Brexit and Future of UK : Discussions

Listen to what BBC had to say about #Chandrayaan3

Should India which lacks in Infrastructure and has extreme poverty, should they be spending this much amount of money on a space program?
Another UK news reports, India goes to moon after taking financial aid from UK. Do they even have the brains to comprehend what they're speaking about?
Another UK news reports, India goes to moon after taking financial aid from UK. Do they even have the brains to comprehend what they're speaking about?
 
It would have been very hard for mother Earth to have such lowly people born and living off her.

 
Ek dhundho hazaar milte hai, how does one country produces so much of illiterate and clueless people?
 

When the solution to your problem is David Cameron, you know you’re in deep trouble​

The former PM is back in the cabinet after Suella Braverman’s sacking. It goes to show how few options Rishi Sunak has left
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Good riddance. Suella Braverman should never have been home secretary. She was appointed by Liz Truss and then Rishi Sunak for two bad reasons. One was in return for her support in their leadership campaigns. The other was to have a rightwing voice in the cabinet. Braverman has been sacked not for pressuring a senior police chief to cancel a protest. She has gone for infuriating Sunak by writing a newspaper article about it. This is no way to run the country.

There is nothing unusual in a prime minister seeking to balance party factions in a cabinet. But the test should not be loyalty, but fitness for office. Boris Johnson disregarded that in 2019 when he dismissed from the cabinet able ministers from Theresa May’s reign and replaced them with second-raters. Sunak failed to correct that mistake and has been punished for it.

A government with a perfectly secure majority has been in perpetual crisis primarily because of the poor quality of its senior membership, revealed in embarrassing detail by the Covid inquiry. With the possible exceptions of Michael Gove and James Cleverly, Sunak chose a second- and third-rate team. He has been chopping and changing ever since. Ministers such as Grant Shapps have held four cabinet posts in just over a year.

It is said that it takes two years before ministers can run their offices effectively. Until then, their offices run them. That depends on them being allowed to do so. Braverman illustrated how debilitated the present civil service is in being able to advise and, if need be, curb a recalcitrant newcomer. It is nonsense to believe that officials are there to do as they are told. They represent legality and experience in government and the need for Whitehall coordination. At present, ministries such as justice, health, transport and housing seem perpetually overstretched and accident-prone. Nothing is more damaging to a government department than a constant change of minister. Under the present Tory party, that has become a disease.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...an-islamophobia-britain-muslim-home-secretary
Sunak is an honest and hardworking prime minister, but one embarrassingly short of sound advice. He is unlikely to have more than another year in Downing Street and is entitled to pray that it be a peaceful one. He has put the Home Office in the hands of Cleverly and brought David Cameron back to office – at least he has the virtue of experience. But when the only figure fit to be foreign secretary was not a member of either house of parliament, then you know the Tories are in deep trouble. (Cameron will now enter the House of Lords as a life peer.)

The Conservative party used to define itself above all as a club. Its leaders knew they could rely on friendship, loyalty and good behaviour, especially in office. The present party is quite different. It is a band of self-starters, individuals and loners. It is certainly no club. They can now be relied upon for one thing: to turn Sunak’s lame-duck premiership into a fierce primary campaign for his succession.
 
Picdelamirand-oil said:

When the solution to your problem is David Cameron, you know you’re in deep trouble​

The former PM is back in the cabinet after Suella Braverman’s sacking. It goes to show how few options Rishi Sunak has left
5500.jpg

​
Good riddance. Suella Braverman should never have been home secretary. She was appointed by Liz Truss and then Rishi Sunak for two bad reasons. One was in return for her support in their leadership campaigns. The other was to have a rightwing voice in the cabinet. Braverman has been sacked not for pressuring a senior police chief to cancel a protest. She has gone for infuriating Sunak by writing a newspaper article about it. This is no way to run the country.

There is nothing unusual in a prime minister seeking to balance party factions in a cabinet. But the test should not be loyalty, but fitness for office. Boris Johnson disregarded that in 2019 when he dismissed from the cabinet able ministers from Theresa May’s reign and replaced them with second-raters. Sunak failed to correct that mistake and has been punished for it.

A government with a perfectly secure majority has been in perpetual crisis primarily because of the poor quality of its senior membership, revealed in embarrassing detail by the Covid inquiry. With the possible exceptions of Michael Gove and James Cleverly, Sunak chose a second- and third-rate team. He has been chopping and changing ever since. Ministers such as Grant Shapps have held four cabinet posts in just over a year.

