the south would be devastating for a lot of people regardless of political persuasion. It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time.
- gumby 10y ago
  > It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time. NI could ally with Scotland and remain a United Kingdom in the EU. Then it would be England and Wales leaving the Union. I must admit this is more of a board game fantasy than an actual possibility given the time and I/NI politics, but is amusing to consider.
  - k-mcgrady 10y ago
    It would never happen but definitely fun to consider. It would solve the EU border issue and the NI/ROI border issue. I wonder if NI and Scotland paired would do better economically together than on their own.
- rmc 10y ago
  There were some local political scandals ("cash for ash") in NI which could have also changed the polling results.

m0nty 10y ago

Could be worse than that, at least from the viewpoint of the Conservative and Unionist Party, to give them their full (and oft-forgot) name: > "For the first time in my life, the prospect of a united Ireland is not only credible but inevitable" http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/northern-ireland-stormont-crisis-sinn-fein-dup-united-ireland-credible-inevitable-a7615756.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/northern-ireland-stormon...

richardwhiuk 10y ago
Unionist means union between Northern Ireland and England, not a united Ireland - the term for that is Republican.
- m0nty 10y ago
  Yes, that's what I meant. It's coded into their DNA (and their name) to not want the union to disintegrate.
- miceeatnicerice 10y ago
  That might have been m0nty's exact point

pjc50 10y ago

The Union has long operated as internal colonialism; this is just the next step in de-colonising the system. It'll be interesting to see how often Conservative ministers promise that there will be no border between UK and ROI but there will be a hard border between England and Scotland, despite none of this making any sense.

biofox 10y ago
On the point of internal colonialism: it might have been true once, but certainly not true today. All of the countries in the union have seats in Westminster, dedicate ministers and committees, as well as their own devolved parliaments. I'd say things are much worse for counties in the North of England, than for the other countries in the UK. The nature of democracy means the majority rules, which will always be problematic for minority communities. The only solutions I can see are to be more cohesive and unified in opinion, divorce completely, or accept differences as the cost of peace and stability and continue working to improve the balance.
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  I grew up in the north of England, Cumbria to be exact. My extended family are all in the north of Scotland. There is no doubt in my mind that the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice, publicly scorned, and they see all their talent move south or abroad. England is a lopsided country and I don't know how to fix it.
  - MagnumOpus 10y ago
    > the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice Well, they had their voice, they cast their lot, they were the deciding vote for Brexit. Now they can lie in the bed they made for themselves. No pity lost from anyone up beyond the Wall or down in the South.
    - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
      Don't be so stupid. People throwing the towel in and blaming others for everything that is wrong is how we've ended up in this political mess. No leaders. No vision. Just pity and blame. The North of England has consistently been stripped of its talent for the last fifty years. To blame them for wanting change and not being attracted to the same campaign you were is idiotic.
- 10y ago

mtgx 10y ago

And that's before you mention that he left UK with the most mass surveillance-friendly laws of the western world [1], that would've likely been declared invalid under EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. There May also played a big role in that. And let's not forget about the "porn filter" that includes much more than just porn, and it will soon become mandatory [2]. Cameron also helped Saudi Arabia [3] become the head of UN's human rights council, and who knows what other kind of corrupt deals he made with China. Cameron was really "looking up" to the leaders in China and how they're doing things there, so to me it didn't come as a surprise that he would try to turn UK into West's China (from a surveillance/censorship point of view). [1] http://europe.newsweek.com/ip-bill-most-extreme-surveillance-law-ever-passed-democracy-516573 http://europe.newsweek.com/ip-bill-most-extreme-surveillance... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/26/porn-blocking-legislation-cement-internet-filtering-uk-law/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/26/porn-blocki... [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uk-and-saudi-arabia-made-secret-deal-to-exchange-votes-for-human-rights-council-seats-leaked-a6673491.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uk-and-saudi-arabia-ma...

k-mcgrady 10y ago
I'm certainly no Cameron supporter but The Investigatory Powers Bill was passed under May's government. It also had no real opposition from Labour. We are still subject to EU law and there has already been a ruling in the CJEU (in December 2016) against the UK's surveillance which will have consequences for the IP Act. And the 'porn filter' (Digital Economy Bill) is still being debated so hopefully something can be done about it.

