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What does that have to do with Brexit?

 Mr. Burning wrote:

The phrase 'tax avoidance' is heavy with spin and dripping with malice.

No where near the levels of malice that are attached to 'benefits' though and tax avoidance costs the Treasury far more.

On a slightly different note...

Today we find out if Mr. Corbyn wins the Labour leadership contest. Doesn't feel like Owen Smith has the nuts to win this one. Who here thinks Labour will split?

No matter who wins, labour loses.

At this rate, we'll be a conservative country for the next 20 years. Better practice your racism!

 Whirlwind wrote:

For those wondering whether Brexit would have an impact on the car industry we have the first evidence it is. Yes, not a major manufacturer, but worrying nonetheless.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-37449289

More than 400 design engineers and other staff at the SAIC Motor Technical Centre (SMTC) at the site and MG Motor employees are not affected.

I'll be harsh and say the manufacturing jobs were only a sop to local MPS councillors and unions. It probably secured funding for the site. Brexit is being talked as a cause but it was probably to good an excuse to finish the site off.

I don't think anyone in power saw a future for the site over short term aims.








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 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

The phrase 'tax avoidance' is heavy with spin and dripping with malice.

No where near the levels of malice that are attached to 'benefits' though and tax avoidance costs the Treasury far more.

Yeah, its spin either way.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
On a slightly different note...

Today we find out if Mr. Corbyn wins the Labour leadership contest. Doesn't feel like Owen Smith has the nuts to win this one. Who here thinks Labour will split?

MPs have been queuing up to get on the news today to say how all parties need to work together and compromise. I.e. Sorry about all the trash talk Jeremy, can I have that front bench job back that I quit from.

Radio was calling it for Corbyn.

 notprop wrote:
What does that have to do with Brexit?

Erm, how many sentences of the article did you read, one, two or just the headline? Hopefully to help

I think MG through Shanghai Automotive's owner have been kind of hanging on there.

They've had a flawed business model in that it was importing virtually the entire car for Longbridge with some very limited assembly, about 40 to 50 workers.

I think what has really scuppered them is the Brexit vote.

They had fundamental business problems in that they were not selling as many cars as they hoped and they had the big import costs of components.

Post Brexit though, the costs of import are much more expensive so costs are higher and there is uncertainty about the future on the trading relationships in Europe.

What they had hoped to do was use the UK as a launch pad for selling into Europe. If - big if - we are no longer part of the single market what is the point of investing there?

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 Mr. Burning wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:

For those wondering whether Brexit would have an impact on the car industry we have the first evidence it is. Yes, not a major manufacturer, but worrying nonetheless.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-37449289

More than 400 design engineers and other staff at the SAIC Motor Technical Centre (SMTC) at the site and MG Motor employees are not affected.

I'll be harsh and say the manufacturing jobs were only a sop to local MPS councillors and unions. It probably secured funding for the site. Brexit is being talked as a cause but it was probably to good an excuse to finish the site off.

I don't think anyone in power saw a future for the site over short term aims.

It's still 40 -50 jobs though. I agree it's current outlook wasn't great but they were trying to make a go of it in the UK. Obviously Brexit was the final nail in the coffin especially with the exchange rate tanking. But it is quite similar to a discussion had a few weeks ago that some manufacturers may find it harder if they rely on imported parts which is exactly the case here and that it might be manufacturing that gets hit the hardest. The maintenance group will survive at the moment because there are still a lot of old MGs around but that might tail off in time. The designers they aren't likely to move immediately because you can't *immediately* transfer the skills. However over time I expect they will be as if you pull out all your manufacturing equipment then the designers would be being designed over here with no way of prototyping them (which might be another reason they had a low level manufacturing base here). I'd expect over time the rest of MG will move abroad as well.


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 Silent Puffin? wrote:


No where near the levels of malice that are attached to 'benefits' though and tax avoidance costs the Treasury far more.

Agreed but as it's the Tories it's an easier spin to blame 'benefits' as the cause of the countries woes because the people that rely on them don't fund/support the party.

