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International financial services accounts for 16% of UK GDP, so that's a deal we won't want to sign very quickly.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Thank you Japan for showing us that it's perfectly possible to have a free trade agreement without having to resort to a political union. You've given us a template to work with for the future.

The problem that's being missed is that there are also geographic issues to be considered. What we have now is 'open trade' in that any goods or services can be bought and sold tariff free. There are no limitations (barring everyone has to meet the same standards set and negotiated by all the EU nations). A free trade agreement is likely to have some, if not many, restrictions and these will be based on what the EU wants (given how poorly the UK has started I doubt the UK needs to worry about what it wants!). As such free trade agreements are what both parties can come to an agreement on and is in their best interest. For example Japan wants EU food and we want their high tech goods. The competition in these areas is *relatively* low hence both sides benefit from no duties on these goods. However it won't include items where the individual countries want to protect their own industries. For Canada and Japan the simple distances themselves will mean some goods aren't worth exporting so far compared to manufacturing locally (e.g. cars). However for example the CETA excludes poultry and eggs.

However the UK is geographically a lot closer and therefore more exposed to desires to protect markets because there is no issue of distance. We might get free trade on whiskey and shortbread biscuits as it is not an area where there is competition. However cars, food, banking etc all have hubs elsewhere in the EU and it is likely for a lot of these there is going to the some protectionism of the EUs own people/businesses. The EU will not want to see, for example, the UK flooding the EU with rapeseed oil at cheap prices because they take a weak approach to environment protection (such as removing the ban on neonic pesticides) whilst the EU keeps that ban and hence puts it's own farmers at a disadvantage.

Not only would we not want to copy CETA because of the impacts on the services but the EU will not want to copy it because of impacts on them.

The idea that some think we can just copy and paste other agreements simply isn't going to work.

And bizarrely despite people wanting more control we are likely to get less overall. The products we sell to the EU will still have to meet their regulations and checks (which businesses will have to pay to evidence that they are) before they go free trade. We are giving up our position to negotiate what these should be. Whatever the EU decide we will have to comply with. That is less control as the UK then has absolutely no say on this whatsoever simply because of the amount of trade we do with the EU.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
International financial services accounts for 16% of UK GDP, so that's a deal we won't want to sign very quickly.

Apparently that's a small price to pay for sovereignty.

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
International financial services accounts for 16% of UK GDP, so that's a deal we won't want to sign very quickly.

Apparently that's a small price to pay for sovereignty.

Yeah, kind of. You're free to personally prioritise maximum economic returns above all else, but not everyone necessarily subscribes to so capitalistic a view of the world. Doesn't make either view wrong or right. Just different. Different isn't always bad.

 Ketara wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
International financial services accounts for 16% of UK GDP, so that's a deal we won't want to sign very quickly.

Apparently that's a small price to pay for sovereignty.

Yeah, kind of. You're free to personally prioritise maximum economic returns above all else, but not everyone necessarily subscribes to so capitalistic a view of the world. Doesn't make either view wrong or right. Just different. Different isn't always bad.

Which is fine, but that would have made for a rather different leave campaign.

Personally I feel the economy underpins everything else.

jouso wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
International financial services accounts for 16% of UK GDP, so that's a deal we won't want to sign very quickly.

Apparently that's a small price to pay for sovereignty.

Yeah, kind of. You're free to personally prioritise maximum economic returns above all else, but not everyone necessarily subscribes to so capitalistic a view of the world. Doesn't make either view wrong or right. Just different. Different isn't always bad.

Which is fine, but that would have made for a rather different leave campaign.

With all due respect,in the same way that the remain campaign didn't have much substance behind its advertising, the inability to conceptualise that there isn't a 'right' answer is (in my limited empirical experience) something that Remainers seem to have a far harder time grasping. The vast majority of those I've met or read that were in favour of Leave were quite happy to concede that there were many benefits to staying within the EU. Whereas the concept that there can be benefits outside of it, or that there are other concerns than purely economic ones, seems to elude most people (that I have encountered) who voted to remain within it.