edblarney 10y ago

The people voted, not Cameron. One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself. Nationalist movements are on the rise across Europe: The Dutch are about to give their top choice a pretty hard core 'anti Muslim' guy. The French will have a runoff between Le Pen and probably Macron. The Sweden Democrats are polling at 22%. True Finns have incredible influence. Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. Brexit. Poland. Danish nationalists form government. Admittedly, Catalonia and Scotland are a different strain. And a massive division between periphery, core and Eastern Europe on 'existential' issues. For most of these issue, failure of EU leadership, and hostility and intransigence towards the will of the plebes led to this. It could have been avoided. 'For or Against' - the EU as we know it is dead - it didn't want to adapt - so Europe is adapting underneath it. I don't think it will break up, but nothing will ever be the same in EU-land.

holri 10y ago
* Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. * 46.21 % to 53.79 % is NOT a tiny margin.
- jpetso 10y ago
  Those are the numbers for the second attempt, where the first attempt was 50.3% vs. 49.7%, won only after counting mail votes, and that first result got annulled because of challenged vote counts.
  - holri 10y ago
    This second attempt is a huge success of the far left wing candidate, while everybody was and is still babbling about an unstoppable right wing trend.
k-mcgrady 10y ago
>> One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself. I would argue it's the politicians. No matter what way you voted it's clear that the campaigns around the referendum were incredibly dishonest. Politicians were largely playing games to further their careers and were willing to say what they had to to succeed. We need to do something to ensure referendums deal only in fact because a large portion of voters have no interest in doing their own research and will vote on lies and propaganda.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

It's incredible when you consider Queen Elizabeth's reign. From visiting India as a British realm to overseeing the dissolution of the Union itself.

tim333 10y ago
I guess that's democracy for you if you let people a vote on it. I wouldn't be surprised if California left Trumpland if it was on the ballot.
- qbfqhfhqfbh 10y ago
  I bet you that if you held the Brexit referendum 10 days in a row, you'd get different results every time
zeveb 10y ago
Unless she's been very active behind the scenes, and we find out later, I think she'll go down in history as one of the worst British monarchs ever. Even as a constitutional monarch, she has influence and she has some reserve powers, but from what I've seen she hasn't used any of it to prevent the disasters of the past half-century of British history. Yes, if she exercised some of her power it'd probably spark a constitutional crisis and she'd probably be overthrown — but that's her job, to act as a last-chance sanity check when the people, the aristocracy and the government itself have all gone mad. It's very, very sad. She seems like a nice lady, but she has (apparently) been extremely ineffectual. Like I noted, maybe someday we'll discover that she's actually been extremely involved, preventing one disaster after another, and that Britain's fall would have been much worse without her expert guidance. I don't expect that's the case, but maybe it'll happen.
- pjc50 10y ago
  I disagree, in that I think everyone's long accepted that the Queen should be "above" or at least apart from actual politics, and therefore intervening would be an unpopular disaster. Ever since King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate, nominally due to marrying a divorcee but secretly due to Fascist sympathies ( https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they-could-have-had https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they... ). It's just not her responsibility and no blame attaches to her. (I'm also reminded of the line from the Australian constitutional crisis, "God save the Queen, for nothing shall save the Govenor-General!")

k-mcgrady 10y ago

>> It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause problems for the Northern Ireland peace arrangement. This is the first time I've felt a border poll in Northern Ireland is a possibility. The recent election resulted in a huge swing in power and a hard border with the south would be devastating for a lot of people regardless of political persuasion. It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time.

gumby 10y ago
> It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time. NI could ally with Scotland and remain a United Kingdom in the EU. Then it would be England and Wales leaving the Union. I must admit this is more of a board game fantasy than an actual possibility given the time and I/NI politics, but is amusing to consider.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  It would never happen but definitely fun to consider. It would solve the EU border issue and the NI/ROI border issue. I wonder if NI and Scotland paired would do better economically together than on their own.
rmc 10y ago
There were some local political scandals ("cash for ash") in NI which could have also changed the polling results.