It is said that it takes two years before ministers can run their offices effectively. Until then, their offices run them. That depends on them being allowed to do so. Braverman illustrated how debilitated the present civil service is in being able to advise and, if need be, curb a recalcitrant newcomer. It is nonsense to believe that officials are there to do as they are told. They represent legality and experience in government and the need for Whitehall coordination. At present, ministries such as justice, health, transport and housing seem perpetually overstretched and accident-prone. Nothing is more damaging to a government department than a constant change of minister. Under the present Tory party, that has become a disease.
Suella Braverman has gone, but she proved that hateful xenophobia is never far from the surface in Britain | Nesrine Malik
Sunak is an honest and hardworking prime minister, but one embarrassingly short of sound advice. He is unlikely to have more than another year in Downing Street and is entitled to pray that it be a peaceful one. He has put the Home Office in the hands of Cleverly and brought David Cameron back to office – at least he has the virtue of experience. But when the only figure fit to be foreign secretary was not a member of either house of parliament, then you know the Tories are in deep trouble. (Cameron will now enter the House of Lords as a life peer.)

The Conservative party used to define itself above all as a club. Its leaders knew they could rely on friendship, loyalty and good behaviour, especially in office. The present party is quite different. It is a band of self-starters, individuals and loners. It is certainly no club. They can now be relied upon for one thing: to turn Sunak’s lame-duck premiership into a fierce primary campaign for his succession.
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Cleverly has replaced Braverman. Cameron has taken Cleverly's previous position.

Very dumb of Braverman to have criticized the police and the voters. Even more dumb of Sunak to have fallen prey to politics and weakened the Conservatives.

And Cameron's back 'cause the King allowed it... what the heck... Britain is as much a democracy as Kim's NoKo. Zelensky is more elected than Cameron.

What say you, @BMD?
 
If MPs can't criticise the police, who can? MP's are elected to represent the views of the public and that's what she did.

Cameron was elected in 2015 and technically resigned. Zelensky was also elected.
 
Annus instabilis au Royaume-Uni
Annus instabilis in the UK

Notwithstanding its 260-year-old gilding, the British coach has, since the summer of 2022, been through a lot of bumps. While on the international stage governments are trying, with varying degrees of success, to chart the long-awaited post-Brexit course, at home the economic crisis and social anger are roiling.

The UK is not doing very well. Of course, the coronation of Charles III on 6 May 2023 was an opportunity to project the image of a powerful kingdom beyond its borders once again, with the willing participation of the world's media - the event was broadcast live and in extended version even on the public radio and television channels of the French Republic. The monarchy remains a safe haven for British soft power. However, even this exercise was (marginally) disrupted by a few demonstrators hostile to royalty and the ensuing debate on the police methods used against them (1). While successive governments are trying, with varying degrees of success, to chart the long-awaited post-Brexit course, the economic crisis and social anger are roiling at home. Here's a look back at a year of instability and the structural (and unresolved) issues that have caused it.

Behind the political instability, the fragility of democracy

The three people who have occupied 10 Downing Street over the past year - Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak - each in their own way and taken together, pose fundamental questions for the British political model. These three successive leaders of the Conservative Party embody the different drifts threatening contemporary liberal democracies in different parts of the world. Boris Johnson is a populist, in the sense given to him by the political scientist Cas Mudde (2): his trademark is to pit the good people against corrupt elites. But more than that, the Johnson case seems emblematic of a form of populism that is very much in vogue at the beginning of the 21st century. On the one hand, his denunciation of the elites is made in defiance of his own position in the social and political arena: Johnson, a product of Eton and then Oxford, where he honed his rhetorical skills and political and industrial friendships, is himself part of the elite. His populism is above all a discourse, a rough-and-ready style, in which he is very similar to Donald Trump (3). On the other hand, Johnson has gradually sunk into an all-out denunciation of the institutions in which he operates, in this case those of parliamentary democracy.