Speaking as a liberal (which is what, at the end of the day, I think I identify as most), those of a liberal inclination were most likely to vote remain ( I believe that view is borne out by various surveys). And liberals tends to be the worst sort of hypocrites. Free speech is okay but only if you think like us, violence is to be abhorred unless you're punching Neo-Nazi's, and so forth. Because we believe we're morally right, there's a terrible habit of condescending to people who think differently, because if those poor fellows had all the facts and their heads on straight, they'd agree with you of course! It's a more patronising form of the hardcore left's 'If you disagree with us you must be a traitor to the people' mentality.

C.S. Lewis had a great quote for it:-

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

 Ketara wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
International financial services accounts for 16% of UK GDP, so that's a deal we won't want to sign very quickly.

Apparently that's a small price to pay for sovereignty.

Yeah, kind of. You're free to personally prioritise maximum economic returns above all else, but not everyone necessarily subscribes to so capitalistic a view of the world. Doesn't make either view wrong or right. Just different. Different isn't always bad.

Which is fine, but that would have made for a rather different leave campaign.

With all due respect,in the same way that the remain campaign didn't have much substance behind its advertising, the inability to conceptualise that there isn't a 'right' answer is (in my limited empirical experience) something that Remainers seem to have a far harder time grasping. The vast majority of those I've met or read that were in favour of Leave were quite happy to concede that there were many benefits to staying within the EU. Whereas the concept that there can be benefits outside of it, or that there are other concerns than purely economic ones, seems to elude most people (that I have encountered) who voted to remain within it.

Speaking as a liberal (which is what, at the end of the day, I think I identify as most), those of a liberal inclination were most likely to vote remain ( I believe that view is borne out by various surveys). And liberals tends to be the worst sort of hypocrites. Free speech is okay but only if you think like us, violence is to be abhorred unless you're punching Neo-Nazi's, and so forth. Because we believe we're morally right, there's a terrible habit of condescending to people who think differently, because if those poor fellows had all the facts and their heads on straight, they'd agree with you of course! It's a more patronising form of the hardcore left's 'If you disagree with us you must be a traitor to the people' mentality.

C.S. Lewis had a great quote for it:-

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Can we just lay off the liberal/ lefty stereotypes? It gets boring and tedious as feth having to read this self righteous bollocks, yet again.

Lay off it? One post hardly counts as a continual diatribe.

Out of respect to you though r_squared, changing the topic, Chilcot has shockingly revealed that Blair misled the public over Iraq.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40510540

I read somewhere else that there's another court motion going through to try and make it possible for him to be taken to court over it. Who knows? Maybe it'll even work.

Given it has taken over 15 years and 3(?) public inquiries to unofficially confirm what most of us knew in 2002 -- that Blair lied to get the UK into the war -- I doubt there will be any repercussions for anyone.

The Grenfell Inquiry has a good chance of going down the same route.

Another point of interest is inevitable election two years distant.

Corbyn is in the middle of solidifying his grip on the party. He was quite washed up beforehand, his Momentum campaign had stalled, and he'd reached deadlock. Now that he's gained a handful of seats and built up some steam on the campaign trail, the long awaited purges of the disloyal are starting to manifest. For example, after Corbyn's whitewash of the anti-semitism issue, Luciana Berger spoke out against him. Now she's on the firing line. Meanwhile he sacked three members of his frontbench the other day for not siding with him on Brexit.

Corbyn will likely have a much more compliant, and hard left party in two years time. Especially if McCluskey manages to fight off the legal challenges he's currently facing over cronyism and election rigging.

The Lib Dems meanwhile, seem to be falling behind Cable's candidateship. Frankly, with Swinson announcing they won't stand, Cable's their only real heavyweight. But he's well loved, and generally a man of integrity. He only got fired before because he went out of his way to thwart Murdoch, and got burned for it by due process. He's also quite smart (he predicted the economic crash before it happened) and quite nice in person.

