Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Dutch politicians do not operate in a Westminster style environment in which the party that secures most votes is considered to have "won" the election even when three-quarters of the voters have rejected them. All Dutch governments are coalition governments; being the largest party in Parliament doesn't give you a "mandate" to be in government. It does put you in pole position when it comes to negotiating a coalition, but that comes with a responsibility to enter the negotiations on the understanding that you haven't secured a majority for your policies and you aren't entitled to throw a hissy fit if other parties don't like them.

Right now, Wilders will want to look like a Prime Minster in waiting. In the context of Netherlands politics, that means the last thing he will do is go around honking into the sky about his "mandate" to leave the EU, or whatever. On the contrary, he'll be a model of sweet reason, emphasising his willingness to build bridges, do deals, find common ground, and generally behave like a grown-up.

That means that any talk of an exit referendum will be sidelined. What Wilders will focus on is the elements of his party platform that align with the platforms of the parties he needs to form a coalition with. The two parties he needs (and, on the figures, he needs both of them) are the VVD and the recently established NSC. Both are parties of the centre-right; the VVD is very much committed to the EU, and the NSC is not opposed to it. The NSC in particular is not keen on Wilders or his party, and will require some persuasion that Wilders is capable of meeting accepted political standards for a national leader.

Wilders won't push the idea of an exit referendum. Neither of the other parties would be attracted by the idea, and such a referendum is bound to fail anyway, so why expect political capital on it? Plus it's the kind of populist shîte that would alarm rather than reassure his prospective coalition partners. Expect him to focus on the issues of immigration and small government.

Same as the crowd in Poland who were walking behind the Polexit banners the other week even as their country accepts billions of euro in EU aid. If the EU offends them so much they could always decline this money.

They weren't excluded, both FF and FG ran on a promise to not go into government with SF, regardless of the election results that was the promise and they stuck to it. Politicians are constantly given out about for not sticking to their promises, here they did stick to them and the usual suspects are still unhappy.

They weren't excluded and if you go about forcing the largest party into government people will forming other parties ruining the benefits of coalitions in terms of giving voices to different opinions. Instead it will end up anti X joining together and anti joining together and everyone voting against what they don't want instead of what they actually want.

FF and FG voters voted for parties who stated they would not go into coalition with sf. That was a large block of voters voting specifically to exclude sf that you want ignored because their votes were split between two parties. I get politicians break a lot of promises, it is another to feel like they should be obliged to break their promises.

The Netherlands will get a new government but they will need to find 50% that can work together and agree on things. There is no I got 25% of the vote so you need to find a coalition that does what I say nonsense like the UK.

I don't argue that the party with the largest number of seats should automatically form part of the government. As you say the largest party has often been excluded.

I was responding to @breezy1985 who wrote "The "mandate" I was talking about was Sinn Fein supporters felling cheated because the largest party didn't get to be in charge. The SF voters on Boards spent ages trying to discredit PR voting."

The point i was trying, not very successfully, to make was that SF supporters complained about SF being excluded rather than saying that SF had a mandate to form a government. I don't remember anyone suggesting that the ;largest party should be the government.

Anyway , this is probably off topic in this thread.

That last Euronews comment is very unfair. Of course retirees living in a foreign country won't have the family supports of the local who's garden they have strayed into.

The baby boomer generation are actually the exception to the norm, so I can see why they wouldn't have planned for their dotage when most things in their lives they took for granted like the NHS and housing were fought for by the previous generations.

I can't find a link but I read a few weeks ago that the rate at which people died alone at home in England didn't drop after the pandemic. It does happen in Ireland, but of the local cases I know all were of people who had moved to where they had no links, so when they weren't seen in a while it was assumed that they had gone back home.

"That's not entirely true. Thanks to mass emigration we actually had one of the oldest demographics in the 1930 to the 1950s. Intergenerational households were the norm, certainly were in my family and still are now"

We may have had households with an older average age but the generation that would be my grandparents or older have little or no experience of caring truely elderly parents like we have now. Life expectancy was way lower.

I think you are doing a lot of patting on the back about Ireland and so is that Spanish person. The numbers of elderly living with family in Ireland are pretty small. I'm not really buying any of this pseudo academic stuff about individualistic society.

Spent half my adult life in the UK.

Moved home to work for the HSE in geriatric healthcare.