The British people had given an absolute majority to the Conservatives led by Johnson in 2019 because he had promised them freedom and sovereignty, embodied by the Brexit. He was finally pushed out when freedom and sovereignty became synonymous for him with impunity from the rules of sanitary containment that his government had itself set, and from the elementary requirement of truth in the parliamentary precinct. His statement in response to the report of the parliamentary committee that forced him to resign as an MP also has undeniable Trumpian overtones: "It's all nonsense. It's a lie. To arrive at this completely crazy conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things that are obviously absurd, or that the facts contradict (4)". So, with Johnson, we see the paradox of populist temptation at work. The British people wanted a Prime Minister who would go against the grain of the well-oiled machinery of European diplomacy. They wanted a bull, a troublemaker, a Trump who had done his homework. They got him. For a while, the Johnson system worked. Not giving in, not admitting mistakes, even if it meant omitting, even if it meant lying. Eventually it broke down. In the end, democratic transparency and parliamentary scrutiny prevailed, but not without serious tests.

After Johnson came Liz Truss and her budget of 23 September 2022, this time embodying not the populist temptation but the excesses of an economic policy indexed to the demands of financial capitalism. Elected following the resignation of her colleague by the members of their party, it was through the voice of Kwasi Kwarteng, her finance minister, that her programme was rolled out: removal of the tax bracket on incomes over £150,000, cancellation of the rise in corporation tax, removal of the ecotax on energy bills, among others (5). But the financial markets soon became concerned that this loss of revenue for the public purse would not be offset elsewhere. The markets refused to lend without covering their backs, and retaliated by triggering an immediate rise in interest rates and aggressive speculation against sterling. The gamble of attracting investors by lowering taxes and thus boosting growth, which would eventually trickle down, was a failure, to say the least. Faced with this pressure, Truss finally gave in. It was decided that she would be replaced within a few days, so as not to risk losing the confidence of the markets again. There would be no general election, and only an internal Conservative party nomination, because there was no point in dragging this out: it was the anticipation of financial speculation that dictated the political process. The rule of law bowed to the law of the market. With Truss, the subjection of politics to finance became apparent.

Sunak, finally, entered Downing Street on 25 October 2022, and since then has been trying in his own way to return to a form of normality. Of the five priorities he has set himself, three relate to the economy as a whole (stopping inflation, reducing debt, boosting growth), one to the health service (eliminating the backlog in care), and one to immigration (preventing illegal immigration or, more trivially, stopping the boats). These priorities clearly reflect the scale of the country's economic difficulties on the one hand, and its nationalist withdrawal on the other. In this, Sunak is following in the footsteps of his predecessors: over the last ten years, the UK has implemented an extremely repressive migration policy. The trend began in the 2010s under Theresa May, David Cameron's Home Secretary at the time, who unambiguously declared that she wanted to develop a "hostile environment" for immigrants, using a great deal of legislation and propaganda. The Immigration Act of 2014 made access to housing and health care conditional on immigration status, while in the summer of 2013 very official vans bearing the inscription "Go Home" travelled the streets of London with the aim of encouraging people to leave voluntarily. Some of these controversial schemes, such as the programme to deport asylum seekers who have arrived in the UK illegally to Rwanda, which was finally overturned by a British Court of Appeal on 29 June 2023 (6), even contravene international law. Sunak's United Kingdom is therefore sinking into this truly insular trend: not only has the country left the European Union, but it is endeavouring to erect both material and symbolic fortresses around itself, contrary to its century-old tradition as a land of welcome and asylum.

Finally, in addition to the excesses embodied by the last three Prime Ministers - the populist temptation, the indexation of politics to finance and the insular one-upmanship - the sheer number of them raises questions. Satirists are having a field day, measuring the passage of time not in months and weeks, but in the number of governments. More seriously, political scientists see in this political instability, which in fact dates back to 2016 - since the Brexit referendum led to the resignation of David Cameron followed by that of Theresa May - the sign of several dysfunctions (7). In particular, Johnson, like Truss (and we could no doubt add Sunak to the list), made impossible promises, since a strong welfare state without a matching tax system is a smoke and mirrors approach. What's more, for May, Truss and Sunak, their internal appointment by the Conservative party alienates them from the British electorate in sociological terms. What's more, although the British Constitution does not require a national ballot to be held after a resignation when MPs do not feel the need to do so, the fact remains that this procedure affects the governments' legitimacy. From this point of view, instability tends to provoke... more instability.

