Portillo's plea for break-up of UK

Who would of thought? a member of the Conservative & Unionst party would call for a break up of the United Kingdom? I have a theory about this. Only one group benefits from the break up. The EU. With the UK going back to its smaller nations, we will seek to build stronger ties with Europe and for our economies, we would have to join the Euro to help give us support.

Its dangerous tatics to defeat Labour. Smashing the Scottish vote by removing them from Westminster is going to prove a dangerous move.


[edit on 8-7-2006 by infinite]

i had heard about this, i believe that scotland would do quite well on its own, maybe we wouldnt be taxed so high lol.

Originally posted by infinite

Mr Portillo's views come amid a growing backlash against the Union.
www.dailymail.co.uk...


Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

- Yeah, so says the Daily Mail........ as part of its' constant campaign to promote this supposed "backlash" and to do all they can against anything it imagines is helping Labour to keep their beloved tory party out of power.

Who would of thought? a member of the Conservative & Unionst party would call for a break up of the United Kingdom?

- What Polly Portillo jumping on a very stupid right-wing band-wagon?

Perish the thought!

(You didn't seriously think he'd come over all reasonable just cos he'd done a few Beeb political shows and that stint on TV as a single-parent for a week now did you?!)

Only one group benefits from the break up. The EU.

- The trouble is infinite that the real loopy little-Englander tories imagine England alone will be so much better off.
Better off without the rest of the UK and better off without the EU.

Mind you it doesn't just stop there, it's just an extension of the same old one dimensional infantile guff where the better off imagine it'd be a much better world if they didn't have to take account of anyone or anything else and could do as they bl**dy well liked and forget about any support for the less fortunate/well off in particular.
Same old same old really.

Of course it's blinkered, idiotic and self-harming b*ll*cks but there's no talking to the real nutter sect who are convinced of this kind of nonsense.

With the UK going back to its smaller nations, we will seek to build stronger ties with Europe and for our economies, we would have to join the Euro to help give us support.

- Every one of the other ex-members of the UK (with the possible exception of Northern Ireland.....but only cos they're possibly too intransigent - even in such a dire situation - to get anything workable up and running together to do anything constructive) would be beating a hasty door to the EU to ensure their membership continued without a hitch, count on it.

Its dangerous tatics to defeat Labour.

- Naaa matey, it's not. It's howling at the moon.
Once thought about seriously (like for all of the 10 seconds it'd take) it won't be taken seriously by even a majority of tories never mind the rest of the country.

But as you say, who'd a thunk it?
Some fringe tories genuinely reduced to feeding this kind of dangerous insanity in an attempt to defeat Labour.
What was it they used to pretend they were all about when it came to fundamentals?
Putting the nation's interest before the narrow interests of their own party!? Ha!

Smashing the Scottish vote by removing them from Westminster is going to prove a dangerous move.

- Especially as the premise is so superficial, childishly selfish and grossly flawed.

Right now without the Scottish or Welsh (or NI) politicians Labour still has a handy HOC majority (cos the Scots, Welsh and NI MP's aren't all Labour anyway).
This might be a ploy for next time or the time after that.

Anyhoo England and Scotland did not 'link' on a whim, the benefits and costs do not come down to a simple budgetary equation every march and disassociating several national economies meshed together over many centuries is not something to be done cost-free (something the Scots Nats could do with considering at some length too).

It's IMO crassly stupid blinkered populism and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that Portillo is the one now promoting it.
The man may not be as charmless as once was but, just as everyone though about 10 - 12yrs ago, he remains desperately immature politically and if he had a remote chance of getting anywhere with this nonsense he would be a dangerous menace - is he the tory party's version of Tony Benn.....without the experience, sense or warmth?

Also consider this, if a British born Labour Muslim MP had stood up and called for the break-up of the UK firstly you'd have seen him utterly and repeatedly crucified by some people - especially people like the Mail - for not understanding 'our traditions', or 'our ways' at all and for 'attacking the fundamentals of HM's realm' or being 'anti-British' and certainly 'suspect' or 'not-quite-really-British'.
Secondly the Labour party would then be forever getting pilloried for being 'full' of 'suspect anti-British loony lefties' intent on the catastrophic destruction and ruin of Her Majesties' UK!

But when it's a tory..............(*sound of crickets*)



[edit on 8-7-2006 by sminkeypinkey]

Originally posted by ronishia
i had heard about this, i believe that scotland would do quite well on its own, maybe we wouldnt be taxed so high lol.

So you seem to be unaware that in Scotland you pay a penny on the pound more in tax than we do in England.

And who is responsible for this?

The Scottish Parliament.

So in what way exactly do you think that an independant Scotland would lower taxes?

