UKH

I very rarely comment on the interminable Brexit threads. But there's a common theme, remain or leave, every report on radio, every update I hear, every politician talking...it's always negative. Even the Brexiteers, I never hear a latest update that's now the one that's positive. 

In reply to aln:

Yes. People do seem to have a problem digging the positives out of it.

In reply to aln:

Here’s a couple of suggestions:

1. Brexit has very usefully shown that the British political system is (and has been for a while) largely disfunctional. Now it’s time to fix it.

2. Brexit has also graphically shown that the old boy network of Eton and Oxbridge has produced a governing class of incompetents who should never again be let near the centres of power in this country.

For this we should thank Brexit (but stop it now!).

In reply to aln:

It’s really very hard to find anything positive about it. Any arguments in favour of it have no evidence to back them up as no country has ever done anything like a Brexit before. They are faith positions.

What makes me despair is the divisive effect it has had, the polarisation of opinion, the feeling of emnity between neighbours.

Nothing could have been better designed to bring out the poison in our country. Maybe it needed to be brought out. There is some hope that bringing out the poison could lead to a process of self examination and deep political reform in our essentially still feudal society.

Alas, the really depressing thing is that I don’t think anything will change, the political system will continue to prop up the terrible, ancient, and deep seated inequalities we suffer from.

In reply to aln:

It has revealed into stark bright daylight about how a vast number of the British population are pissed off with the whole 'THING'. as in status quo establishment.

Your usual General elections come and go and people grumble about the latest government, but you can always vote again in a few years time for change.

Challenging the status quo is a good thing.  The people running scared are your comfy middle class professionals, they see all this as a serious threat to their bourgeois lifestyles.

In reply to Lusk:

Bull. It will hit the hard up worst and already is doing!

On this, we agree. A talentless band that somehow released 31 albums despite only being able to play 2 chords!

In reply to Lusk:

Not sure why you come to that bonkers conclusion. That group are the most likely to have a bit of savings and enough equity in their houses to see it through another recession. 

Others with nothing to fall back on and who are only getting by day to day are the ones seriously screwed by all this. 

The status quo definitely does need challenging  if for no other reason than to allow *proper* leaders to come to the fore and sort this mess out. 

In reply to Lusk:

Try telling my team of working class fitters who build machines for the export market and are concerned about the medium / long term impact of manufacturing and their jobs.They are not happy.

 

In reply to Phantom Disliker:

I thought it was three chords, same as I can manage

In reply to pasbury:

It's like a very civil Civil War. With only insults being thrown as opposed to knives and bullets

In reply to aln:

Weapons-grade winning:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2283555705036822&id=7065072...

Jk

In reply to Lusk:

I'm not comfortable and I can see how it damages me. If it damages me it damages the businesses and employees my meagre earnings help support. It's bad for almost all of us. Not all revolutions are good, even when they are desperately needed.

Jk

In reply to pasbury:

IMO the division and polarisation of opinion already existed but was conveniently ignored.  The referendum merely gave it a voice.

In reply to neilh

I am a fitter working for such a company in an already shrinking market, there is a serious amout of double thinking going on. Complaints about price rises, value of the pound etc... But at the same time a large portion of the fitters/machinist are sure Brexit will fix it, and the whole situation is Europe's fault and that we deserve a better deal etc... (or no-deal because that 'll show em)

All you hear from them as a defence when questioned is a quote or headline from the Sun. Our political system is broken but as long as the majority of the media prop up the government I doubt much will change.

In reply to GridNorth:

You are right about the division already existing, but Remainers like myself totally underestimated the scale of it. The few Brexiters I met before the R were UKIPers who I thought represented about 5% of the country. But the R has definitely inflamed the division.

In reply to aln:

Maybe you’re speaking to the wrong people? 

For a british citizen who wants to do hard manual labour working in the vegetable fields of east  anglia, brexit is probably really positive. 

If you speak to someone who wants the city of London to maintain its prime position as the major conduit between the private capital from big Asian economies and the tax havens of the british empire, then again, I think you’ll find they still think brexit is a wonderful idea. 

If you speak to US medical companies, again it’s a great idea. 

Brexit is not bad news for everyone. 

In reply to pasbury:

Really...  Tiny and poor Slovakia in 1993 and tiny and poor Montenegro in 2006 did something much more fundamental. They created a completely new country without any membership in any international body and any substantial foregin relationship in day 1 and nothing horrible happened to them and they do (relatively) well.