Behind inflation and social anger, the limits of an economic model

While Prime Ministers come and go, the last few months have been marked by a deterioration in the country's economic situation. Since 2021, the UK has been experiencing almost continuous inflation (8). Between March 2021 and January 2022, prices rose by between 1% and 5% a month compared with a year earlier. From February 2022, the rise accelerated, reaching 9.6% in October 2022. Inflation remains at these record levels thereafter, remaining at 7.9% in May 2023. In the end, the price of certain food products literally soared, particularly sugar (+50% between May 2022 and May 2023), milk (+29%) and fresh vegetables (+21%). This rise in prices is multi-factorial: the catch-up effect of post-Covid-19 consumption and difficulties in importing certain products since the start of the war in Ukraine (9); a shortage of market garden labour following the Brexit, which is reducing harvests (10); but also the effects of climate change on agricultural production, or "climflation", for example on Spanish olive oil (11), speculation by "hunger profiteers" on raw materials (12) and opportunistic increases in the profits of certain companies (13).

The Bank of England's monetary policy aimed at stemming the rise in prices consists of raising interest rates. The Bank's key rate, on which commercial banking institutions are aligned, was set at 0.1% during the first wave of Covid-19, and has been raised every month since January 2022, reaching 5% in June 2023. However, the vast majority of home loans taken out in the UK are not, as is the norm in France, fixed-rate loans for their entire term. In 2022, half of all outstanding mortgages had a fixed rate for only the first five years, before being renegotiated. A quarter had a fixed rate for two years, and 15% were at a variable rate (14). Under these conditions, the Bank of England's decision to raise its key interest rates has had direct and dramatic consequences for the quarter of Britons who have a mortgage (15). By taking this decision, the Bank of England has clearly established that the monetary priority is to bring down inflation: the aim is to discourage consumption and encourage saving; in short, to slow down the economy. In so doing, the Bank runs the risk, according to some analysts (16), of provoking a recession, even if Andrew Bailey, its director, denies this (17).

Rampant inflation and the measures designed to curb it are having a dramatic impact on the purchasing power of the British people, which explains why the UK experienced a historic wave of strikes from 2022 onwards. This social movement, which can be described as multi-occupational insofar as it affected the whole of the British working world, is in fact a set of social conflicts at company, establishment or branch level. These disputes relate to pay: the demands concern pay levels first and foremost, and are combined, depending on the case, with other sectoral demands. Postal workers at the Royal Mail, which has been privatised since 2013, have called for pay rises to compensate for inflation, while denouncing forms of outsourcing, i.e. the recruitment of self-employed delivery workers, and work intensification. In April 2023, the sector's main union, the Communication Workers' Union, reached an end-of-conflict agreement after almost a year of mobilisation and dozens of days of strike action, including the abandonment of freelance recruitment and 10% pay rises. These multiple conflicts, of which the postal service is just one example, signal a deep malaise among British workers. The incomes of the working and middle classes have deteriorated considerably (18). This decline has had very tangible consequences in terms of living conditions, which can be seen in the emergency measures put in place by associations, such as food distribution and the provision of heated rooms (19). This rapid rise in poverty and inequality, and the social anger they engender, highlight the limitations of the British economic model, in particular the poor regulation of the labour market, where jobs are easy to find but also poorly paid and insecure.

So, since the summer of 2022, the United Kingdom has, in a way, been faced with its own contradictions, politically, economically and diplomatically. Internationally, Sunak, like his predecessors, is walking a fine line between dreams of global leadership and the reality of today's world: the UK sees itself as a pioneer of the ecological transition, but Sunak is not setting foot at the summit for a new financial pact; it is trying to develop its trade agreements in the Pacific but cannot compete with China's power, and would like to control its borders without really cooperating with its allies. These contradictions are not new, but they have recently become much more pronounced. The British model has been destabilised, and will continue to struggle.
 
BMD said:
If MPs can't criticise the police, who can? MP's are elected to represent the views of the public and that's what she did.

Cameron was elected in 2015 and technically resigned. Zelensky was also elected.
Click to expand...

You missed the part where I said "and the voters."
 
Picdelamirand-oil said:
Annus instabilis au Royaume-Uni
Annus instabilis in the UK

Notwithstanding its 260-year-old gilding, the British coach has, since the summer of 2022, been through a lot of bumps. While on the international stage governments are trying, with varying degrees of success, to chart the long-awaited post-Brexit course, at home the economic crisis and social anger are roiling.

