You want Corbyn to ride into #10 on a Unicorn, rip the wealth from achievers to pay for the workshy, If you had your way we'd be back to the 70's, f'd, skint and a global embarassment.

If my ambition were global embarrassment, then Boris Johnson would very much have made me a winner. I know you disliked Corbyn, but try saying something positive about Johnson, as opposed to pointing out somebody else’s flaws... it’s got to be tough, no? If you had to pick one of the traditional seven virtues (Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness and Humility), which would it be? I know we’re talking about a Prime Minister not a potential saint, but (squinting a bit in some cases) i’d give Thatcher diligence, Major humility, Cameron temperance, and May patience. F’it, use an eighth of your own choosing, if you prefer.

I became increasingly ambivalent Corbyn, I admit, to the point where he only started to look good compared with a Conservative party that had defeated UKIP by becoming UKIP.

I think wealth is too concentrated to be healthy for our society, including for the very wealthy (golden cage etc.). A lot of wealth isn’t held by achievers, it is merely inherited. Rent-seeking economic activity and financial churn, come at the expense of innovation and optimal allocation of capital. Our version of capitalism has become distorted, and the need for reform is pretty widely accepted even by capitalists. I’d look at a limited shift from income taxes to wealth taxes - which is something they do in the US, so hardly puts me on the hard left.

Labour’s campaign did have the feel of trying to win over a demographic that no longer exists, based on a nostalgia for the circumstances that led to it’s birth. I might knock the Tories for stealing their rival’s clothes, but Farage-era UKIP attracted voters and they’ve been able to absorb that and ride it to an 80+ seat majority. The other parties have to change now to oust them - probably in some ways I won’t like.

Out of interest, how do you rate the prospect of this Conservative Government vs the most recent previous iterations? Cameron/Osborne and May/Hammond.

Happy New Year.

Call it jealousy or envy, you do not like success, deal with it.

Christ almighty.

Are you a real person or just one of those bots who repeats a pre-determined line when there's a trigger word in the previous post?

Tell us all about you, IR80. What successes have you achieved? How successful are you? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What keeps you going when things are getting you down? We'd all love to know...

Are we talking about success purely in terms of wealth accumulation in this context?

The logistics of living with extreme wealth don’t appeal to be honest. Better than being destitute, of course. Once you have enough money, then life is more what you do and what you are than what you have, imo.

The UK’s richest man grew up in Hull. I did not know that. Brexit supporting, off to live in Monaco, Sir James Ratcliffe. Each to their own, but I just can’t imagine being that rich and still basing my life decisions on money. People have different priorities, but I don’t envy him his.

IR80 I note you do not deny that Johnson lied and are happy for him to continue to do so. I look forward to the good times he promises for all and the end to food banks.

Boris won, get over it.
Food banks are just for scroungers and the worthless workshy.

And there we have the voice of the right.

Unmarried mothers are the worst.
Prefer fags and booze to feeding their kids then expect a food bank to bail them out.

Brilliant, how badly informed can someone actually be

Quote: IR80 "what always frustrates me is the total lack of villification of absent parents (male or female), these are not party political issues, they are societal, '" here's an example of this kind of moral rectitude so we can have some vilification: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics ... fer-Acruri

Quote: IR80 "what always frustrates me is the total lack of villification of absent parents (male or female), these are not party political issues, they are societal, '" here's an example of this kind of moral rectitude so we can have some vilification: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics ... fer-Acruri

Interesting comments - I agree with some but not others

Boris is at least a leader with conviction and will not stand for those - no matter how high up they are - who will not support the agreed position - I bet Hammond didn't think he wouldn't be in the government let alone not an MP 12 months ago, same goes for Gaulke and Grieve. Part of Corbyn's problem was he couldn't lead his party round a position on Brexit and it cost. I think he does care and I do think the less well off will do well under him. Corbyn saw government as a vanity project to keep the likes of Jon Lansman on board. Can a large state owned economy truly prosper - if it doesn't it doesn't matter at least we know. As for his personal flaws we all have them - even you - does it stop him doing a good job not at all. Compared to Clinton or Trump he is a saint.