The Tories have to pick out May's successor. Practically everyone in the Cabinet considers themselves fitting heirs, from Fox to Gove to Boris. How many of them really have the chops though? At the moment, Ruth Davidson is the most popular Tory in polls, and she did a cracking job up North, but is unlikely to abandon Holyrood. Davis is second in terms of public popularity, but whether or not his bid is successful will be tightly linked to how we do out of Brexit. If it's a success, he'll be boosted beyond any of his would be rivals, but if it's a failure? He'll burn with it and the greasy crew (Gove, Johnson, Fox, Hunt, Rudd, & Leadsom) will be left to fight it out.


If Brexit is reasonable, and Corbyn pulls his thumb out his arse to start articulating some more decent well thought out detail about his utopian plans? I'll be hard pressed personally to pick between Davis, Corbyn, and ol' Vince. I think a campaign between those three would generally be quite gentlemanly, and very interesting.

Honestly?

I can see a second EU referendum coming. Once the Tories finally admit we can't have our cake and eat it, and that pretty much everything Vote Leave promised was bovine excretia.

In short, they know they now have to carry the can, and do so from a seriously weakened position at home. All May did with the election was secure her place as the scapegoat for when it all blows up in our face. Whether that's crashing out with no deal and tanking our economy in the name of satisfying a handful of extremist backbenchers, or getting us a truly one-sided deal.

That'll be when we go back to the Polls, and with a little luck, call the whole debacle off.

Is it not a little galling to see that Corbyn is moving to banish the opposition from within his own party when he himself was a serial rebel for decades? That's the least of my problems with him though.

And I accept the fact that we probably are going to have a second referendum on the EU at some point. But I'll still vote to leave. I don't like where it's going and to come back now will have us in a position of weakness. And again, I don't see it lasting another decade anyway, and that's at best.

 Ketara wrote:
With all due respect,in the same way that the remain campaign didn't have much substance behind its advertising, the inability to conceptualise that there isn't a 'right' answer is (in my limited empirical experience) something that Remainers seem to have a far harder time grasping. The vast majority of those I've met or read that were in favour of Leave were quite happy to concede that there were many benefits to staying within the EU. Whereas the concept that there can be benefits outside of it, or that there are other concerns than purely economic ones, seems to elude most people (that I have encountered) who voted to remain within it.

There are good and bad consequences for everything. A nuclear war will have ample opportunities for the scrap metal and health care sectors. If you break both legs you can learn to play the guitar.

That still doesn't mean nuclear war or breaking your legs are any good in themselves, it just means people will cope and carry on.

The remain campaign did a poor job of communicating the benefits of staying in the EU (for the most part because they were the same people who were happy to pin any of their shortcomings while in government to those bad guys in Brussels) but the leave campaign dismissed everything they didn't like hearing about as project fear. I'll take incompetence over wilful deception any time.

I don't think there is a metric for success of Brexit.

Obviously it can easily turn into a huge mess, which is how it looks at the moment. But, assuming we get out on time without a lot of ructions and get a half-decent trade deal, we have to wait five to 10 years to see how well the government and the economy will bear up to the challenges (or rise to the opportunities) of the UK doing its own trade deals.

This takes maybe three parliaments, giving the electorate many opportunities to dish out spankings left and right depending on the public mood of the day.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Is it not a little galling to see that Corbyn is moving to banish the opposition from within his own party when he himself was a serial rebel for decades? That's the least of my problems with him though.

Why should he give time and seats to party members who wants to see him ousted and who has fought against him since forever? How is this anything outside the norm of party politics? Especially for a party that is in a civil war?

This corbyn-phobia continues to amaze me

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Is it not a little galling to see that Corbyn is moving to banish the opposition from within his own party when he himself was a serial rebel for decades?

Can you expand on exactly what you're refering to? I may have missed a recent development, but at least up until yesterday's Daily Politics I haven't seen any evidence of that. I've ony seen him removing frontbenchers from their positions for voting to ammend a position that was in the manifesto that saved their jobs, and pushing to place more power in the hands of CLPs, as has been his position for decades.