The UK is not doing very well. Of course, the coronation of Charles III on 6 May 2023 was an opportunity to project the image of a powerful kingdom beyond its borders once again, with the willing participation of the world's media - the event was broadcast live and in extended version even on the public radio and television channels of the French Republic. The monarchy remains a safe haven for British soft power. However, even this exercise was (marginally) disrupted by a few demonstrators hostile to royalty and the ensuing debate on the police methods used against them (1). While successive governments are trying, with varying degrees of success, to chart the long-awaited post-Brexit course, the economic crisis and social anger are roiling at home. Here's a look back at a year of instability and the structural (and unresolved) issues that have caused it.

Behind the political instability, the fragility of democracy

The three people who have occupied 10 Downing Street over the past year - Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak - each in their own way and taken together, pose fundamental questions for the British political model. These three successive leaders of the Conservative Party embody the different drifts threatening contemporary liberal democracies in different parts of the world. Boris Johnson is a populist, in the sense given to him by the political scientist Cas Mudde (2): his trademark is to pit the good people against corrupt elites. But more than that, the Johnson case seems emblematic of a form of populism that is very much in vogue at the beginning of the 21st century. On the one hand, his denunciation of the elites is made in defiance of his own position in the social and political arena: Johnson, a product of Eton and then Oxford, where he honed his rhetorical skills and political and industrial friendships, is himself part of the elite. His populism is above all a discourse, a rough-and-ready style, in which he is very similar to Donald Trump (3). On the other hand, Johnson has gradually sunk into an all-out denunciation of the institutions in which he operates, in this case those of parliamentary democracy.

The British people had given an absolute majority to the Conservatives led by Johnson in 2019 because he had promised them freedom and sovereignty, embodied by the Brexit. He was finally pushed out when freedom and sovereignty became synonymous for him with impunity from the rules of sanitary containment that his government had itself set, and from the elementary requirement of truth in the parliamentary precinct. His statement in response to the report of the parliamentary committee that forced him to resign as an MP also has undeniable Trumpian overtones: "It's all nonsense. It's a lie. To arrive at this completely crazy conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things that are obviously absurd, or that the facts contradict (4)". So, with Johnson, we see the paradox of populist temptation at work. The British people wanted a Prime Minister who would go against the grain of the well-oiled machinery of European diplomacy. They wanted a bull, a troublemaker, a Trump who had done his homework. They got him. For a while, the Johnson system worked. Not giving in, not admitting mistakes, even if it meant omitting, even if it meant lying. Eventually it broke down. In the end, democratic transparency and parliamentary scrutiny prevailed, but not without serious tests.

After Johnson came Liz Truss and her budget of 23 September 2022, this time embodying not the populist temptation but the excesses of an economic policy indexed to the demands of financial capitalism. Elected following the resignation of her colleague by the members of their party, it was through the voice of Kwasi Kwarteng, her finance minister, that her programme was rolled out: removal of the tax bracket on incomes over £150,000, cancellation of the rise in corporation tax, removal of the ecotax on energy bills, among others (5). But the financial markets soon became concerned that this loss of revenue for the public purse would not be offset elsewhere. The markets refused to lend without covering their backs, and retaliated by triggering an immediate rise in interest rates and aggressive speculation against sterling. The gamble of attracting investors by lowering taxes and thus boosting growth, which would eventually trickle down, was a failure, to say the least. Faced with this pressure, Truss finally gave in. It was decided that she would be replaced within a few days, so as not to risk losing the confidence of the markets again. There would be no general election, and only an internal Conservative party nomination, because there was no point in dragging this out: it was the anticipation of financial speculation that dictated the political process. The rule of law bowed to the law of the market. With Truss, the subjection of politics to finance became apparent.

