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Richard Murphy
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Genius!
So sad and so true. If we were that good.. They would have stayed.
vote.uk
for a coercion free democracy.
All people,
All topics,
All areas,
All can vote.
Actually not quite true of sorts, there are moves to form some kind of union after Brexit with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It Is taken so seriously the US has commented on it as a viable option for them esp with the US declining. I know you many will poo poo this but it seems to be serious thing happening. The US naval institute wrote about this as a good option esp with the combined naval forces of the four countries. So even some in the US military is taking this seriously.
“Security concerns could drive the commonwealth nations toward a unified defense command and an all-Union parliament with direct funding and clear oversight of key military forces. The British strategic deterrent would be the first capability to fall under unified command. An effective all-Union political authority in which office holders from all four nations had key political and military positions would be central to ensure a credible deterrent. Australians with long memories might not fully believe the validity of a British deterrent pledge, but if some of the office holders and naval officers in the decision loop were Australians, the deterrent would become more believable.”
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017/january/all-queens-shipsl
“. Like most analysts, I had dismissed these as imperial nostalgia projects that made little sense given the countries’ widely divergent economic interests and the reality that such collaborations were likely to do little to reinforce the rules-based global order.”
” Not only is deepening foreign-policy coordination among Ottawa, Canberra, and London increasingly attractive amid the accelerating decay of the American-led world order, but this grouping has shown itself over Hong Kong to be far more meaningful in world affairs than seemed possible. Instead of being backward-looking, this is a progressive cause–and a worthwhile one.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/30/hong-kong-uk-trump-canada-australia-alliance/
https://www.canzukinternational.com/
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1236734/brexit-news-uk-trade-union-canada-australia-new-zealand-Erin-O-Toole-Canzuk-plan
I think dismissed for good reason…..
Why do you hate this country so much?
If you are so ashamed of it, you could always leave.
I may
When it has given up claims to places it should not be ruling
And closed its tax havens
But the reality is I don’t hate this country
I hate the was this country is abused
And the way it’s used by abusers
You’re not that keen on the English though, to be fair.
I have no problem with the English
I do with English nationalism that thinks it has a right to impose on others
That’s quite different
Precisely Richard, precisely.
Those are exactly the reasons I and many others despair at our current state.
So are you OK with English nationalism that does not think it has a right to impose on others? Are do all English nationalists, in your opinion, think they have a right to impose on others?
Your question makes no sense: sorry
Why do you hate this country so much?
Standard right wing bluster – someone has a different political viewpoint from you, so you accuse them of treason, effectively. Aren’t people allowed to think we don’t live in a land of hope and glory? Here are some more words you might not recognise – foodbanks, poverty, racism, division, intolerance, xenophobia.
This has echoes of the basic Thatcherism question “is he one of us?” Which was of course not so much a question as an accusation.
And because I am Scottish I will place on record for you that I don’t hate the United Kingdom. I don’t hate England either (apart from when we’re competing at football or rugby union, but I recover soon afterwards). What I do hate is what has become of England.
Sorry if it’s not obvious, but my previous posting here was a response to what “Sandra” wrote, rather than anything written by Richard. I should perhaps have put the first sentence in inverted commas.
Despise rather than hate. How else should you feel about a state (not a country) whose sole policy in Scotland is to maintain ownership (as it sees it ) by crippling our democratically mandated institutions – effectively fighting a dirty war against the whole country. Most disgracefully exposed during a pandemic when ownership and control were prioritised over public health in a filthy campaign against Scotland’s successful strategy and where any deviation from the UK’s failures was presented as some kind of treason. Scotland’s success in protecting its people is now to be rewarded with yet more vicious measures against its parliament to prevent any repeat. The UK behaves in Scotland like an occupier and the sooner we are rid of it the better.
I know you want that fact to be seen as some sort of anti-UK thing but it is a very silly thing to try to make a point about. How many of those countries has the UK tried to take independence away from once granted? Besides……
The Commonwealth, a voluntary association, has fifty-four members and a combined population of 2.4 billion.
Can any other former imperial power boast of such a close alliance with its former dominions?
It would see you are a master in missing the point
Yes, France.