One thing is certain he will get a better deal out of the EU than Corbyn ever could - he is committed to leaving something neither May nor Labour were ever going to achieve. He has shown some resilience - those early days must have been tough - losing every vote. He out manoevered Corbyn both before and during the election - time will tell how good he is but the increase in the living wage is a very good start.

On wealth - how do you stop great business people being great business people - just by being better they accumulate huge wealth. It isn't money that drives them its progress, its setting new challenges, its doing deals you will never stop the cutting edge accumulating huge wealth whether its Bezos, Rockafeller, Arnault, Gates, Getty its has happened since the day dot. I don't agree with you inherited wealth - look at the 100 richest people for 20 years ago and see how many are still in the 100 - not many. The really rich have made their fortunes in recent times.

I agree a better spread of wealth would be great but that shouldn't be achieved by dragging the top down it needs to be by dragging the bottom up.

Difficult to compare different regimes - Boris has only been in charge a few months and he has inherited the financial issues that Cameron/Osborne inherited. May was a disaster in every role she has ever had so Boris has to be an improvement on that - Hammond was mean for the sake of being mean and he is best gone - good riddance.

Boris isn't some genius negotiator. The only reason he got a deal with the EU is because he went back to them and conceded one of Theresa May's red lines on putting a border down the Irish Sea. That was the EU's original idea but May had said no British PM could find it acceptable to put a customs/regulator border inside it's own sovereign territory, a point which Boris also pledged to the DUP conference. That dealt with the backstop issue in the way the EU wanted it to be dealt with, effectively carving off NI in to the EU's regulatory control.

Now over time this is going to be a real problem, if Boris' government wants the UK to diverge regulations from the EU, because one part of the UK is going to have to follow EU regulations (what Boris would call 'vassalage') and the rest of the UK follow a different set which means increasingly complex border checks on trade between mainland GB and NI, the more regulations diverge.

If Theresa May had brought back that deal, a lot of Boris' cheerleaders in Cabinet and the media would have been spitting feathers about the outrage of dividing the UK like that, Boris just did it because he knows his allies will just parrot his lines to take about it being a 'great deal for NI' (vassalage, that is...)

Corbyn would have found it similarly easy to 'get a deal' from the EU because he would have also conceded things to them (that he agrees with): alignment on social, environmental, consumer rights, free movement of people and so on. He would have moaned about state aid, but given his super tight time scale there wouldn't have been time for a two-way negotiation and most likely when his civil servants explained to him that the EU state aid rules actually constrain governments from giving tax breaks to vested interests he would have probably conceded. He would have put a deal to a referendum which would be similar to a Norway style arrangement.

As for the deal Johnson will get....here's my prediction for 2020. If Boris wants an extension he actually has to ask for it by July, which he won't, so the EU will have the 31 December baked in. Because Boris wants a 'bespoke' deal which allows the UK a lot of room for divergence that makes the detail more complex - you have to negotiate bespoke agreements on every issue, and those are the 6-7 year style negotiated trade deals not the 'off the shelf' ones. There won't be time to go in to that. So Boris will have to decide between whether he really wants to go 'no deal' (for which his government will have to accept the consequences, including what it means for the north and midlands where all his new MPs with small majorities are), or accept a very limited deal which the EU and all 27 member states are willing to sign up for.

Because most of the big EU states are mainly goods/manufacturing-oriented, and the UK is services-oriented, the kind of deal the EU will offer will reflect that. They will want to remove tariffs but not regulatory checks and controls (ie non tariff barriers, Rules of Origin checks), safe in the knowledge that the UK is likely to be more liberal in terms of what standards it accepts, so the barriers for EU exporters going in to the UK will be minimal whereas they will be much tougher for UK exporters proving that their goods meet EU standards.

They will also agree limited agreements on transport/aviation to allow planes to fly, but ones which don't extend the benefits of the Single Aviation Act to the UK, which will cause problems for airlines ownership and incentivise them to relocate to the EU.

Boris will accept this kind of deal, because he will be able to sell 'tariff-free' as 'free-trade'. There may be some posturing over the year but as the EU runs the clock down to December he will be forced to take what he can. The media won't scrutinise it much so he can sell it internally and the EU will have what they want.