 Whirlwind wrote:
That is less control as the UK then has absolutely no say on this whatsoever simply because of the amount of trade we do with the EU.

Not entirely - we only need to comply with EU regulations for stuff that is going out to the EU. So it's entirely possible we can make separate domestic market stuff cheaper by cutting regulations. Whether it's worth running 2 production setups for domestic/export is a different matter, but for companies that don't export, or export very little, it may be better for them to just give up trying to meet EU regulations.

Unfortunately that just means lower quality stuff for us, or poorer conditions. It may not even result in a reduction in costs.


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 Ketara wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
International financial services accounts for 16% of UK GDP, so that's a deal we won't want to sign very quickly.

Apparently that's a small price to pay for sovereignty.

Yeah, kind of. You're free to personally prioritise maximum economic returns above all else, but not everyone necessarily subscribes to so capitalistic a view of the world. Doesn't make either view wrong or right. Just different. Different isn't always bad.

There's ignoring the capitalist view for better options, and there's ignoring the fact that a 16% hit to the economy would be devastating to everything, particularly public services. We already run a deficit, and a drop in income of that level will mean austerity that'll make the current Tory gutting of the public sector look benevolent. The knock-on consequences would be huge - if property prices drop then that'll hit a lot of investments (like pensions and banking).

Can we cope with losing our international finance sector and the 16% of economy over a few decades? Certainly. But can we deal with the impact of it disappearing over the course of a year or 2?

It's all fair and well to say that we don't like bankers, and the recession was their fault, but we do kinda need to accept that if nothing else we need their money. We could probably have let some of them go under / be nationalized in 2009, but we couldn't really do with seeing them all move to Frankfurt.


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 Ketara wrote:
Ruth Davidson is the most popular Tory in polls, and she did a cracking job up North, but is unlikely to abandon Holyrood.

I'm not sure how well she did on her own merit, or how much is the down to her reliance on a single issue (stopping IndyRef2) to appeal to folk*. She comes across as a nasty individual who isn't that articulate or dynamic. She may be a good fit for the Tories but I don't think she'd hold up particularly well in any real capacity. Bear in mind that at least some of her party gains were aided by Scottish Labour, since there was a lot of encouragement for an anti-SNP vote. Plus a lot of those gains were absolutely marginal (under 2%), so they could easily be lost again. As I understand it there's only really 1 or 2 Tory strongholds in Scotland, the other 13 are fragile, and SNP still has the majority.

She's also got minimal spine it seems; she threatened to ensure the Scottish Tories (15) would vote in Scotlands interests, against the party if needs be, but didn't use that to get any DUP like deal, and seems happy to side with the DUP who should be anathema to her. So she's already seemingly just reverted back to doing what her Westminster overlords tell her.

*That's maybe not fair, she's got 2 issues: Stopping Independence (she's in a unionist party), and attacking the SNP for not doing enough to counter Tory cuts.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think there is a metric for success of Brexit.

Obviously it can easily turn into a huge mess, which is how it looks at the moment. But, assuming we get out on time without a lot of ructions and get a half-decent trade deal, we have to wait five to 10 years to see how well the government and the economy will bear up to the challenges (or rise to the opportunities) of the UK doing its own trade deals.

No one is thinking the UK will suddenly sink into the waves. It's just cost of opportunity. The UK will have to collectively work harder for less return.

It's like the multinational exec who leaves everything to open a country restaurant who realises it has to work longer hours, gets paid less and still has to deal with exactly the same kind of entitled little gaks as before. Because even a small country restaurant has suppliers, banks and customers, at times worse than the ones before.

Herzlos wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
Ruth Davidson is the most popular Tory in polls, and she did a cracking job up North, but is unlikely to abandon Holyrood.

I'm not sure how well she did on her own merit, or how much is the down to her reliance on a single issue (stopping IndyRef2) to appeal to folk

That's it. If the SNP hadn't pushed indyref2, the Tories would still only have one Scottish MP. They're in a bit of a tough bind, their only chances of any electoral success in Scotland rely entirely on the threat of another independence referendum. If they every get their way they'll lose all their seats.