Total non-shocker- Corbyn wins the Labour leadership. Guess we won't be seeing another Labour govt for a lonnng time.

On a slightly more amusing note- he collects manhole covers for a hobby..

May I be the first to congratulate our Conservative Overlords on their next nine years of uninterrupted unchallenged occupation of power? And the Liberal Democrats on their future revival and the SNP on their continued domination of Scotland?

 Ketara wrote:
May I be the first to congratulate our Conservative Overlords on their next nine years of uninterrupted unchallenged occupation of power? And the Liberal Democrats on their future revival and the SNP on their continued domination of Scotland?

Tories must be laughing themselves silly right now. All we can hope is that there enough people that vote SNP, Lib Dems and Labour to result in a hung parliament because we can't expect Labour to hold massive appeal to enough people. We're now stuck with a hard right government with a hard left opposition. The question is when the hard left crowd wake up to the fact that JC is unelectable and that by throwing their toys out of the pram they could be damning the country to hard right politics for the foreseeable future which is exactly the opposite of what they want.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Total non-shocker- Corbyn wins the Labour leadership. Guess we won't be seeing another Labour govt for a lonnng time.

On a slightly more amusing note- he collects manhole covers for a hobby..

Hey I collect miniatures and never paint them for a hobby... at least his manhole covers might have some decorative value, mine just sit in boxes.

 Ketara wrote:
... and the SNP on their continued domination of Scotland?

The 'hard' left politics of Corbyn will actually be a threat to the SNP, although Labour will be a spent force in Scotland for a long time due to their previous complacency.

As Corbyn has now won the leadership election twice, with even more support than last time, its definitely time for the PLP to get back in its box and work towards unifying the party, continuation of the pissing and moaning that they have been doing for the last year or so will guarantee that the Tories will be in power after the next election.

I won't right him off if the Labour party is unified in the next few months; the Tories are bound to continue making an arse of things, the Brexit negotiations are going to be nasty and there is a large ground swell of anti austerity opinion. Its entirely possible that Labour will win the next GE, as it stand its not likely but then neither was Brexit.....

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
... and the SNP on their continued domination of Scotland?

The 'hard' left politics of Corbyn will actually be a threat to the SNP, although Labour will be a spent force in Scotland for a long time due to their previous complacency.

To quote Yodhrin from a time back, the Labour machine in Scotland has dissolved. The party activists have gone, the local offices are underfunded, and the SNP has effectively occupied for the long term a good half of their old seats regardless of a Labour comeback or not.

Whilst I'm not quite as pessimistic about their chances as Yodhrin, I think their biggest problem is that JC has no plan for regaining control of Scotland. As an MP from Islington who's spent his life cycling through London and attending protest rallies, Scotland doesn't even figure on his radar. He's point blank said that he reckons the reason Scottish Labour took a thrashing was because it wasn't anti-trident and austerity. As such, he thinks that if he commits to opposing nuclear weapons and permanently spending more money, the Labour votes will come flocking back with no extra effort required on his part. One of his previous strategy aides who decamped claimed that there was 'literally no plan' for regaining Scottish seats in Corbyn's office.

And without Scottish seats, Labour will stay a protest movement. With the Tories resetting the boundaries (which I'm not opposed to so much since Labour did it a decade or so ago, and gerrymandered the seats vastly in their own favour), he sees it as a chance to boot out a number of troublesome MP's, but that's only going to reduce the odds of Labour winning power further.

Corbyn is here to stay till the next election now I reckon, but he's going to be a lame duck opposition, and will stumble on for as long as he can. God help us all. Maybe if I write a nice letter to them, the SNP will start campaigning south of the border...? I can only dream.

