They can't deliver them because they're not in power. But that's the point of political campaigning for parties not in government - to get into power or at least to advance to a position of serious influence, which Ukip, for now at least, appear to be doing. They are certainly making the political weather. But having an ambitious, even an over-ambitious/unrealistic (depending on your point of view), programme in which you believe and which you stick to steadfastly/stubbornly (ditto above) is very different from making 180 degree U-turns in response uncomfortable opinion polls and issuing through gritted teeth policy pledges in which you do not believe and which you know perfectly well, when you open your mouth, you have not the slightest intention of delivering. That's populism. Or desperation. The Lib/Dems came a cropper with their tuition fees policy because it was never really policy at all but political mood music which they never dreamed they would be called upon to implement. But to give them their due, though I would never vote for them to save a dying Grandmother, they have stuck to their Europhilia even though it will destroy them, because they believe in it. Labour and the Tories are jostling like spivs to present the electorate with counterfeit policy to maintain their share of the vote. You want populism look at nauseating Milliband putting on his best serious face and intoning piously that immigration is now an issue at the top of the agenda when it was him and his party who spent 13 years assiduously dismantling our borders and screaming racist at anyone who questioned what they were doing or so much as mentioned the i word.
If only Harriet Harman, Mr & Mrs Ed Balls, Keith Vaz, Ed Miliband, Tony Blair , Dianne Abbott, Tristram Hunt and pretty much any prominent Labour politician you can think of would defect to UKIP and take some of their trendy,left wing street cred with them we would all be able to feel so much more at ease voting UKIP. Not at all like all those terrible multi millionaire right wingers who are so hard to stomach hey ! Makes you pine for the likes of Michael Foot. Agree with him or not he struck me as a proper principled man doing what he felt was right.
I thought Michael Foot was great, he made the Labour Party unelectable. There are several multi millionaires in the Labour camp, but then a million pounds just isn't what it used to be.
I heard something on Radio 2 today that made me laugh. When questioned why they had voted UKIP in the Clacton by elections the person replied "because the old Tory hasn't done anything for years"
On the Apple website, there is a useful tool which allows you to compare iPads, laptops, iPhones and the like. On one page you can see the difference in screen resolution, chips, weights etc etc. What would be handy would be a similar page comparing political parties with their various stances on the budget, immigration, Europe, NHS, tax etc etc. That way maybe we'd be able to make a more informed choice (not that I can of course). As it stands, it's like comparing a load of insurance policies or smartphones. You have no idea of the differences or what the major selling points are. It just comes down to "I like Dave, don't like Nigel, Clegg's a twat and Milliband speaks through his nose." It's not that useful. Maybe such a site exists - perhaps someone can point me to it.
it's all there already. you just have to chose from who you think will deliver according to their history.
Political parties generally oscillate between stoutly maintaining the purity of their principles (at the expense of being stuck in opposition) and pragmatically adjusting their policies to appeal to the electorate (so they might win power). They swing to and fro about every 10 years, and always have done. Overlaying that is the much-studied phenomenon whereby parties in opposition promise the sun, the moon and the stars; but on entering government they have to face reality as they are constrained by what is feasible, thus inevitably they are forced to compromise (and of course get blamed for doing so). This kind of analysis applies to all parties, not only to those of today, and there is no escape. Anyone who arrives on the scene claiming they will 'change politics' learns better after a few years.
As i have said before. Let's abolish all political parties and just let those elected represent the people who put them in power, not those funding their parties. I still fail to see how making it much more difficult to trade with your biggest export market will suddenly ease all Britain's ills.
I have a theory about this issue which I wont air on a public forum however I did have the same thoughts about Stephen Fry over the past few years too............
I still fail to see how making it much more difficult to trade with your biggest export market will suddenly ease all Britain's ills.[/QUOTE] It is not difficult to trade outside the EU. I have an import/export & distribution business and a very large chunk of my business is done outside the EU. For example, to import from China I require 1 additional document from the factory and pay 3.6% duty to hmrc on the particular items I bring in. Also there are plenty of non EU countries that have free trade agreements with the EU. Just google free trade eu and see what comes up. Mexico, Egypt, Turkey & Peru for example. Imports from these countries are of course duty free. There are ups and downs to EU membership but regarding trade my opinion is that if anything we would have better export prospects if we were out. Remember all the stories of doom if we failed to take up the Euro ? I think it is the same with EU membership and we`ll be fine if we are out. The world wont stop spinning on its axis whether we are in or out . Lets have a proper informed conversation instead of politicians talking bollox . Not much chance of that though is there ?
I don't know if there is a political Go-compare site, but people could always visit party websites and read manifestos to see what they stand for and make up their minds for themselves. And parties should be encouraged to publish policy rather than dealing in sound bites. The political process has been dumbed down quite enough already to accommodate the short attention spans of our media driven age.
The EU people can be very vindictive though. Following the popular vote in Feb where Switzerland decided to take control of EU immigration numbers, the EU has been spitefully pulling the plug on all sorts of other unrelated bilateral agreements, saying it's a complete package, all or nothing. Britain might expect similar treatment if it leaves the EU "pour encourager les autres". The EU doesn't want piecemeal agreements - it wants as near to a superstate as it can get. So don't count on all UK European exports being duty free imports to the EU. The EU hates people having the best of both worlds. The UK isn't flavour if the month in Brussels in any case since it didn't want the common currency. Who knows what would happen in practice but I can see the EU being about as friendly to ex-members as a bunch of Scientologists would be to theirs.
Quite agree Dukesox. To their credit Ukip have published a report on the economic implications and opportunities of withdrawing from the EU: http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.ne...riginal/1396261328/EFd_doc_2.0.pdf?1396261328 It is not encyclopaedic, a mere 91 pages long, but that is precisely 91 pages more than the other parties have published to support the case for staying in. They confine themselves to wagging their fingers at the electorate, bleating about losing 3 million jobs, the sky falling in and Britain sliding into an economic nuclear winter and invoking imagery of 1930's nationalism without producing a shred of supporting evidence. And yet its Ukip doing the scaremongering. Its pathetic.
So we should stay in the EU from fear of what they would do to us if we leave? That's beaten wife territory. The UK runs a substantial trade deficit with the EU. We buy from them much more than we sell to them. We need to grow a pair.
Quite. Hand-wring, bleating, negativity and fear of the future. Unfortunately it was just enough to scare people into staying put. But the Scottish independence genie is well and truly out of the bottle. It can never go back in. And the same is true in the case of the EU. The politicians, as usual, are playing catch-up and presenting it as leadership.
If you want to know who is behind UKIP, who backs it and what their backgrounds are, have a read here. Two rootless, soulless parties have cleared the way for Ukip | Owen Jones | Comment is free | The Guardian Gliddofglood, i would say its inevitable that if the UK puts very harsh immigration rules on EU members then UK citizens will find the same rules applied to us if we wish to travel to Europe. I have already seen this in action when traveling to Crete this summer, where two planes of Russian holidaymakers were kept trapped in the arrivals/passport area whilst EU citizens could pass straight through.
Owen Jones is funny, him and Laurie Penny would make a good double act, left wing undergraduate activists from privileged backgrounds who have never quite grown up.