I can't imagine any reason why powerful and well-established Britain cold not make much easier step

In reply to pavelk:

Slovakia are now in the EU and Montenegro are trying to get in. The EU we are leaving isn't the split of a larger country: the equivalent in the UK would be if Scotland were to become independant (and if so the majority there support EU membership).

We are extremely poorly served by our politicians at the moment. Very few actually work for their constituents or do anything useful. And don't get me started on parliamentary recesses and pay and pensions...

 

In reply to Thunderbird7:

‘Very few’. How do you know this? I am sure you can find some individual cases to support this argument, but I doubt if you can justify anything quantitative.  You can find hard-working MPs (on all sides of the House) as well. 

In reply to Thunderbird7:

I think we are more poorly served by the system than by the individuals.  We need a more collaborative approach, and PR and a new building with a circular chamber are a good way to achieve that.

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Well mine does bugger all!!! Except get caught out shagging his secretary and then finding god and his family...

In reply to Lusk:

"Challenging the status quo is a good thing.  The people running scared are your comfy middle class professionals, they see all this as a serious threat to their bourgeois lifestyles."

Let me guess; you used your Brexit vote to stick it to the Tory party and Cameron?

The success of the the Brexit vote back in June 2016 can also be attributed to the fact that it gave those in this country who feel they have no voice when it comes to democracy, an opportunity to shout back.  For that, I don't blame them, although I don't agree with them.

 

In reply to Thunderbird7:

My sympathies... there are definitely some prats in the Commons. But I’d suggest an excess of cynicism is also unhealthy- that’s what the nihilists thrive on. 

In reply to pavelk:

Perhaps because Britain is powerful and well-established - with those well-established deals, treaties and relationships being a big part of why it is powerful, and with that being severely damaged by what it is doing now.

But of course it can make the step. It's just going to cost (and is already costing) us dearly.

In reply to aln:

We do have a problem with our democratic system in the uk. This was certainly part of the issue with brexit.

without PR there are many people who’s vote literally doesn’t count in any meaningful way if they happen to be in a “safe” seat

Democracy doesn’t just come from a ballot box every five years, it’s about your voice being heard as an individual or member of a group. We have dismantled to much, unions are part of democracy and we have rendered them toothless, access to the law courts has been slashed to the bone, Our access to informed information has become muddied sometimes quite deliberately. 

We have a political system that can’t make long term and difficult decisions because of 2 party politics.

we need to dismantle the House of Lords and replace it with an elected chamber 

a slow steady dismantling of some of the theatre and pomp in parliament and breaking the link between our democracy and the monarchy which is unhealthy as it is a shiny and well polished tip of a somewhat dirty iceberg the encomplases the entitlement of those like JRM, Hunt and BJ et al.

We probably thought we had got rid of the class system but judging by remarks on here and a look at the CV of most of the people involved in this Brexit fiasco we haven’t  and the People “taking back control” TM are the same people who have alway had control other than a brief period historicaly after 1945

In reply to skog:

I don't mind getting dislikes at all, but I have to laugh at the sheer mindlessness of disliking that post without saying why!

It's a lovely demonstration of unthinking tribalism, at least - the inability to accept that there could be any difficulties with, or disadvantages to, the chosen stance.

Was that you, pavelk, or someone else? Either way, thanks for the chuckle.

In reply to Phantom Disliker:

No bull. The educated, comfortable cosmopolitan middle class are the new establishment and they voted every last one of them to remain. The poor and disenfranchised, to quote Marx, have nothing to lose but their chains. Smug Middke Class lecturing (so many of them are lecturers) the lower classes that they will be worse off is so arrogant. Like they don’t know what it is like at the bottom of the heap. If we don’t leave and soon they will rightly conclude the system is a middle class racket from which they are excluded. As Michael Young argued in Rise if the Meritocracy...a book totally misunderstood and misrepresented by Tiny Blur. 

In reply to john yates:

Interesting variant. 

http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/

In reply to john yates:

I know quite a number of the educated, comfortable cosmopolitan middle classes who voted for Brexit (and some regular posters here provide typical examples of their views)  so I wonder by saying "every last one of them" you feel OK to make what looks like a completely idiotic statement. The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Spectator see themselves as the epitome of middle class educated,  comfortable cosmopolitan conservative news providers and have hardly been pro remain.

