General British politics discussion thread

Largely agree about Blair but he really had little social care policy. I would have preferred Brown, grumpy and all as he is.

And blessed by the global economy which we all now know was a big pack of lies that people like Blair allowed to happen and nurtured.

Ya life was great under Blair and his neo liberal buddies but they are so .such to blame for what has come after and left a very hard mess to clean up.

So a lot more than Iraq needs laying at his door.

Im on the side that thinks Blair, Bertie and others ignored loads of warning signs and facilitated dangerous economic practices for short term electoral gain knowing they would be out the door before the sht hit the fan.

The UK was selling off its industry long before Blair.

They asset stripped many nations with their empire, and since Suez they've been asset stripping what was left.

Reform's surge is at heart anti union English nationalism. I wonder if the shilling will finally drop in the unionist heartlands in NI.

Blair & Brown were the architects of the closure of most defined benefit pension schemes in the UK

the global economy which we all now know was a big pack of lies

I'm not sure that the global economy was a big pack of lies in the 1990s. IIRC, two things happened that led to huge economic benefits for us in the west.

The first was the destruction of the USSR and subsequent sacking of their economy and resources - along with E Europe too, which led to a real improvement in living standards in the West (while living standards declined enormously in the former Soviet Bloc). All the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Romanians etc who live here now are testimony to those events.

The second thing was related to the first - the end of the cold war, which brought huge amounts of military-grade knowhow to the market, a computer in every household, the internet, the knowledge economy and so on. This added to the boom in the West.

After the 1990s things changed - the dotcom bust, and the financial meltdown from 2006 onwards. We have been dealing with an increasingly zombie economy ever since. Around the same time in Russia, Putin took control and stopped the extraction of wealth by the West; and China started to become the economic powerhouse it is today, eventually undercutting the West in virtually every sector of the economy.

Interesting to read this as basically you seem to saying that an independent Scotland can stop or massively reduce defence spending. Norway and Sweden and Denmark (Northern Euro States) spend on defence or are you seriously suggesting an independent Scotland follows the Irish model of despite being a wealthy country but being utterly embarrasing & irresponsible with our defence spending and having to go hat in hand to the RAF begging for a Typhoon to go up every time the Russians have a bit of craic. You should do a little bit of reading about the actual state of the Scottish economy before resorting to infantile comments questioning my education. I do think that the Scottish economy could be turned around and there are potential areas it could do very well in but the current SNP administration has shown nothing but disdain to the business and entrepreneurial communities in Scotland and prefers the handouts and freebies and grievance route. If over time you could build a more enterprising and entrepreneurial Scotland I think the independence argument would take care of itself. It's just not within the skill set or mindset of the SNP IMHO.

Defined contribution shifts the risk from employers to employees so has its downsides. I think a minimum defined benefit would ensure workers who have worked all their life are not left with barely anything if there is a market collapse.

Why only talk about this generation. Are you actually against minimum defined benefit for future generations? That would be to to the benefit of employers but not workers.

the SNP has already said it remains in NATO so would be required to maintain a relevant size military, so would still spend on defence. What it would lose though are very lucrative contracts to build ships.

Labour's support for Israel may well have been a factor in left wing supporters abandoning them and moving to the Greens (and other parties). Certainly, Starmer's deep unpopularity was probably the main factor, but I saw many former Labour voters citing the war crimes and the whole 'Labour Friends of Israel' thing as a reason they wouldn't vote for the party. Not the only reason obviously, but it kept coming up.