Off Topic UK / EU Future

Tories way ahead in the polls, your message is not getting through. The electorate don't trust the Marx twins.

 

Merkel's popularity dropping constantly although not yet reached the record low Macron recently posted. These leaders are looking increasingly like lame ducks waiting to be casseroled.

 

It seems as if you wish to talk about anything but the division you are trying to create within your own party. Something not quite logical there for right thinking people.

 

Unfortunately my small financial contribution does not allow me to formulate Tory policy, I will need to rely on the next Tory PM from within the ERG group.

 

Joke I take it. The rump would do better to get behind Farage and form New UKIP. Maybe then the party could return to being a party for the many, not the few.

 

We don't need another UKIP, it served its purpose at the time by successfully campaigning for a referendum which it helped to win, a fantastic result. Farage is well overdue a knighthood for public service.

 

It is ironic but Brexit Britain is one of the very few countries currently in the EU without a surge towards the far right. AfD made further gains at the weekend in Germany whilst the far right government in Italy is threatening to wreck the whole EU structure. We now have the prospect of the far right in France becoming the largest party in Brussels after next years European elections. It did not take France very long to reject the wishy washy so called 'new politics'.

Maybe the UK is a beacon of hope, to avoid extreme politics ditch the bureaucratic centralised control from Brussels and become free nations again.

 

Can we get something straightened out here ? In one post you are telling us that Farage should get a knighthood - yet Farage was in Germany helping the AfD with their election campaign. By which we can presume that Farage/Ukip are on the same level as them - yet you want him knighted ? Just where do you stand on the political spectrum ?

 

Centre right - The Conservative party. As regularly chosen by the UK electorate.

UKIP under Farage cannot be compared to AfD in Germany and NR in France. Both of those have had links with total extremists, Nazis or holacaust deniers. Anyway UKIP is a spent force in the UK whilst the far right in many EU countries is becoming very influential.

 

Didn't somebody claim the far right in France was finished last year?

He obviously didn't inform the French public

 

Maybe you should look more closely at some of the links of Ukip - for example to the EDL, which, in turn, have links to the BNP and several parallel organizations in Europe. The fact that Farage was in Germany with the AfD tells us a lot. You appear to relish in any discomfort which Merkel or Macron have, yet politically they are both on the right - Macron being very much an admirer of Thatcherism, and Merkel being centre right. In other words, they are both very close to where you say you are yourself - so why the bitterness against them on your part ? You appear to also take great pleasure in every suggestion of far right resurgance in Europe - all very suspicious.

 

I'm simply pointing out how fortunate the UK is in having an absence of extreme politics. It is also relevant to expose the growing flaws in the EU at a time when we are fortunately leaving this failed project. Looking across the channel I'm surprised Brexit support has not grown enormously, probably down to the project fear put out by the establishment daily. The Italian challenge to Brussels looks to be very serious at the moment, both sides are refusing to back down with other nations queuing up to test Brussel's resolve.

 

Well it is true that we don't have a party calling itself 'British Fascist Party' actually getting votes in the UK. This is probably because there doesn't have to be one in the UK. because extremism has become mainstream in UK. politics. It has become a normalised part of the national debate - not even considered radical any longer. Stigmatising of immigrants as disease ridden scroungers or refugees - spoken of as hords, and a swarm, which is engulfing the English way of life. A message which is supported by so much of the British media and where the Tory Party have co-opted so many Ukip ideas and language, that it almost starts to appear 'normal'. Bojo, Michael Gove and Ian Duncan Smith have all pitched in with comments which could have come from any far right propaganda book. With Bojo even having made a point of lambasting that 'Half Kenyan' - meaning Barack Obama. No - Britain does not have any parties calling themselves Fascist - it doesn't need them as long as you have the present Tories. It is true that Britain does not have the AfD (although they are no worse than Ukip, and would never have got away with use of some of the posters which Ukip have used) - but the AfD do not have the power to influence the politics of the other parties in Germany, and so will remain on the fringe, unable to cause the devastation which Ukip have helped cause in the UK.

 

Is Merkel a goner?

 

On Wednesday, Britain’s top counter-terrorism police officer, Neil Basu, told MPs on the home affairs committee that the extreme rightwing was growing across Europe and said: “There is no doubt that crosses the border into the UK and there have been attempts by groups here to coordinate with European partners as well.”

So MI5 has been asked to take on the fight against the far right that already exists in the UK as they have better links with their counterparts in Europe than the police. The wishy washey reaction to these groups, which certainly exist within the Tory rightwing members and UKIP, leaves the country to exposure to a creep from vile to acceptance. Why do these groups even exist? Answer that and maybe you will be on the road to solving the problem

 

The best place to look is in countries with a long history of extreme right wing participation namely Germany Italy and France.