In reply to john yates:

Don't know about the rest of your post, but that's bollocks. I know many middle class people who voted leave. And many working class people who voted remain. I don't know many upper class (rich?) people, but my MP is one and he voted Leave.

Your as bad as everyone else who's trying to stereotype one or the other.

In reply to Offwidth:

I can't really fathom where Mr Yates is coming from, apart from apparently having a massive chip on his shoulder. The way he talks doesn't seem to gel with his profile etc. 

In reply to Offwidth:

The Times was remain, although from memory the Sunday Times was pro-Brexit. You are right about the Spectator and the Telegraph, the Telegraph* in particular has been utterly relentless in pro-Brexit misinformation. Whilst I often disagreed with it, it is a shame that the Telegraph has given up on serious journalism.

* The Spectator probably has been as well, but I’m less exposed to it.

In reply to pasbury:

Isn't the flip side to this that their is also no evidence of the negative predictions people are making if we leave?. No one knows what will happen because it is rather unprecedented. Right now there are Deffinatly some negative effects and some companies are drawing their horns in until they see what happens, I'm sure other companies are using it as an excuse to down size "it's not our fault its Brexit causing it"

One benefit I predict is companies having to their up wages and improve working conditions to encourage British people to take their jobs once the cheaper Eastern European Labour is no longer available.

One negative is pretty much all the products I sell come out of Europe so I'm Deffinatly expecting an increase in costs and delivery times. 

In reply to John Stainforth:

If you check out his profile, you'll quickly identify that there was an abrupt change, more or less overnight. Off the top of my head I can think of a couple of reasons for that, neither of which I like very much; but I'm sure most people reading his posts take them with a pinch of salt anyhow. He's not terribly subtle, after all, and his style is far too offensive to win him many friends here.

In reply to aln:

the positive is the emergence of pro-EU grassroots campaigns in the country.

In reply to John Stainforth:

I've long since learned to skip past his posts. Not worth the energy.

In reply to Dax H:

I’m not sure working conditions will improve, as someone who has worked in industry for a long time I can assure you in times of financial stress conditions and wages dont improve for the average worker.

possibly fruit picking and other low skilled jobs might see a slight improvement in wages to draw people in.

it was never the competition with cheap Europeans that drove wages down, it was having no unions to keep wages up and ensure wages remained realistic, no enforcement of minimum wages, disdain for the living wage from politicians and widespread corporate welfare in the form of working benifits claimants.

Also if memory serves me correctly I believe JRM and Co have promised us a bonfire of red tape, I’m sure they will ensure the lower classes will reap the benefit of the warmth generated by this bonfire.

In reply to Dax H:

definitely negative effects for those of us who are British but who live in the EU  but not the UK, and many of us where not allowed to vote

In reply to jethro kiernan:

Cheap wages are a victim of the loss of strong unions, I fully agree with that. There were very few union shops around when I started work in 86 but the few I had any dealings with took the piss. Regardless of that though if a factory owner can find employees willing to work for £7.83 per hour lots will, when said factory owner can't get willing labour for that price he has 3 choices. 1 shut up shop, 2 pay more to attract people, 3 invest heavily in mechanisation.

Some will take option 1 but a gap in the market is usually filled by someone else, most will take option 2, a few will go with 3 but those that could afford it probably already have. 

In reply to Phantom Disliker:

Woah! You've gone too far now. 

In reply to Pete Pozman:

indeed, I'd expect action from The Police.

In reply to John Stainforth:

Sorry to correct you but it's remoaner ! 

In reply to John Stainforth:

Massive chip on his shoulder ????

In reply to Dax H:

The vast majority of jobs lost within manufacturing are the victims of automation, not factory closures. You might be underestimating how prevalent it has become. And it’s one of the fallacies of Trump/Brexit that immigrants have much to do with the fall in job openings for certain skills.

In reply to Dax H:

7.83 does not get you time served mechanical or electrical or electronics people. It gets you unskilled labour which can usually be automated. It gets poor productivity which has killed and will continue to kill any uk manufacturing that is left which relies on unskilled labour.

 

In reply to Monkeysee:

I suppose you are entitled to call us anything you like - it's just name calling. Remainers never called themselves that IIRC.

I try to avoid use of the word Brexit, but it sometimes slips out as an expletive!

In reply to Thunderbird7:

I'm dying to know.....

In reply to jethro kiernan:

 

Very succinct and to the point. Very well said.