She's also got minimal spine it seems...seems happy to side with the DUP who should be anathema to her

You'd think that, she is marrying an Irish Catholic woman, after all, but she endorses Orangemen for political office, one of whom used to be a BNP activist and whose email was neill1690nosurrender, and is best pals with Murdo Fraser who loves to punt out sectarian football tweets.

That said, her spinelessness is very obvious every time she is forced to defend the rape clause, during which she always looks like half of her brain is trying to exorcise the other half.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Honestly?

I can see a second EU referendum coming. Once the Tories finally admit we can't have our cake and eat it, and that pretty much everything

I doubt May would ever consent to that. She's hung her entire hat on the Brexit train now. No way we'll see a new referendum ahead of a new election.


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 Future War Cultist wrote:
Is it not a little galling to see that Corbyn is moving to banish the opposition from within his own party when he himself was a serial rebel for decades? That's the least of my problems with him though

It's hypocritical, but since he's failed to control the party through fear, and can barely compromise, getting rid of them is all that's left to him. That being said, what the Labour MP's rally behind is someone who they think might win, so they're shutting up now anyway for the most part anyway. They can see that two year milestone as well as me.

By the same measure though, the whole anti-semitism whitewash was an absolute disgrace for the Labour party, and going after an MP because she pointed that out reeks of bad morals setting in.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think there is a metric for success of Brexit.

Obviously it can easily turn into a huge mess, which is how it looks at the moment. But, assuming we get out on time without a lot of ructions and get a half-decent trade deal, we have to wait five to 10 years to see how well the government and the economy will bear up to the challenges (or rise to the opportunities) of the UK doing its own trade deals.

By my measuring stick, getting out with a fair trade deal that lets business carry on more or less as normal with a bit of extra paperwork? That would be a success. I don't doubt one or two sectors are going to take a minor hit regardless, but that happens as a matter of course in yearly market developments regardless.

The nub of whether Brexit is a success or failure is how big the hit is, how long it takes to manifest, and how quickly it passes.


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jouso wrote:
No one is thinking the UK will suddenly sink into the waves.

See, you say this, but the post above you has things like:-

Herzlos wrote:Can we cope with losing our international finance sector and the 16% of economy over a few decades? Certainly. But can we deal with the impact of it disappearing over the course of a year or 2?

I went into a detailed breakdown of the vulnerability of the different parts of the banking sector to Brexit some time back (if you care to dig, it was in one of these threads). And the outshot was that some very specific parts of it were vulnerable, whereas a large amount of it was not. Speculations that it'll all vanish in a year or two, or that:-

we couldn't really do with seeing them all move to Frankfurt.

are really just quite generalistic doomsaying with little basis in reality. 'Bankers' across all sectors don't actually function collectively, and no force short of nuclear war is going to displace the infrastructure or place of the City of London that quickly.

Although in all fairness to Herzlos, the way the media simplifies these things doesn't help for general understanding.

Avoidance of IndyRef2 was certainly a factor, but there has always been a welcome in Scotland for the kind of "Red Tory" that Thatcher called "wet". Plus all parties have ups and downs caused by reversion to the mean, and right now it looks like the regression is going to favour the Scottish Tories over the SNP. Eventually that will swing back, of course.




Regarding soverignty versus economics, this isn't an obvious trade-off. The rinciple of Brexit is that the UK will do better economically once it is freed from the bureaucratic shackles of the EU. (And so on.) ALl this can and has been disputed in various ways.

At the bottom line, though, there are two key things about how we organise our socieyt to divvy up the rewards of economic success:

1. Who gets what percentage of the overall pie?
2. How big is the pie?

There clearly are cases where it's better to have a smaller slice of a bigger pie, while conversely, if you own the whole of a smoking post-apocalyptic wasteland it doesn't do you any good at all.