Unfortunately there always seems to be this undercurrent of people who are ‘my country right or wrong’ in their thinking, waiting to be either mobilised by extreme right wing politicians/crooks or those of us who are aware of our history and can face it rather than bury it.
Nixon called them the ‘silent majority’ and he mobilised them for the Vietnam war. Thatcher certainly mobilised hers for the Falklands.
These days, there is a new variant – those who have been brutalised by laissez-fair economics (low pay, zero hours contracts) and clap and egg on those politicians who will help reduce the life chances and quality of their neighbour’s lives too – because that is how things are.
It is hard knowing what to do with them to be honest. Their world view is so limited, it lacks imagination and hope and just seems to wish for an equality of hopelessness rather than genuine improvement.
How to engage with this group is one of the hardest tasks we face. There has to be a unified belief in something better within the people themselves.
How can we turn that back on? That is the question.
The Commonwealth owes its success largely because it is a club of English speaking countries (not sure about Mozambique!) discussing common aspects of governance that the British Empire left behind. Their lawyers like to chat among themselves about similar legal systems. That does not make them admirers of what we did in the name of that Empire, and for instance how our Immigration Department (by law) looks upon their citizens today. But all-in-all it does no harm, and that is a good thing.
Didn’r one of the Leeward Isles (briefly) ask to rejoin? Although possibly not by referendum
Nit that I am aware of
Sadly, there was just one – but only because ‘the wrong kind of independence’ had been forced upon them.
The small island of Anguilla (35 sq mi, pop 15,000) was made independent in 1967 as part of “St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla” but the islanders promptly ejected the St Kitts police force and declared their wish to be independent of St Kitts & Nevis and return being a British colony. Britain didn’t really want Anguilla back, and it was 1980 before Anguilla finally, formally returned to being a Crown Colony.
Under more direct British rule than its other former colonial neighbours, to no-one’s surprise Anguilla is now prospering as a tax haven. [Wikipedia]
It’s a shame to spoil such a neat headline, Richard, but the details only underline the uncaring incompetence of British colonial rule.
In other words Independence is normal (except for viewers in Scotland).
Scotland just had a referendum and voted to stay… or was that all based on lies? Or should we have an annual referendum? And if one year they choose to exit, should the annual referendum continue to cone back in if the vote was close? Or would the chaos that followed just mean the referendum should be offered just once a generation?
We’e had three general elections since then
Should we ignore them all?
Why is some democracy once in a generation and that which suits this government really quite frequent ?
Laurie Driver says:
“Scotland just had a referendum and voted to stay… or was that all based on lies?”
To a large extent, yes it was. There was the assurance of remaining in the EU against a threat (which may or may not have been true) that an independent Scotland would have been ineligible to remain in or rejoin the EU. That situation has changed, and Scotland was solidly pro ‘Remain’ in the EU referendum.
The so-called ‘Vow’ backed by the three main Westminster parties’ leaders promising deeper devolution was empty words. There was deliberate misinformation about the security of pensions in an independent Scotland and likewise about the continued use of Sterling. In the aftermath the state of play in the Brexit process has done little to reassure Scots that the Union is going to offer a good future. The relationship has moved substantially since 2014 in considerably less than a generation.
Are you sure you were offered a peerage and turned it down?
Guido seems to say otherwise
https://order-order.com/2016/09/30/richard-murphy-wanted-shami/
Three people knew if this discussion
John McDonnell
Seb Corbyn
And me
I didn’t leak it
And I didn’t seek to spread misinformation by doing so
I was told they were trying to arrange this for months as a way to avoid the Labour Party paying me……
Well, that brought out some odd trolls! You hate the UK/the English? Why don’t you leave? (Very Brexiteer language). For me, the point is well made and understood. If I were a Scot, I’d be off like a shot.
But Scot or not you can move to Scotland if you wish.
I could
And time will tell
I’m not sure what this is supposed to represent, but Australia & NZ were self-governing a long time before 1931.