 Ketara wrote:


Whilst I'm not quite as pessimistic about their chances as Yodhrin, I think their biggest problem is that JC has no plan for regaining control of Scotland. As an MP from Islington who's spent his life cycling through London and attending protest rallies, Scotland doesn't even figure on his radar. He's point blank said that he reckons the reason Scottish Labour took a thrashing was because it wasn't anti-trident and austerity. As such, he thinks that if he commits to opposing nuclear weapons and permanently spending more money, the Labour votes will come flocking back with no extra effort required on his part. One of his previous strategy aides who decamped claimed that there was 'literally no plan' for regaining Scottish seats in Corbyn's office.

The other issue is that if people in Scotland recognise that Labour are ineffectual then there really is no reason to change parties and vote Labour. It could be reasonably assumed the SNP will provide them with a better, louder voice than JC 'weary headteacher' approach will ever do.

Yes SNP south of the border would be ironic but likely to be a better choice. Maybe that would wake up Labour up from the direction they are heading.

The good thing about the Corbyn win is that finally the working class may get a political party that listens to and represents them in government again, you know like Labour was set up to do so.
It's also likely that any potential working class support for UKIP could be kyboshed by a resurgent, anti-elitist, anti-austerity Labour party.
If only the Blairites would finally feth off, we could actually have a convincing opposition. The Tories maybe gloating, at the moment, but if Labour do it right, and actually drum up some support from the millions who voted for BREXIT, and reform, they might find themselves in serious trouble.
Owen was deluded if he thought he stood a chance at leading the country into a new nu-labour future. People are sick of that old tosh, and are not prepared to vote for red tories anymore.

 r_squared wrote:
People are sick of that old tosh, and are not prepared to vote for red tories anymore.

Sadly, they're not prepared to vote for the old reds either, I don't think. Doesn't really leave the Labour movement in a good place either which way.

The historical dialectic should throw up their replacement by 2030, but we're in for a rough decade and a half in the meantime, politically speaking. So long as oil stays low, Scotland won't go independent, but if it rises in the meantime and the SNP decide to stick north of the border, the Union will be in trouble.

It's a myth to say that Labour needs Scotland to win. All of Blair's victories would have been achieved without Scottish seats.

In the last 100 years, Scottish votes have only made the difference in 2 General elections, one of the reasons why I want out the UK is I'm fed up of this democratic deficit.

Elections and referendums have always been won or lost in England.


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 r_squared wrote:
The good thing about the Corbyn win is that finally the working class may get a political party that listens to and represents them in government again, you know like Labour was set up to do so.
It's also likely that any potential working class support for UKIP could be kyboshed by a resurgent, anti-elitist, anti-austerity Labour party.
If only the Blairites would finally feth off, we could actually have a convincing opposition. The Tories maybe gloating, at the moment, but if Labour do it right, and actually drum up some support from the millions who voted for BREXIT, and reform, they might find themselves in serious trouble.
Owen was deluded if he thought he stood a chance at leading the country into a new nu-labour future. People are sick of that old tosh, and are not prepared to vote for red tories anymore.

In answer to your first sentence, that ship sailed a long time ago.

 r_squared wrote:
The good thing about the Corbyn win is that finally the working class may get a political party that listens to and represents them in government again, you know like Labour was set up to do so.
It's also likely that any potential working class support for UKIP could be kyboshed by a resurgent, anti-elitist, anti-austerity Labour party.
If only the Blairites would finally feth off, we could actually have a convincing opposition. The Tories maybe gloating, at the moment, but if Labour do it right, and actually drum up some support from the millions who voted for BREXIT, and reform, they might find themselves in serious trouble.
Owen was deluded if he thought he stood a chance at leading the country into a new nu-labour future. People are sick of that old tosh, and are not prepared to vote for red tories anymore.

There's no point having a party that is so entrenched on the left that any you having to even to fight to keep the central ground people voting for you. Blairites are bad just as much are Corbynites; they are living in a make believe land where everyone is suddenly going to agree to hard socialist everything. They may keep the left support but the middle ground now have a choice between either a hard right or hard left choice neither of which are particularly palatable. The risk is then they don't vote because they don't like either option or move to LD.