Sunak, finally, entered Downing Street on 25 October 2022, and since then has been trying in his own way to return to a form of normality. Of the five priorities he has set himself, three relate to the economy as a whole (stopping inflation, reducing debt, boosting growth), one to the health service (eliminating the backlog in care), and one to immigration (preventing illegal immigration or, more trivially, stopping the boats). These priorities clearly reflect the scale of the country's economic difficulties on the one hand, and its nationalist withdrawal on the other. In this, Sunak is following in the footsteps of his predecessors: over the last ten years, the UK has implemented an extremely repressive migration policy. The trend began in the 2010s under Theresa May, David Cameron's Home Secretary at the time, who unambiguously declared that she wanted to develop a "hostile environment" for immigrants, using a great deal of legislation and propaganda. The Immigration Act of 2014 made access to housing and health care conditional on immigration status, while in the summer of 2013 very official vans bearing the inscription "Go Home" travelled the streets of London with the aim of encouraging people to leave voluntarily. Some of these controversial schemes, such as the programme to deport asylum seekers who have arrived in the UK illegally to Rwanda, which was finally overturned by a British Court of Appeal on 29 June 2023 (6), even contravene international law. Sunak's United Kingdom is therefore sinking into this truly insular trend: not only has the country left the European Union, but it is endeavouring to erect both material and symbolic fortresses around itself, contrary to its century-old tradition as a land of welcome and asylum.

Finally, in addition to the excesses embodied by the last three Prime Ministers - the populist temptation, the indexation of politics to finance and the insular one-upmanship - the sheer number of them raises questions. Satirists are having a field day, measuring the passage of time not in months and weeks, but in the number of governments. More seriously, political scientists see in this political instability, which in fact dates back to 2016 - since the Brexit referendum led to the resignation of David Cameron followed by that of Theresa May - the sign of several dysfunctions (7). In particular, Johnson, like Truss (and we could no doubt add Sunak to the list), made impossible promises, since a strong welfare state without a matching tax system is a smoke and mirrors approach. What's more, for May, Truss and Sunak, their internal appointment by the Conservative party alienates them from the British electorate in sociological terms. What's more, although the British Constitution does not require a national ballot to be held after a resignation when MPs do not feel the need to do so, the fact remains that this procedure affects the governments' legitimacy. From this point of view, instability tends to provoke... more instability.

Behind inflation and social anger, the limits of an economic model

While Prime Ministers come and go, the last few months have been marked by a deterioration in the country's economic situation. Since 2021, the UK has been experiencing almost continuous inflation (8). Between March 2021 and January 2022, prices rose by between 1% and 5% a month compared with a year earlier. From February 2022, the rise accelerated, reaching 9.6% in October 2022. Inflation remains at these record levels thereafter, remaining at 7.9% in May 2023. In the end, the price of certain food products literally soared, particularly sugar (+50% between May 2022 and May 2023), milk (+29%) and fresh vegetables (+21%). This rise in prices is multi-factorial: the catch-up effect of post-Covid-19 consumption and difficulties in importing certain products since the start of the war in Ukraine (9); a shortage of market garden labour following the Brexit, which is reducing harvests (10); but also the effects of climate change on agricultural production, or "climflation", for example on Spanish olive oil (11), speculation by "hunger profiteers" on raw materials (12) and opportunistic increases in the profits of certain companies (13).

The Bank of England's monetary policy aimed at stemming the rise in prices consists of raising interest rates. The Bank's key rate, on which commercial banking institutions are aligned, was set at 0.1% during the first wave of Covid-19, and has been raised every month since January 2022, reaching 5% in June 2023. However, the vast majority of home loans taken out in the UK are not, as is the norm in France, fixed-rate loans for their entire term. In 2022, half of all outstanding mortgages had a fixed rate for only the first five years, before being renegotiated. A quarter had a fixed rate for two years, and 15% were at a variable rate (14). Under these conditions, the Bank of England's decision to raise its key interest rates has had direct and dramatic consequences for the quarter of Britons who have a mortgage (15). By taking this decision, the Bank of England has clearly established that the monetary priority is to bring down inflation: the aim is to discourage consumption and encourage saving; in short, to slow down the economy. In so doing, the Bank runs the risk, according to some analysts (16), of provoking a recession, even if Andrew Bailey, its director, denies this (17).

Rampant inflation and the measures designed to curb it are having a dramatic impact on the purchasing power of the British people, which explains why the UK experienced a historic wave of strikes from 2022 onwards. This social movement, which can be described as multi-occupational insofar as it affected the whole of the British working world, is in fact a set of social conflicts at company, establishment or branch level. These disputes relate to pay: the demands concern pay levels first and foremost, and are combined, depending on the case, with other sectoral demands. Postal workers at the Royal Mail, which has been privatised since 2013, have called for pay rises to compensate for inflation, while denouncing forms of outsourcing, i.e. the recruitment of self-employed delivery workers, and work intensification. In April 2023, the sector's main union, the Communication Workers' Union, reached an end-of-conflict agreement after almost a year of mobilisation and dozens of days of strike action, including the abandonment of freelance recruitment and 10% pay rises. These multiple conflicts, of which the postal service is just one example, signal a deep malaise among British workers. The incomes of the working and middle classes have deteriorated considerably (18). This decline has had very tangible consequences in terms of living conditions, which can be seen in the emergency measures put in place by associations, such as food distribution and the provision of heated rooms (19). This rapid rise in poverty and inequality, and the social anger they engender, highlight the limitations of the British economic model, in particular the poor regulation of the labour market, where jobs are easy to find but also poorly paid and insecure.