Therefore my comment that economics underpins everything else.

A weak economy can't pay pensions, social security, build infrastructure or invest in education, etc.



Apart from Corbyn removing the front benchers, there has been an unofficial move to start getting anti-Corbynistas deselected, and a proposal to change the Labour Party's rules in ways that will make it harder for the MPs to affect the choice of leader.

These haven't come directly from Corbyn, as far as we know, but they still are obvious moves to the left wing where Corbyn happily sits.

 Ketara wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Honestly?

I can see a second EU referendum coming. Once the Tories finally admit we can't have our cake and eat it, and that pretty much everything

I doubt May would ever consent to that. She's hung her entire hat on the Brexit train now. No way we'll see a new referendum ahead of a new election.

May will do whatever her puppet master(s) tell her at the time. Remember how adamant she was that there'd be no GE?

Who are the puppet masters?

There wasn't any kind of public appetite for a general election. Looking back, I now feel that it was entirely caused by May's desire to take advantage of Labour's at the time massive deficit in the opinion polls. The guff about strengthening her hand for Brexit negotiations was just guff.

I actually think May will do everything she can to avoid another referendum. At the same time, I think a referendum is completely justified given the total lack of clarity about the impacts of leaving the EU during the first referendum.

I have no idea how the result might play out. Things are going to change over the next 18 months anyway.

[please delete]

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Who are the puppet masters?

I have honestly no idea. She behaves like there's a few of them and they don't talk to each other, given how randomly she flips about.

I think she & party will be keen to avoid any election/referendum in the near term, until they find some way to rebuild favour. As it stands they have a bad chance of losing a GE (I think they'd easily lose some of the Scottish seats after people wise up to the tactical voting - there were places people were encouraged by Labour to vote Tory, to beat the SNP. If they'd just voted Labour then Labour would have won the seat. They won't do that twice).

 Ketara wrote:

jouso wrote:
No one is thinking the UK will suddenly sink into the waves.

See, you say this, but the post above you has things like:-

Herzlos wrote:Can we cope with losing our international finance sector and the 16% of economy over a few decades? Certainly. But can we deal with the impact of it disappearing over the course of a year or 2?

I went into a detailed breakdown of the vulnerability of the different parts of the banking sector to Brexit some time back (if you care to dig, it was in one of these threads). And the outshot was that some very specific parts of it were vulnerable, whereas a large amount of it was not. Speculations that it'll all vanish in a year or two, or that:-

we couldn't really do with seeing them all move to Frankfurt.

are really just quite generalistic doomsaying with little basis in reality. 'Bankers' across all sectors don't actually function collectively, and no force short of nuclear war is going to displace the infrastructure or place of the City of London that quickly.

Still that's a far cry from sinking. The UK would be on a par with Italy which is still a pretty desirable part of the world to work and live. And that's the Doomsday scenario.

However in the citizen minds going backwards is a very hard fact to accept. Especially if you were promised the land of milk and honey.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Avoidance of IndyRef2 was certainly a factor

The factor. Tories did absolutely zero campaigning on any other issue. Neither did the Lib Dems. Labour kicked about a couple of ideas about using tax powers, but largely also ran on 'No To IndyRef2'. Every single camapign leaflet and advert from everyone except the Greens and SNP (for the council AND general elections) exclusively dealt with IndyRef2. It's the only game in town.

Apart from Corbyn removing the front benchers, there has been an unofficial move to start getting anti-Corbynistas deselected, and a proposal to change the Labour Party's rules in ways that will make it harder for the MPs to affect the choice of leader.

These haven't come directly from Corbyn, as far as we know, but they still are obvious moves to the left wing where Corbyn happily sits.

I don't accept it's as linear as this. Democratising the party to grant more power to CLPs is a good thing. You'd hope to see it in all parties but to my knowledge it's fairly alien to everyone except the Lib Dems and the Scottish Greens. It so happens at the moment that it favours Corbyn supporting MPs, because that's who the majority of the membership back, but in other times it will favour other paradigms. It will only impact MPs who don't get on with their CLPs rather than hit every anti-Corbyn MP. Hilary Benn and Tom Watson, probably the biggest ani-Corbyn voices, would probably be ok. Angela Eagle would be done for.