Yes austerity has been bad for a lot of people and it has punished them for not their own direct actions but all Brexiters aren't going to suddenly choose the New Socialist party because many are retired conservative (in both meanings of the word) people that are happy as long as the pensions keep flowing freely and wrecking the country (as 65+ state expenditure goes equates to about 33%). There are also a lot of people that supported Labour and were pro-EU and aren't suddenly going to vote for a party they no longer recognise. There always needs to be balance between supporting the poorer but promoting self achievement (as long as it doesn't become greed - but which it now has a real risk of worsening).

 Ketara wrote:

To quote Yodhrin from a time back, the Labour machine in Scotland has dissolved. The party activists have gone, the local offices are underfunded, and the SNP has effectively occupied for the long term a good half of their old seats regardless of a Labour comeback or not.

There are two main reasons for that though; 'new' Labour with its centre right politics and Labour's apathy in and towards Scotland drove formerly Labour voters and members away in huge numbers, mostly to the SNP.

Corbyn's politics will help with the former, although he will exacerbate the later. Labour will take a long time to recover in Scotland and if it does it will probably be post independence. However a UK wide, genuinely left wing political party will create problems for the SNP.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:


There are two main reasons for that though; 'new' Labour with its centre right politics and Labour's apathy in and towards Scotland drove formerly Labour voters and members away in huge numbers, mostly to the SNP.

Corbyn's politics will help with the former, although he will exacerbate the later. Labour will take a long time to recover in Scotland and if it does it will probably be post independence. However a UK wide, genuinely left wing political party will create problems for the SNP.

The New Labour part doesn't really stand up though (apathy perhaps). SNP didn't really gain ground until after the 2010 elections which, if the Scottish people had been fed up with that style of government, you would have expected to have happened in 2010; also the referendum likely polarise views somewhat. The loss of the Scotland happened in 2015 under Ed Miliband. However bizarrely Ed Miliband actually got only 200,000 less votes than Blair did in 2005 overall (which he comfortably won). Ed Miliband was hardly what I would have called New Labour, but somewhere about 25% to the left of that. The move to SNP I think came from the realisation that Westminster parliament was no longer supporting Scotland fairly and that people from SNP would fight their corner harder (and Labour were not going to be in the position to do that). So although SNP only gained about 800k votes it was enough to completely massacre Scotland for them. The votes they did gain weren't enough to offset this proportionally. Those they did gain from LDs probably didn't make up for the losses they made to UKIP which pushed the whole country to the blue side of things. But blaming 'New Labour' for their loss in Scotland I don't think is valid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2005

You know, whilst he was a nobody who never really stood a chance of winning yet had a lot of unsavouries backing him, Owen Smith fought a clean, honest campaign. I haven't read a single offensive thing he's said, no skeletons fell out the closet, and every step of the way he's sounded reasonable, measured, and dignified. Even when attacking Corbyn, he made sure to phrase it in polite reasonably complimentary terms for the most part. I wouldn't mind seeing more of him in the Labour party, in whatever capacity.

Mr Smith said: "There is no doubt that the Labour Party has changed under his [Corbyn's] leadership, he has mobilised huge numbers of people over the last 12 months, many of whom are here at conference in Liverpool, and he deserves the credit for that, and for winning this contest so decisively.

"I have no time for talk of a split in the Labour movement - it's Labour or nothing for me... although today's result shows that our movement remains divided, it now falls primarily to Jeremy Corbyn, as Labour leader, to heal those divisions and to unite our movement."

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
May I be the first to congratulate our Conservative Overlords on their next nine years of uninterrupted unchallenged occupation of power? And the Liberal Democrats on their future revival and the SNP on their continued domination of Scotland?

Tories must be laughing themselves silly right now. All we can hope is that there enough people that vote SNP, Lib Dems and Labour to result in a hung parliament because we can't expect Labour to hold massive appeal to enough people. We're now stuck with a hard right government with a hard left opposition. The question is when the hard left crowd wake up to the fact that JC is unelectable and that by throwing their toys out of the pram they could be damning the country to hard right politics for the foreseeable future which is exactly the opposite of what they want.