Only in part. The Statute of Westminster 1931 was the process by which the Imperial Parliament agreed that it would no longer legislate for the Dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the Irish Free State) without their written consent. This took effect from Jan 1st 1932. Before then all Westminster Acts of Parliament might or might not apply to those territories depending on what Westminster decided and what was specified in the pre-amble to the Act. Thus ‘This Act shall apply to: xxxx’. Westminster does occasionally still legislate for the Dominions, for example ‘The Royal Styles and Titles Act 202x’ will apply in due course when the styles and titles for Prince Charles are promulgated (and bear in mind he can choose any name – does not have to be Charles! He can be King Fluffy Wuffy I if he wants to be. Prince David became Edward VIII in 1936). King Charles would also be a bit tricky as there is already a large marble memorial to King Charles III of Scots in St Peter’s in Rome (paid for by George III).
Well. Goodness. This post got some ‘interesting’ reactions. So, just for the mere mention of the lack of appetite there is for becoming a colony to the ‘UK’ again, this escalates into you hate your country (unspecified which) or you hate the English,,, or etc. A tiny bit extreme I think.
But interestingly, if you talk about the British Empire that colonised all these places in the first place, it was ‘just as much the Scottish’ wot done it,,, I feel some cognitive dissonance coming on,,,
Truly is fascinating how fierce the defence of Empire is to this day – it’s almost as though a lot of people base their core identity on the fallacy spread about the British Empire’s history. I thought (well, a long time ago now) we had our own in Scotland, but it ain’t nothing compared to what I’ve heard in England. I choose ‘core identity’ specifically; those are your beliefs that you think are necessary for your own self identity – very hard to change, or shake loose from anyone. (I.e. Very little point trying to reason with them). And you possibly have an entire country full,,, hmm, I wonder, why did Brexit happen again?
“Won their independence” is an interesting framing. Has the UK now “won its independence from the EU”? Hong Kong is not on the map – did it “win its independence” from the UK in 1997? The journeys to independence of say the US and Australia, or India and Malta, or Ireland and Barbados, or Bahrain and South Africa, or Israel and Ghana, were all quite different. Few of these places actually voted to join with England in the first place though. Apart from Scotland and Ireland, of course.
It’s more correct to say that a very small handful of Scottish aristocrats voted to join England, after being bribed by having their Darien debts paid by England (private debts, by the way, *not* a national debt). The ordinary people weren’t permitted to vote and opposed the union, with rioting in streets common for months afterwards.
The way countries have left control by the UK does, of course, vary. In some cases it was relatively peaceful, in others very much not so. ‘Won’ is an appropriate descriptor for many of those, and will certainly be appropriate for Scotland.
No doubt we could spend another 300 years debating the whys and wherefores of the 1707 union (following the previous 100 years of personal union). It is not really the fault of the English that the Parliament of Scotland was a unicameral body largely composed of the nobility. There wasn’t a plebiscite in England about union with Scotland either, and the English / British / UK House of Commons was hardly representative of the population at large until at least 1832 but arguably 1918 or even 1928.
Actually, there is an exception of a sort.
Newfoundland (& Labrador) became a Dominion in 1907 and in 1932, hard hit by the Depression and would have had to default on the debt, they applied to be jointly administered by the British Government. Thus they gave up Dominion status in 1933.
In 1949 they joined Canada as the tenth province.
Otherwise you are right.
Laurie Driver: Already answered, admirably & correctly, by Andy Crow (Cheers friend).
and before anyone brings up the “once in a generation” rubbish currently resurrected by the putative new leader of the Tories in Scotland he should expect a flood of emails requesting him to “put up or shut up” and produce a copy, or a link to it at least, of this mythical document which he claims to have been signed by Ms Sturgeon & Mr Salmond…….
The exception that proves the rule is Newfoundland (a Dominion in its own right since 1907) in 1934, after it had essentially become bankrupt. In 1949 – as perhaps the least bad option – it chose to became part of Canada.
The other is Anguilla which, decided that being a British Overseas Territory was preferable to being dominated by St Kitts.
So neither as such came back
If an ex-colony asked to come back, why would we agree?
I live in an ex British colony. 5% of its nationals live in the uk and don’t want to come back despite the diaspora schemes in place to attract them.
Another 50,000 would probably move to the uk if they had the right, and probably 25% of the young people.
Individuals vote with their feet and they know that the uk is great!