To all those complaining that the Tory Scots had a focus on one issue; I think the wider context is being missed.

Firstly, they're still part of a larger political group, so I'm not sure you can break it down and say to the 'Conservative Tories' and the 'Conservatives' are campaigning on entirely separate platforms. When the Tory Prime Minister is putting out her manifesto, it's also the Scottish Tory Party's.

Secondly, in all fairness, the SNP basically campaigned solely on the same thing in reverse. 'A vote for us is a vote for another referendum'. As the party in opposition in Holyrood but in government in London, the Scottish branch of the Tories are primarily concerned more with countering in the incumbents in Holyrood. They can't devise alternative policies to what's coming out of Westminster, their job is rather to focus on challenging the establishment. And as the establishment up there chose to fight on the ground of 'We want another referendum', that was the ground Davidson had to meet them on.

I watched a number of her addresses at the time, and most of it wasn't so much 'Vote for us to stay in the UK', as it was'Vote for us because the SNP are hellbent on another referendum and are ignoring every other issue in Scotland'. It's a subtle, yet important distinction. She wasn't fighting a campaign based off of her own policies, because those mostly come from Westminster. She was fighting a campaign on the ground that the SNP specifically chose to draw the battlelines on.

Accordingly, I don't think it's entirely fair to accuse her of not having sufficient variety in the campaign, y'know? There's something to it, but the wider context should be recognised.

On a sidenote, I actually thought she gave a better speech than May or Corbyn generally. She certainly seems to have more substance than either. She's ex-military, an ex-journalist, bolshy, and rolls with the punches when under verbal attack. I'd probably take her as PM anyday over Bojo, Fox, or Gove. She's got a history in terms of stances on issues generally that I can respect (especially slagging off the Saudis).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Davidson

 Ketara wrote:
To all those complaining that the Tory Scots had a focus on one issue; I think the wider context is being missed.

Firstly, they're still part of a larger political group, so I'm not sure you can break it down and say to the 'Conservative Tories' and the 'Conservatives' are campaigning on entirely separate platforms. When the Tory Prime Minister is putting out her manifesto, it's also the Scottish Tory Party's.

It is, but you wouldn't know it from any of their campaigning in Scotland, or barely even from the Scottish press. It's really becoming cult of personality stuff. The Scottish Tories are the Ruth Davidson Party. The Conservative logo usually features only as a tiny image in the bottom corner of their materials.

Secondly, in all fairness, the SNP basically campaigned solely on the same thing in reverse. 'A vote for us is a vote for another referendum'.

No, they absolute did not. They strove incredibly hard to avoid ever speaking about IndyRef2 through both the council and general election campaigns. Much to the chagrin of some of their supporters.

As the party in opposition in Holyrood but in government in London, the Scottish branch of the Tories are primarily concerned more with countering in the incumbents in Holyrood. They can't devise alternative policies to what's coming out of Westminster, their job is rather to focus on challenging the establishment. And as the establishment up there chose to fight on the ground of 'We want another referendum', that was the ground Davidson had to meet them on.

I watched a number of her addresses at the time, and most of it wasn't so much 'Vote for us to stay in the UK', as it was'Vote for us because the SNP are hellbent on another referendum and are ignoring every other issue in Scotland'. It's a subtle, yet important distinction. She wasn't fighting a campaign based off of her own policies, because those mostly come from Westminster. She was fighting a campaign on the ground that the SNP specifically chose to draw the battlelines on.

I'm afraid you could only think this if you have absolutely no familiarity with recent Scottish political discourse whatsoever. Everthing you are saying is exactly the opposite of the reality. It was the press, the Tories, and Labour who were able to dictate the terms of the campaign. It was they who insisted it was about another referendum. Unless directly questioned on it, all SNP spokespeople avoided it at all costs.