 

You could call it the far right Frenchie, but this gives it a significance which is misleading. We are seeing a rise in tribalism in the World which is not just confined to Europe - look at Trump, the new upcoming dictator in Brazil, Erdogan etc.etc. Maybe it is the threat of globalization - people are looking inwards rather than outwards. The phenomenon is the same - from Brexit right through to Islamic State, the impulse is the same. People can see Global forces which they cannot identify which actually disenfranchise whole countries - the worker of today is dispossessed by forces which he cannot influence, World Markets which support the increasing concentration of wealth. Not being able to get at these he looks inwards and erects barriers. Easier to blame the immigrant than the World Bank. In our industrialized countries the new poor are no longer working class, but are now just poor, without political representation. What we call the far right jumps in because the idea of blood, nation, fatherland are more resonant rallying calls (for many) than 'workers of the World unite'. The left is no longer able to fill the void in the way it used to. I am uncertain about the expressions 'right' and 'left' wing, and do not feel they serve any purpose - and may even be misleading. Up until the second world war being far left meant believing in collective ownership of the means of production, and little more than that. The expression 'far right' had no real meaning then. Now we all know that it is possible to believe in 'collectivization' of industry, but still be racist as hell - so does this place someone on the left or the right ? The left needs to find an answer to the threat of globalism and the global economy - because at the moment the far right is taking up the mantle of anti globalism, and it doesn't have to be that way.

 

Angela Merkel has announced that she will be stepping down as Chancellor in 2021, and stepping down as leader of the CDU this year. Normally the 2 roles would be carried out together but this will be an exception. It has been coming for a long time - she actually didn't want to stand last time, but, apparently, Barack Obama convinced her to do it. She has announced that after 2021 she will play no further role in politics. Who the new leader (and candidate for Chancellor) will be I do not know. The good news is that the Green Party are rapidly becoming the second party in German politics - what the CDU do is their problem.

 

Although I agree with quite a lot of what you have written, I would have to question some of it. I don't propose to go down the right v left definitions, we have been there before. I would query the assumption that countries are being disenfranchised. In some of the poorer ones that might be true, but it hardly can apply to a country such as the UK, one of the larger economies in the world. Individual governments have it in their power as to how they organise the distribution of wealth. You can have the low tax, low services model, or the higher tax better services model. This is the normal choice presented to the electorate in the UK, and because of various factors concerning where in the country you live, the low tax model wins some times, the higher tax model wins sometimes, usually after a period when people in the south see that services they expect are withdrawn. We currently are at one of the natural tipping point stages in this normal progression. The fact that at the last election there was no mandate for either model shows that despite rejecting the current bad services, the population were not ready to take the chance of going for what in the UK is a more extreme version of tax and spend. Many countries where the population enjoy a high standard of satisfaction with their lives do spend more on services. They do find that if they start with excessive spending the voters let them know. Because many countries are in the same situation as the UK , at a tipping point, the rise of alternative models are being looked at, hence the rise of different parties to the existing ones. Macron would never had come to power if either the two main parties could have offered the hope of life improving for the poorest. Individual parties as in the case of the Greens, although standing under the same banner are very different depending on which country they are in. It actually comes down to how well they can produce policies that seem to be be relevant to the moment.

 

Disenfranchisement may have been too strong as a description Frenchie. Nonetheless, if you measure nations GDP against the turnovers of international firms then there has been a seismic shift in power over the last 20 years - money (and power) have privatized. If the most powerfull players are making more than the GDP of the country which (theoretically) hosts them then you can kiss democracy goodbye. Would the German government ever make a decision which was completely contrary to the wishes of the car industry ? More or less every country in the World is in debt (almost without exception), so what matters is their credit ratings - so, in a sense, the World Bank (or WTO) can influence the range of possibilities which a country has, including their spectrum of possible politics. The electorate are consequently fed with a limited range of political possibilities, from which they can choose. In fact the range of political possibilities which Western voters are offered is no greater than that on offer in the ex USSR. Governments do not have the resources to turn the wishes of their electorates into reality, nor the will to educate their populations beyond what is necessary to be producers and consumers.

Although the Greens have some differences within Europe, they are still held together by the 'Charter of the European Greens', which is one of the closest groupings in the EU. Far closer than the relationship which exists between eg. The Labour Party and the SPD. There are differences in the way they play the political landscape in their respective countries - with the farthest left being the Portuguese, Danish and Dutch Greens and the Scandinavians being pragmatic, less ideological, and accepting nuclear power as a bridge technology, which we in Germany would never do. The German Greens have worked together with those in France and Belgium, and are probably similar in outlook.