In reply to stevieb:

Their enthusiasm comes from a desire to make a killing at our expense. 

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Don't you think that Brexit might be demonstrating that our political system can do a pretty good job of representing us when we are hugely divided on a major issue?

You appear to be highlighting negatives rather than the positives that the OP asked for.

In reply to timjones:

Regarding the political system doing a pretty good job, I doubt if Brexit would have ever been a realistic possibility if it had been doing a good job previously. Is it doing a good job now? Well, we are stuck with an impasse that the system does not appear to show a way out of, so no, I don't agree. 

To my mind the things we've learnt about the country and its political system are a positive, maybe just not in the direct sense that the OP intended.  

In reply to john yates:

I'm confused. Farage, JRM, Boris or for that matter Dacre, Dyson etc aren't middle class ?

 

In reply to jethro kiernan:

There is plenty of enforcement of min wage,you only have to look at the lists of companies that have been taken to account on this issue. 

Productivity and a strong economy is the key to driving wages up, that is the building block. Everything flows from those 2 fundamentals. 

In reply to neilh:

As John McEnroe said........

 

In reply to Lusk:

I'm middle class and fairly comfortably well off. Brexit may make it harder for my foreign girlfriend to stay in the country. How dare you be so utterly flippant about people's lives?

In reply to GrahamD:

No, they're just a bunch of oppressed and misunderstood people fighting for justice and fair platform.

In reply to aln:

Interesting article on this subject today:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/21/england-rebel-spirit-...

 

In reply to Pete Pozman:

I heard it was 3, and tried a 4th, but didn't like it...

Wonder what that 4th one was 

In reply to Bob Kemp:

With a substantial and rising number of people becoming uneasy about the EU I find it hard to see how we could have staved off a referendum forever.

As for whether or not it's doing a good job now, we need to find  workable compromise or climbdown. We may be at an impasse right now  but I don't think we can judge without knowing the final outcome. I'm fairly confident that we are likely to do better than crashing out with no deal.

Only time will tell.

In reply to timjones:

I wonder how many of this "substantial and rising number of people" who are apparently "uneasy about the EU" can explain what they're actually uneasy about, and why their unease can't be assuaged perfectly well while still being in the EU? I suspect unfounded government and media EU-blaming has an awful lot to answer for.

 

In reply to john arran:

I believe the theory that a "substantial and rising number of people" were becoming disenchanted with the EU is pure fiction, touted by the extreme Right and their supporters, particularly in the right-wing press. The general impression I had over the last decade was that most people thought the EU was getting better (with e.g. cheaper, higher quality food.)

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Bashing the EU can be done for personal gain it seems,  very successfully.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46981440

 

Shooting is too good

In reply to timjones:

I think we can very clearly judge that the political system is not working and has not been working for a long time, which was the essence of my original point. Even if Parliament is able to fudge some kind of solution out of the current mess it has still become apparent in various ways that the present system of government, and our democracy as a whole, needs a radical overhaul. 

In reply to jethro kiernan:

Agreed. Today the BBC has been explaining EU/Brexit terms one by one so we can understand them. A bit late when people made their minds up a couple of years ago based on "project fear" and "everything will be wonderful, the EU will have to give us a good deal and there'll be lots of extra money to spend". 

In reply to oldie:

I wasn't even original, though effective - the SNP invented "Project Fear"

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

How about looking at the EU’s own research?

From the Eurobarometer survey “Before the (? 2008 Financial?) crisis, around half of Europeans had a positive image of the EU. Since then, there has been a substantial deterioration, and by the autumn of 2013 less than a third of Europeans shared this opinion.”

“Dealing with the continuing fallout of the crisis is of course a priority, but issues of communication and democratic participation are also key to restoring faith in the EU.”

http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Perhaps you could explain why you feel it isn't working?

In reply to john arran:

Some can explain and others can't do you have to explain your reasoning in order to be allowed to vote?

At the end of the day party politics thrives on unfounded blaming.

If I thought that a new system of government could sweep away the crappy party system I'd be amongst the first to support it.

In reply to Mark Edwards:

That's six years ago.

Personally/anecdotally I agree with Gordon, the number of people in the UK who were directly, identifiably, adversely affected by the EU was very small: steel workers might resent the lack of state aid, fishermen might resent being held to account for selling off their rights, environmentalists might consider the EU moved too slowly on environmental concerns... but on the whole, it was just something that worked, we took for granted that we were part of Europe, a load of concerns were shared between 28 partners, we could travel wherever and whenever we wanted and we were part of a bloc that could deal on equal terms with the US and China.

