If they claim to be the party of the working class why remove the protections granted by the EU from the withdrawal agreement. I doubt they did this to strengthen worker’s rights but those who voted for the Conservatives will deserve all they receive it is those who didn’t I feel sorry for.

I think you are wrong - this is all part of us controlling our law making - why should we be dictated to by the EU as what any of our laws should be?

We already have better workers provisions than the EU do you think eroding them is going to help the Tories win the next election? You on the left would have been very happy for Corbyn to trash the economy - doubt you would had much sympathy for those on right who voted against Labour if the result had been the other way round. You lefties know what's best for the rest of us

No we don’t but we do know that it is business that funds the Conservatives and if they want to produce inward investment then a reduction in worker’s right will be a starting point. With the current majority I doubt they care about what their new supporters think. They have previously muted the reduction in rights but whatever happens he will lie about it, I guess it depends how many continue to believe him.

Anybody who has worked in road transport will tell that workers rights ,especially for drivers, have gone down hill for the last twenty odd years ,ever since the EU Driving Time Directive came in.
The Working Time Directive re normal jobs is not all it is made out to be & in a legal sense has eroded some of the rights to breaks etc that were in force prior to the WTD.

Its business that funds the economy - if you want to produce inward investment then you need to find competitive sources of investment capital. There also needs to be a rebalancing of the council tax/business rates. Why should business bear a big chunk of these costs - business has to pay extra if they want their bins emptying!!.

The Tories have never muted a reduction in workers rights - what they have muted is a reduction in the administration of employing people - no bad thing in my view. It would be electoral suicide to reduce workers rights.

You are a very sore loser - nobody told more lies in the campaign than Labour - shame you refuse to accept that.

I completely disagree - breaks are strictly controlled and adhered to by the use of Tacho's - operators run the risk of losing their O Licence if they flaunt the rules.

Well we did have tachos before Europe became involved & maximum working days of 11 hours with up to 3 optional half hour breaks on top & no more than 2 x 10 hour drives per week.

But now because of its position on Brexit the government has to face both ways with business.

The business community has been saying for the past 3 years that their priority is to avoid additional costs of doing business with the EU: avoid tariffs, non-tariff barriers like regulatory checks and rules of origin. Hence the arguments for staying within the single market and/or customs union. Outside those there will be a lot more paperwork involved which for small businesses that can't centralise and create dedicated teams to deal with it could very quickly become prohibitive and destroy margins. For NI businesses that do trade with mainland GB this is going to be a major problem now there will be checks down that border.

The government however is taking the line that they won't listen to business on this, because the people want to leave the single market / customs union. Fair enough. But its inconsistent to take that position and then start championing slashing employment rights, consumer rights and so on, by saying it's important to help businesses and businesses fund the economy so we have to listen to them. The CBI/FBS has been lobbying much harder about not facing trade costs than they have to deregulate workers rights, consumer rights, product standards and so on!

One of the big ironies is that after David Cameron's big drive to reduce red tape for business, the largest increase in red tape could come over the next year under a Tory government because of the red tape associated with Brexit

I note that on Friday both IDS and Fox appeared to produce unverified statistics stating that the USA food industry resulted in less death through food poisoning. They claimed that the concerns raised by Labour were just leftist propaganda against the import of food stuffs from the USA.
It was no surprise that the figures quoted by IDS were incorrect and that the protections received by using the standards set by the EU in one category resulted in no deaths compared to 124 in the USA. I guess they were just preparing the public for what could be included in a possible trade deal.
They also announced at 10 pm Friday that one of our defence companies could be sold to the USA. Why announce it at this time other than to try to avoid scrutiny, what are they worried about and are they going to continue with the Johnson election strategy of dodge, duck and lie.

The defence deal was first suggested in the early part of the year, it was called in for scrutiny and passed that. Nobody knows what the trade deal with the USA does or doesn't include. Chlorination is safe, wether it allows poorer farming standards is down to IF those regulations are changed.

It’s weird that in my bubble that is taken for granted and that in yours it is unheard of.