So, since the summer of 2022, the United Kingdom has, in a way, been faced with its own contradictions, politically, economically and diplomatically. Internationally, Sunak, like his predecessors, is walking a fine line between dreams of global leadership and the reality of today's world: the UK sees itself as a pioneer of the ecological transition, but Sunak is not setting foot at the summit for a new financial pact; it is trying to develop its trade agreements in the Pacific but cannot compete with China's power, and would like to control its borders without really cooperating with its allies. These contradictions are not new, but they have recently become much more pronounced. The British model has been destabilised, and will continue to struggle.
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Sounds like somebody wants us back.
 
Picdelamirand-oil said:
or more simply that he wants popcorn
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Well there's no popcorn on sale here. One would have thought that you'd just wipe your hands clean and saunter off instead of constantly posting crap on the issue like you were trying to change it or something.
 
BMD said:
Well there's no popcorn on sale here. One would have thought that you'd just wipe your hands clean and saunter off instead of constantly posting crap on the issue like you were trying to change it or something.
Click to expand...
The real subject is: "Brexit and Future of UK: Discussions". Posting a year's analysis of UK geopolitics as published by the leading independent publisher in the French-speaking world, specialising in international relations, diplomacy and military and strategic issues does not seem irrelevant to me.
 

Brexit has completely failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons – poll​

Only one in 10 feel leaving the EU has helped their finances, while just 9% say it has benefited the NHS, despite £350m a week pledge according to new poll

A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.

The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.

Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.

Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.

The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.

The Vote Leave campaign led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove had promised that Brexit would boost the economy and trade, as well as bring back £350m a week into the NHS and allow the government to take back control of the UK’s borders.

James Crouch, head of policy and public affairs at Opinium, said the perception of Brexit being handled badly and having had negative effects on various aspect of UK life appeared to be spreading: “Public discontent at how Brexit has been handled by the government continues, with perceived failings even in areas previously seen as a potential benefit from leaving the EU.

“More than half (53%) of leave voters now think that Brexit has been bad for the UK’s ability to control immigration, piling even more pressure on an issue the government is vulnerable on. Despite this, Brexit is likely to be a secondary issue at the next election compared to the state of the economy and the NHS, which are the clear priority for voters.”​

Boris Johnson at a Brexit press conference in 2019
Boris Johnson, the then prime minister, speaking at a press conference in 2019 about his party’s plans to solve the impasse on Brexit. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

Robert Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University, said that while there was now evidence that negative perceptions of Brexit, particularly on the economy, could have an effect on votes at a general election, Brexit was very unlikely to play such a direct role as it did at the last two general elections.

Ford said: “Voters’ attention has shifted decisively elsewhere, with leave and remain voters alike focused on the domestic agenda of rising bills, struggling public services and weak economic growth.

“The appeal of ‘Get Brexit Done’ was not just about completing the long Brexit process but also about unblocking the political system and delivering on other long-neglected issues. Brexit got done, but this has not unblocked the political system, and troubles elsewhere have only deepened. Many of the voters who backed the Conservatives to deliver change now look convinced that achieving change requires ejecting the Conservatives.

“This shift in sentiment may be particularly stark among the ‘red wall’ voters who rallied most eagerly to Johnson’s banner four years ago, but have been most exposed to rising bills and collapsing public services since. The final act of Brexit may yet be the collapse of the Brexit electoral coalition.”

One of the key claims of the Brexiters was that leaving the EU’s single market and customs union would usher in a new era of global trade for the UK based on trade deals with other parts of the world. Many voters now seem to have concluded that Brexit has in fact been bad for trade. Some 49% think it has been bad for the ability of UK firms to import goods from outside the EU, while 15% think it has helped.​
 
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