General British politics discussion thread

It isn't this thread that is harping back, Brexit itself is built on the very notion that Britain must once again rule the world. That everyone needs them more than they the UK needs them, that UK rules and regulations are great and everyone else's is bloated and useless.

A very core of the Brexit thinking was that Ireland would leave the EU to join up with the UK, thereby getting rid of the NI issue. Brexit was never based on the SM and CU is a problem in and of itself. Their own union, the UK, is based on the notion of centralised and common rules and regulations. The issue was always that the UK felt it should be in charge, it should be making the decisions.

It is all based on a sense that the UK has lost its place in the world. Rather than being in charge, it is a member of a collective.

I know that, but Brexit is the driving narrative of the UK the last 8 years or so and has had a massive impact of the general politics of the UK.

You cannot separate one from the other. Every decision is made with some context to Brexit.

Even the Australian and NZ trade deals were made on the basis of having to be seen to get a win, rather than if it was actually any good.

Truss was given the leadership because many felt she was more Brexity than Sunak. Johnson won the leadership, and the GE based entirely on his position on Brexit.

While all the problems that the UK are facing cannot be blamed on Brexit, in many cases Brexit has had a direct negative impact but also the politically many decisions are being made,or not made, with an eye on Brexit rather than what is best.

That was not one of my better posts. My main point was the extent of the poor grasp of history, and how what grasp they do have is rose-tinted nationalism rather than being used to avoid future mistakes.

To be fair when I was living in Dublin (I'm originally British but lived in Ireland for nine years) it often transpired that I knew more about Irish history than most of the people I met over there.

I'd add to that the lack of Scottish history in the English curriculum.

Edit: And Welsh. The union wasn't formed over tea and scones on a happy Sunday afternoon.

I don't know about India being a "proud member" of the Commonwealth. The UK colonial authorities made British India a Commonwealth member in 1945; it wasn't a choice made by the Indians themselves. It was expected that, with independence, India would leave the Commonwealth, and that had been Nehru's position for some time. In the event, he told the UK that India would remain provided the Commonwealth rules were restructured so that member states did not have to have the UK sovereign as head of state, but could be republics. The UK, after some havering, agreed to this, because they wanted continued access to India's military resources, and thought that shared Commonwealth membership might be a vehicle for this. India put the kibosh on that idea pretty early on, though.

For his part, Nehru overcame his earlier reservations about Commonwealth membership because he thought it might confer trading advantages, and he saw it as a way of maintaining and building up relationships not so much with the UK as with other former UK colonies, with whose experiences he thought India would have much in common. It never really did confer any trading advantages, and the Indians soon became relatively unbothered by Commonwealth membership - not opposed to it, not particularly valuing it.

India today still seeks to use Commonwealth structures to develop political links with other developing countries, and to pursue trading relationships with them. But it's a relatively minor strand of Indian foreign policy. In recent decades, as often as not, the Indian Prime Minister hasn't bothered to attend Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings. It's not that India is hostile to the Commonwealth; more that it's of limited value to them, and they have other priorities.

Labour trying to go for "Cool Britannia II"

Sad thing is it's the best way to get heard.

Sunak asks homeless man “what are you doing this weekend?”. You couldn’t make it up. How dumb, stupid and out of touch is he. How could they allow this stuff to be broadcast. Are the Brits that thick that this scutter would make them think Sunak is doing a good job jo and gives a toss about people who have nothing.

I never understand why any PR person advocates for something like this. At best, it will come across as a PR exercise and be scoffed at as the lame attempt to make Politican look good.

At best it slows everything down. In this case, the perfectly capable staff that normally do the work have to first explain to said politician what to do and then stand around wasting everyone's time while the politician does a few token tasks to make them look good. All the while costing taxpayers huge sums of money by having to have all the PR staff spend time setting it up, the photographer out to take the pics, the TV crews. Why not just save all that money and give it to the food service.

But it always run the risk, greater or lesser based on politician, to come off really bad. This is one of those cases. You could see he was struggling to get a conversation, but when the guy said he was homeless that was the chance to ask what he would like the government to do, how could he, Sunak, help that man. Instead, he fell back into talking about financial services and the work of government, like any of that is going to help that man over Christmas.

Seeing that Sunak clip described- “do you work in finance?” is enough, I can’t bring myself to watch it. He’s just awful.