“It is Johnson who sets the tone.” @campbellclaret spot on with this.
The attitudes of those at the top of any organisation always filter down through the management layers and if allowed to persist will also affect how people at the bottom act. 1/
The danger is the moral vacuum spreads and infects people. If the prime minister tells lies to get himself out of trouble, why should someone junior bother to tell the truth. If the cabinet are doing a shitty job why should their advisers be held to account. 2/
If the cabinet engages in wholesale mistruths to defend the boss who just swans around doing not a lot, why should the local backbench MP bother to spend a second helping a constituent or local group? He/she isn’t going to get into trouble! 3/
This is why we really need @UKLabour and all opposition parties to get on British TV screens at every opportunity night and day, telling it like it is. Revealing truth, highlighting lies. Shining a light on chaos and importantly explaining with passion what SHOULD be done! 4/
The trouble with moral vacuums is they grow and more layers of society become in danger of slipping in. Don’t @ me about Parliamentary majority. I am not stupid. The battleground for political integrity has to be taken out directly to people and beamed in on their TV. /end
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What we have seen under Tory government - in no particular order and not comprehensive
- thread
1. Interfering with report on police corruption connected to a murder 2. Windrush scandal 3. Wholesale damage to British import/export industries because of brexit
4. Wholesale removal of people’s rights through Brexit 5. Mistakes leading to higher covid death toll than necessary 6. Austerity impacting millions of lives 7. Appalling Brexit outcomes for farming, fishing, finance.
8. Appalling Brexit outcome for Northern Ireland 9. Disrespect of Scotland so making the breaking of the Union more likely 10. Questions over where the money came from for PMs wallpaper 11. Questions over where the money came from for a luxury holiday for PM
Lots of people saying Labour are right to stay silent on Brexit, that people need to feel the pain or something. That’s easier said than done for those who have spent years proudly building their independent businesses, creating jobs, creating tax revenue, collecting vat, 1/
putting homes up as collateral to raise the money to invest in the future for themselves, their staff, their families and their communities, working all the hours god sends for years, doing without to get their companies through bad patches. 2/
If you haven’t got a job on the line, a business on the line, a life’s work on the line, it’s very easy to sit there shouting at those who just don’t understand why the opposition parties are letting them simply go down without even an acknowledgement that is happening. 3/
I totally agree with this very well expressed piece. At the core of brexit was always that willingness amongst too many supposedly mature people to blame the problems they saw with things like housing on the Eastern Europeans in particular that came to the UK. 1/
In fact the statistics never support this age old narrative that getting rid of the foreigner will make things better. An influx of young ambitious immigrants can even help to revive local economies which are struggling due to the demographics of an ageing population. 2/
I am always a little dubious about the argument that it’s down to the education system. The UK is not a third world country, the population is by and large educated to a reasonably high minimum standard. /3
On the issue of how quickly a rejoin campaign takes a hold, well I think it depends on a lot of things - no idea why people are so absolutely positive it’s the wrong thing to do straight away!
Let’s see how quickly people get fed up with cabbage for dinner again! Thread 1/
It didn’t take more than a few months to turn a small group of people from not caring a toss about Eu membership to turning the EU into the devil incarnate in their heads. Enough people to get leave over the line I mean. 2/
Yes even with all the cheating and the lying and the years of fake headlines about Germans and pool towels and refugees and gravy trains they still only got a small majority back in 2016. 3/
Trump has been allowed to get where he got to because people who knew better, for political reasons, went along with him. To oppose self serving lies and manipulation requires hard plain truths from politicians. If that doesn’t come from an opposition where does it come from?
I am extremely troubled. There are already severe problems in cross border trade apparent. We have lots of worms yet to wiggle out of the can. Who is going to call all this out as it occurs? There is no real fix to any of it outside the sm/cu without reducing rights.
Capital will be pushed into fewer hands too as small businesses are pushed out already struggling with covid.
I have no issue facing the fact that we have been unable to stop Brexit from happening but no amount of desperate self delusion spouted by MPs will hide the fact that Britain has damaged its own prospects by leaving the biggest trading bloc in the world!
There is nothing in the short or medium term that can make up for the financial hole that this government have led the UK into. The EU is not going to fall apart it will only get stronger. To abandon the privileged position of being a powerful voice inside it was stupid!
The only thing we can do is damage limitation at least in the short/medium term. Everything is now harder for virtually every business sector you can think of. But more than that I believe the UK will get lonely in its isolation.