This is nonsense for at least two reasons:

1) Corbyn is not "hard left". He's a social democrat. To imagine him as anything else is to lose perspective.

2) There is nobody that Labour could possibly get as their head that would lead them to massive victory. Now at least the party has regained some small measure of its soul and have something they can actually work with. Ideology is central to a party and it isn't much of a labourer's party if it's just tories that took a quick dip in paint.

Welp, that's Labours finished then.

Rosebuddy wrote:


1) Corbyn is not "hard left". He's a social democrat. To imagine him as anything else is to lose perspective.

2) There is nobody that Labour could possibly get as their head that would lead them to massive victory. Now at least the party has regained some small measure of its soul and have something they can actually work with. Ideology is central to a party and it isn't much of a labourer's party if it's just tories that took a quick dip in paint.

OK, but I meant hard left from a UK political perspective rather than how so far left we can't see the other side of the tunnel etc.

You can have the perfect ideology but it means nothing if you can't get elected. They need to win back some support from more of the media and then can slowly push the country in a more inclusive society. Doing it too fast with politically very left rhetoric won't persuade the soft (i.e. flaky) Tory voters that they are a better alternative. And I'm sure there are good potential leaders in there.

Still this isn't a good sign. Worth reading the connected article on the twitter posts, some are quite funny.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/how-to-leave-the-labour-party_uk_57e67464e4b0db20a6e93dea?ir=UK+Politics&utm_hp_ref=uk-politics

 Whirlwind wrote:

You can have the perfect ideology but it means nothing if you can't get elected. They need to win back some support from more of the media and then can slowly push the country in a more inclusive society. Doing it too fast with politically very left rhetoric won't persuade the soft (i.e. flaky) Tory voters that they are a better alternative. And I'm sure there are good potential leaders in there.

I'm of the opinion that being 'left wing' isn't so much an issue, it's more Corbyn and his particular brand. He's a bit of a naff leader, and his policies are half baked. That's what turns people like me, who are inherently anti-Tory and desperate for an alternative, off of him. I mean, being anti-austerity is all very well and good, but when your solution is 'print more money', it's nothing to do with the fact your ideologies are left wing so much as it is that you don't appear to have a clue what you're doing. The British public doesn't mind having a left wing leader, what they do mind is having an incompetent one. And this whole fiasco within the Labour party has just reeked of incompetence.

I was hopeful when he was first elected leader, I really was, but I've been bitterly disappointed with what's emerged. I don't care that he's a career politician, I don't care that he's left wing, I don't care what the Blairites and neo-cons hidden within the party have to say about him, I care about there being an effective, credible opposition that I can insert into power when the Tories feth up who can represent me and mine. Whilst the lack of a unified opposition thing isn't necessarily his fault, the 'credible' bit most certainly is.

While Corbyn is busy preaching vague platitudes to the converted and playing party games, me and the rest of the British electorate will be waiting in the corner for the next GE with a pint and packet of scratchings, and waiting for him to get down to brass tacks. If he has any.

And after a relaxing few weeks off from being the only opposition party in the UK, Labour have returned to exactly where they were before the referendum: nowhere.

Anyone hailing this as a huge victory is rather missing the fact that it should never have happened in the first place, and has not gained them anything; only stopped them from losing more.

What we'll see from Labour now is everyone grudgingly asking for their jobs back, and Corbyn reluctantly giving them back, because they're the only experienced people Labour has and it's either give them their jobs back, or promote the interns who make the tea.

This is yet another time that Corbyn needs to grab the metaphorical bull by its metaphorical balls and actually become an opposition party people must get behind, but given his rather poor record of taking the initiative, I suspect there'll be a few muttered words about unity and then back to the same old nothing.

