UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[Lumine]

The Withdrawal Agreement recieves royal assent. Bercow is also having a bad day, between the government denying him a peerage and a dossier regarding the bullying allegations against him being presented.

[CumbrianLefty]

It looks like we are exiting the EU next week without formal approval from the devolved governments, contrary to what was previously agreed and an obvious potential trouble spot in the future.

[brucejoel99]

The Withdrawal Agreement recieves royal assent.

Alright Brexiteers, over to you now. We've had a lot of promises & it's time to deliver on them. And you'll have nobody to blame if Brexit f**ks up. You got what you wanted &, now, you have to live with it.

Oh, who am I kidding, they'll always blame somebody other than themselves.

Bercow is also having a bad day, between the government denying him a peerage and a dossier regarding the bullying allegations against him being presented.

Hmmm, perfectly timed accusations to stop him from becoming a peer.

*Dominic Cummings intensifies*

[Frodo]

Remember how some were predicting that Brexit would bring the United Kingdom and the United States closer together, especially under their current leadership?  Now Trump is threatening yet another trade war and Johnson is considering ending the longstanding alliance between our two countries:

Trump is threatening a damaging new trade war with the United Kingdom after Brexit
 

[Silent Hunter]

Trump threatens a lot of things, one finds. He rarely actually follows throw on them unless he knows there will be no real comeback.

[Middle-aged Europe]

That old English lady I know from playing with her in an impro theatre group in Berlin specifically obtained German citizinship due to Brexit. She also let her British passport expire and doesn't intend to get herself a new one for the forseeable future. I guess Brexit means that some Remainers left.

[CumbrianLefty]

Trump threatens a lot of things, one finds. He rarely actually follows throw on them unless he knows there will be no real comeback.

So he can do pretty much what he likes with our government, then?

[brucejoel99]

Remember how some were predicting that Brexit would bring the United Kingdom and the United States closer together, especially under their current leadership?  Now Trump is threatening yet another trade war and Johnson is considering ending the longstanding alliance between our two countries:

Trump is threatening a damaging new trade war with the United Kingdom after Brexit

He has a single-note foreign policy: bluster & threaten to try & get what he wants, intentionally let a situation deteriorate, & then, when things revert to where they were before he started messing them up, demand credit & claim that he's achieved an unprecedented breakthrough. Anybody seriously expecting that Trump would bend over backwards to get a trade deal with the UK just because he's buddies with BoJo either hasn't been paying attention to what Trump's been doing on the world stage over the past 3 years (e.g. Iran, North Korea, the Chinese trade war), or has been intentionally ignoring it.

[urutzizu]

Though being in the EU did not seem to necessarily help when it came to this: The main point of contention between the UK and US being the proposed Digital Services Tax, well France just this week was forced to suspend its plans for one over the threat of Tariffs, and the P3 (UK, France, Germany) were basically bullied by the US with, again, Tariffs into triggering the sanctions mechanism in the Iran nuclear deal last week.

Point being that even as members of the EU, european countries are not really sovereign vis-a-vis the United States. The Idea of collective retaliation was intended to counter this, but as long as EU-US trade is such a one-way street, Europe is dependent on US defense assets, and the EU is not united enough to introduce things like the digital services tax uniformly (and Germany et. al. therefore unwilling to risk a trade war over a french tax), then membership of the EU does not safeguard sovereignty in an effective way. Brexit will just make a already dire situation worse.

[Lumine]

Probably won't last for long - and it is early enough for it not to matter too much - but the latest GE poll:

CON: 49% (+4)
LAB: 29% (-4)
LDEM: 10% (-2)
GRN: 4% (+1)
BREX: 2% (-)

[brucejoel99]

Probably won't last for long - and it is early enough for it not to matter too much - but the latest GE poll:

CON: 49% (+4)
LAB: 29% (-4)
LDEM: 10% (-2)
GRN: 4% (+1)
BREX: 2% (-)

Impressive after 10 years of government.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Probably won't last for long - and it is early enough for it not to matter too much - but the latest GE poll:

CON: 49% (+4)
LAB: 29% (-4)
LDEM: 10% (-2)
GRN: 4% (+1)
BREX: 2% (-)

Congrats, BoJo. Now it's all downhill from here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Labour regularly polled over 60% (!) for a time after 1997.

[Continential]

https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1222555670911897601

What a moron.

[urutzizu]

First Indy Poll post GE:



https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1222871389050372096

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.

[afleitch]

Support is at 65% amongst under 50's. It is a demographic bomb in Scotland as much as it is in Northern Ireland.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though support does appear to be lower with the youngest voters, compared to people in their 30s and 40s.

[afleitch]

Though support does appear to be lower with the youngest voters, compared to people in their 30s and 40s.

It's only a tad lower at 62%, with a small sample size and runs contrary to the other polls in December, so I don't think there's any reason to be concerned

[CumbrianLefty]

I think it has also showed up in other polls before.

[Intell]

I think it has also showed up in other polls before.

I think it has showed up in polls quite consistently too.

[afleitch]

Ashcroft had support at 51% in 2014 amongst 16-24 year olds. While it's a different cohort 62% is an advance. Ispos MORI had it at 72%, again the strongest age group as did YouGov's previous poll. Other pollsters have a wide 16-34 sample which as expected show the strongest support.

[CumbrianLefty]

Anyway, today is the BIG DAY and come 11PM our time a door closes.

Yes, its the football transfer period over until the summer!

Something else may also be happening, or so I am told.......

[parochial boy]

Oh ho. Welcome to the permanent state of negotiation that is "Bilateral agreements". Glad to have you here with us 

[afleitch]

I cried.