Until, for reasons which I will never understand, shysters with nothing better to do started whipping up discontent, spreading out and out lies about everything from straight bananas to £350 million a week, the entire population of Turkey coming to live here and Juncker being an unelected dictator. 

(Sigh) but we know all that.

In reply to timjones:

Life is too short... But briefly, the current Brexit parliamentary impasse is one illustration of failure. The result of the Brexit referendum can be seen as another: many people in this country feel disenfranchised in various ways and found the referendum was an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction. 

Otherwise, the first-past-the-post system of voting and the two party system have been under criticism for a long time. Some of the problems are discussed here:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/shaun-lawson/when-is-democracy-not...

 

In reply to timjones:

I won't speak for anyone else, but I will offer some thoughts on why our current systems are not working. The main problem is that Parliament is not properly representative. Our FPTP system fails woefully to reflect votes cast. It rewards and encourages tribal politics, which may not act in the public interest. At the 2015 election, UKIP polled 12.6% of the vote and won no seats. The SNP polled 4.7% of the vote and won 8.6% of the seats. The Liberal Democrats polled 7.9% of the vote and won 1.2% of the seats. 

Such inequalities shout unfairness, and with unfairness comes resentment. 

Further, the relative ease with which the two main parties gain a majority (current shambles notwithstanding) means they have no need to accommodate opinions from outside their own parties. 

In addition, the fact that none of the minority parties ever have a position of influence mean that they never have to accept the realities of compromise necessary for successful government. 

And as for the House of Lords ...

In reply to Harry Jarvis:

Another layer of disenfranchisement is the eclipsing of local government and democracy over the last forty years. This article explores this:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n24/tom-crewe/the-strange-death-of-municipal-engl...

 

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

And you think things have gotten better in the last 5 years?

I was adversely affected in the fallout from the ERM debacle and got really close to losing my house a few times. It wasn’t lies when taxes were imposed or put up because of EU directives or when obviously stupid taxes couldn’t be removed because it was against the rules. Yes, they have finally agreed that the tax on sanitary products can be removed (in 2022).

Perhaps the EU is/was just spectacularly bad at getting the good news stories out in the last 40 years but all I remember are the bad ones. If the majority think the EU is so great how come we have never fully embraced the European project?

I can see the Common Market was a good idea in its time, but the current direction towards a United States of Europe run by the Brussels bureaucrats is a step too far for me.

Yes I voted leave, but I also think that in the name of democracy there should be another referendum with multiple options on both sides. I also think we need something like a direct democracy (maybe even EU wide) instead of the antiquated, binary, representative democracy we have now. Yes, OK, the last referendum was a disaster whichever way you look at it. But I think there more practice we get at them the better we would become. It’s like going climbing once every 10 years isn’t going to make you a good climber. Do it every day and you will improve.

 

In reply to Mark Edwards:

I agree with much of that, but

1) the EU isn't a media outlet; it's the UK media that sets the agenda as to how the EU is portrayed. That's been a very significant part of the problem.

2) referenda are inappropriate except for a very limited range of decisions as they rely on extensive public knowledge of the subject involved, which for obvious reasons is rarely (if ever) the case. For a climbing analogy, imagine asking all UK climbers to vote on the grade of Hubble, the best crag in Cornwall or whether to put a fixed chain at Gogarth's Yellow Wall abseil. There's a very good reason why we elect representatives to make good decisions on our behalf, even if the FPTP and party whipping systems make a mockery of current electoral processes.

In reply to Mark Edwards:

It's perhaps worth remembering that the right wing press in this country has much to answer for. Papers like the Mail and Telegraph (and others) have spent decades telling lies about the EU and denigrating it at every opportunity. Boris Johnson (who has a long history of lying) spent a long time working in Brussels for The Times (I believe) and was responsible for all those silly stories about bananas and condoms. People who you see/hear being interviewed on TV/radio still bring up these stories. The drip feed of denigration and failure to print positive stories in my opinion cost remain the referendum.

 

In reply to Mark Edwards:

We are busy, we work. We pay people to do the work of governance, they're doing a poor job but we won't do better from a position of even deeper ignorance and less accountability.

Jk

In reply to Harry Jarvis:

Surely it's the party system that encourages tribal politics rather than  FPTP?