If you were to Google ‘Tories workers rights’ and pick one of the many hits from the media catering to my bubble, you’d see that version of the reality. Equally, if I click on the link from the Times, i can read a few lines about Michael Gove vowing to stand up for workers rights (either trying to be genuinely reassuring and failing or taking the pee and succeeding) that are visible above the paywall.

One curiosity is that I think that Dominic Cummings does understand those who have been left behind. What is less clear is whether he understands them like somebody understands a hammer, as tool that can help him get poop done (like a British Steve Bannon or Vladislav Surkov), or whether he might have some empathy. His quote about the Tory politicians not caring about ordinary people and the NHS offers hope (and about David Davis being thick as mince )but why he thinks Johnson and Gove are any different or even better, remains a complete mystery to me.

Surely that's just sensible because in a globalised economy they face competition from all over the world. Any additional costs or restrictions that businesses face that their rivals don't face, is a problem. It's just like they would come out and oppose being asked to pay additional business taxes.

Also for years the right wing press have been telling us that 'EU red tape' was strangling our businesses so it's been revealing to see the business community mostly supporting Remain, or at least single market membership.



I agree and think there is a definite spectrum even within the Tory party on this. Theresa May, Philip Hammond, Greg Clark came from the position that capitalism has to deliver for ordinary people otherwise it just undermines support for the market system. They moved towards the position Ed Miliband had taken as leader of the Opposition, ie seeing 'good capitalism' and 'bad capitalism' and trying to tame bad capitalism with measures on the gig economy and price caps for energy. Also they had started to recognise issues like late payment for suppliers, where 'bad capitalism' sees small businesses screwed over by big businesses.

On the other hand you have the ideologues who basically see everything in the private sector as good, everything in the public sector as bad. Chris Grayling was a classic example - getting trapped in a rabbit hole by championing the rail franchises that were obviously failing (like GoviaThameslink) and instead of admitting defeat and exercising sanctions against them or removing the franchise, was changing the rules at which sanctions kick in to basically make sure the failing private provider got cushioned by the state. The 'Britannia Unchained' brigade - Raab, Patel and so on are also rapid believers that the market can do no wrong (except when it comes to free movement of people of course!).

Which way will the current government go....? I think Boris will be torn with pressures in both directions. Some of the rich donors and right wing 'think tanks' (ie lobby groups) will be pushing hard for the Britannia Unchained approach, but that will disproportionately hit less well off voters who are now in Boris' target 'base'.



I've heard Conservatives taking this position a lot recently and it really sums up how they are struggling for arguments to still justify that Brexit is going to benefit the UK. They've been forced to take basically the position of the Bennite left from the 1980s when the argument from the hard left in the Labour party was to withdraw from the EEC so we would be free to pursue a policy of state-subsidies to support strategic industries and protect manufacturing in this country. Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives took the complete opposite view, that ailing industries needed to be competed out of business! Jeremy Corbyn's position in all his years before his late conversion to Remain (which seemed to coincide with taking the leadership) was exactly that - withdraw from the EU, pursue a nationalistic industrial policy. Now some Tories including Dominic Cummings are talking about the same thing.

I’ll see if I can find it, thank you.

One thing that has been interesting about the Brexit debate has been re-alignments, contortions even, that a lot people and groups of people have undertaken to support their position. Quite rapidly in some cases - remember a few months ago when the ERG thought the DUP’s opinion was important for more than just reasons of parliamentary support? Labour banging on about impacts on business and free-trade, Tories making the case for potential State-ist intervention in key industries. In that respect it might have done us some good, and i’m not sure we will return to the old normal. And Cummings has been one catalyst for that, as a ‘disruptor’. He’s shown he can break the system... can he contribute to making a new one?

I suspect he despises Johnson, an arts graduate who is good at networking and blagging it, as you put. Cummings is quoted as saying ‘Look around parliament. Who are the people that get ahead? People who are glib, who enjoy public speaking, who make jokes’. Both a complaint, and a description what he needed, I suppose. It’s a very volatile and probably unstable combination, but there’s a symbiosis to it too. Johnson relied on Stuart Reid to run the Spectator when he was nominally editor, and knew he needed policy and management help when he became Mayor of London (fair play), so this is just the pattern repeating.