 Ketara wrote:


I'm of the opinion that being 'left wing' isn't so much an issue, it's more Corbyn and his particular brand. He's a bit of a naff leader, and his policies are half baked. That's what turns people like me, who are inherently anti-Tory and desperate for an alternative, off of him. I mean, being anti-austerity is all very well and good, but when your solution is 'print more money', it's nothing to do with the fact your ideologies are left wing so much as it is that you don't appear to have a clue what you're doing. The British public doesn't mind having a left wing leader, what they do mind is having an incompetent one. And this whole fiasco within the Labour party has just reeked of incompetence.

I was hopeful when he was first elected leader, I really was, but I've been bitterly disappointed with what's emerged. I don't care that he's a career politician, I don't care that he's left wing, I don't care what the Blairites and neo-cons hidden within the party have to say about him, I care about there being an effective, credible opposition that I can insert into power when the Tories feth up who can represent me and mine. Whilst the lack of a unified opposition thing isn't necessarily his fault, the 'credible' bit most certainly is.

While Corbyn is busy preaching vague platitudes to the converted and playing party games, me and the rest of the British electorate will be waiting in the corner for the next GE with a pint and packet of scratchings, and waiting for him to get down to brass tacks. If he has any.

Yeah, I'm not saying left is bad. It's just when you get to the politically 'hard' left you are reliant on a subset of (rather fanatical) people to keep him in regardless of whether it is 'good' for the country or not. Unfortunately I find that any hard left or right people have views that just aren't practical in reality and I think this then 'breeds' leaders with concepts that pacify these crowds resulting in, as you say, poorly thought out concepts and ideas. I think state ownership of national infrastructure isn't a bad thing per se, but that the French have a better approach to it with EDF rather than a bloated public service which is mired by political 'sticky fingers'. Corbyn has pandered to this crowds for his political career and never really had to give it much actual thought as to how in reality it would work and now he has to, there's the obvious realisation that most of his ideas whilst sound in concept just aren't viable. Put this in a background where from an evolution perspective the human race is more conservative and right wing by default ('the shy tory' for want of a better term) then having an opposition that is hard left is going to be a hard sell to any such people. Even if the hard left party had sensible well thought out plans I don't think they'd get enough support from 'flaky' tories to actually win. When even the Tory party are saying that JCs election is a good thing for them then they should know they are in trouble.

Really the only hope we have is if almost every central to left party just came together with an "Anything but Tories" plan and didn't campaign against each other but I highly doubt that will happen!


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 Avatar 720 wrote:

This is yet another time that Corbyn needs to grab the metaphorical bull by its metaphorical balls and actually become an opposition party people must get behind, but given his rather poor record of taking the initiative, I suspect there'll be a few muttered words about unity and then back to the same old nothing.

They have the bi-elections first to contend with. If JC loses significant ground in these then I'm not sure how it will end.

 Whirlwind wrote:

The New Labour part doesn't really stand up though (apathy perhaps).

It does. Labour got the votes it did in Scotland by voting tradition and because it was the only left wing(ha!) party in mainstream politics, in the 2010 elections there was no real alternative (the Lib Dems have always been also rans and the SNP was not in the commanding position that the Indyref gave it) so Scots followed the usual voting pattern to the extent that Scotland returned the exact same seats as in the 2005 GE.

As the SNP became a mainstream party with obviously left wing polices and rhetoric the support for Labour absolutely collapsed, they have less MSPs than the Tories! You can't blame Ed Milliband for that given that he was sailing the same centre right course set by Blair and then Brown, Scottish Labour voters were clearly less than happy with the direction set by Labour and were waiting for a worthy alternative. If it wasn't for Blair Labour may still be a political force in Scotland.

What is interesting is that the "also ran" Lib-Dems polled 65% more votes that the SNP at the 2015 election, but got only only 14% as many seats. This is because the SNP votes of course are completely concentrated in Scotland.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
This is because the SNP votes of course are completely concentrated in Scotland.

You mean that the Scottish National Party only puts forward candidates in Scotland! I am thoroughly shocked and amazed.

The Lib Dems have always been a fringe party and they are at a very low ebb these days. I voted Lib Dem in 2010, that went well.