 

In reply to Rog Wilko:

They see

They sell to a market. People want/like these stupid stories.

In reply to timjones:

FPTP encourages the two party system. See Duverger's Law - 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

 

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Indeed. The main issue, beyond bipartisanship, is simply that with FPTP you often end up electing MPs that a majority of voters actually do no want.

Any system that puts in power people who have a majority AGAINST them, surely, cannot be qualified as remotely democratic in any sense.

AV fixed that, but despite being mathematically proven to be a better system, the British people voted against it.... facepalm.

In reply to Lusk:

I know only  3 people who voted for Brexit. All three are retired, one of them on a very good NHS pension, one a retired company owner and his wife. All live in nice expensive houses and travel a lot. Not exactly your revolutionaries.

In reply to Bob Kemp:

And a two-party system makes a partisan media system likely.

When there are 8 significant political parties out there, newspapers are forced to be somewhat nuanced in order not to loose too many readers

In reply to jkarran:

So it works for the Swiss but we’re too busy/dumb to copy that model?

 

In reply to Mark Edwards:

we come from a different background, more of historic serfdom under the Feudal system and then the capitalists of the IRev.  On the Continent citizen's (rather than subjects) rights and suffrage have been longer established.   Remember that all working men only got the vote in 1918

In reply to Rog Wilko:

It’s been a long time since I bought or looked at a newspaper and get my news mostly from the BBC and UKC.

So I don't think I’m swayed by the right wing press, whatever that is.

In reply to wercat:

OK, but we are in the 21st century. We need to be looking forward not backwards. I propose the current, antiquated systems aren’t working today, for the good of us all I think we need to find a better way.

Never before has it been so easy to communicate or publish to the whole planet. Do we continue to accept that the so called elite have the right to speak for us all?

I wish I had any sort of answer. But for the sake of my kids and grandchildren it would be nice to see some sort of progress away from what was acceptable in the 18th century.

 

In reply to HansStuttgart:

That’s a very good point - hadn’t thought of that. 

In reply to Mark Edwards:

It doesn't work very well for the Swiss, they narrowly averted a similar disaster to that which has befallen us.

Jk

In reply to aln:

I guess the minimum wage will shoot up 30% and  food banks will immediately disappear after Brexit,due to the new prosperity.More police will be employed,and we will be sending back to Europe all those  unnecessary doctors and nurses? Of course,rail fares will decline and all our privatised trains will no longer be overcrowded and overpriced?Oh………..

did I just express an opinion?!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-brexit-conservat...

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Do you think that having more parties would improve matters?

 

In reply to timjones:

There are more parties - they don’t get representation in keeping with their proportions of votes. 

In reply to Mark Edwards:

You have led a sheltered life, Mark.

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Would increasing their representaion be a good thing, how desirable is it to increase the influence of the likes of UKIP and the DUP?

It's not the number of parties represented that causes tribal politics.

In reply to Bob KempYou can add to that article that the democratically elected councillors on moderate expenses pay ( at the time I think) have been replaced by cabinets. Small in number and extremely highly paid to rubber stamp/implement central government cuts without a democratic debate or possibility of refusing central or regional governments demands/policies. As such the dismantling has been extremely rapid. 

In reply to timjones:

Arguably the DUP's voters are over represented in Westminster even in normal times, UKIP's were grossly under represented. These people should have a voice in parliament whether we like what they have to say or not, they should be seen, heard and open to debate, not pushed to the margins where they can stoke a justified sense of grievance. Our rotten electoral system lies at the root of much of our current difficulty, people feel voiceless and unrepresented because they are, not because of the EU's scale or design but because our own parliament is engineered to disenfranchise those who do not hold with the views of the big two parties.

Yes it is. A parliament where more than two parties were normally capable of forming a government would be forced to be less dogmatic, more open to the compromises necessary for coalition government, it would be forced to the common ground of evidence based policies.

jk

In reply to timjones:

It may not be desirable if you don't happen to like UKIP for example, but the essence of democracy is that you allow for the possibility that the people you don't like have influence and power. It's better for democracy that the people who vote for minority parties can see that their vote counts. Marginalised voters were a significant force behind the referendum vote...

I wouldn't personally be worried by the prospect of UKIP having a representation in Parliament that reflects their proportion of the vote - it would be offset by other parties like the Greens having more representation too. And there's every chance that they'd suffer the fate of the BNP at local level, where their incompetence led to them being voted out pretty quickly.