Give the Scottish Parliament total control over your taxation, and those insane socialists will send your taxes one way, ever spiralling upwards.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
The trouble is infinite that the real loopy little-Englander tories imagine England alone will be so much better off.
Better off without the rest of the UK and better off without the EU.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every one of the other ex-members of the UK (with the possible exception of Northern Ireland.....but only cos they're possibly too intransigent - even in such a dire situation - to get anything workable up and running together to do anything constructive) would be beating a hasty door to the EU to ensure their membership continued without a hitch, count on it.

Well, something ive noticed about the England independence movement. Its ran by extreme right wing loonies, who are probably ex members of the BNP. CEP (Campaign for English Parliament) is the only group that doesn't promote a right wing agenda and the typical "kick all the non-english".

No mainstream voter is suddenly going to back a party that will turn England into a North Korea like state.

Its funny to notice, Cameron isn't saying anything on this while other members are running around chasing Scots while waving St George

Originally posted by infinite
Cameron isn't saying anything on this while other members are running around chasing Scots while waving St George

- Exactly.

....and on the rare occasions when he does pipe up what pearls does Cameron have for us?

"Youths/'hoodies' aren't all bad!"

Wow, wise words or what (but according to almost all the TV news coverage today a significant 'repostioning' by the tory party; jayzuss wept )

What next?
Stop press, 'Cameron declares rain wet!'?

It would be funny if it wasn't for real.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
What next?
Stop press, 'Cameron declares rain wet!'?

It would be funny if it wasn't for real.

LMFAO

to behonest, im starting to agree with you that he my not even make the general election. Yeah, he is ahead in the polls and the public would like him as Prime minister than Brown/Blair, but would the Conservative Party want to keep a leader who is (well) seeming more center Left, than right wing to me

My husband is a devoted reader of the Daily Mail. Which is surprising, seeing how hes a staunch Labour supporter and has no use for the Tories. I have read the paper a few times and to be honest, it really didn't impress me, as it seemed to me the majority of the Daily Mail is either about slaming Labour for things they would praise the Tories for doing, or they are playing Chicken little and slapping a heavy coat of sensationalism into every minor incident, as if it some growing menace that will destroy civilization if it is not stopped. And of course, its always Labour's fault.

Somehow, I really cannot see the Union breaking up. Is anyone other than the Mail covering this?

I really don't understand what's going on in the minds of Europeans. I mean like this wanting to split the U.K. up (most of Ireland already has) yet wanting to join together in this EU thing which sounds like a United States of Europe only less democratic and less transparent in its governing. Really, what is happening over there? Can Americans ever really understand what's going through your minds?

Originally posted by djohnsto77
I mean like this wanting to split the U.K. up yet wanting to join together in this EU thing which sounds like a United States of Europe only less democratic and less transparent in its governing.

- It's no secret that many of the Scots, Welsh and Irish see no great threat in the EU (and the truth is an outright anti-EU/Europeanism is not a popular feeling shared by a majority of the English either......as demonstrated by the abject failure of the tory party at the height of their anti-EU-ism under Hague in the 2001 and later Howard in the 2005 general elections).

Ironically it is some within the old long-term (they held power for the vast bulk of the pre & post WW2 period) ex-ruling governing party in England that flirts with this idea of breaking up the UK now.

There is also a more widly held view within the tory party that imagines that an appeal to the narrow English nationalist chauvinism will help in the coming electoral fight(s) against the Labour party as well as the LibDems.
This is largely because the Labour party & the LibDems have a visible level of Scottish support and representation as well as senior Scottish figures in their 'cabinet' and 'shadow cabinets' whist the tories have been wiped out in Scotland & Wales and have no visible Scot or Welsh people anymore (they used to and back then obviously saw no reason to sneer at their nationality or indulge stirring deeply ill-advised nationalism in pursuit of narrow party self-interest).

Anyhoo, they obviously see they have little left to lose by taking this 'them and us' stance on this and as Gordon Brown (the likely next PM here) is a Scottish accented Scot - as opposed to the English accented Scot that Tony Blair actually is - they think it might gain them some votes.

As for the EU?
Well it is elements within that same, mainly English, party that has such a deep dislike of the EU......partly, I suspect, because their greatest nightmare is of an EU 'centre' (over which they do not hold absolute control) which treats them with the same callous and at times cruel indifference and contempt as they treated the powerless regions and other 'home nations' of the UK, not so long ago when they were last in power.

I suppose the irony and inconsistency of supporting an economic and political union 'at home' and having such a deep loathing for the other one 'abroad' became too much for them!

I would just point out though that if Americans keep on trying to view the EU as some kind of approximation of the USA & it's constituent states you'll never really 'get' it.
The EU is nothing like that, it really is a poor analogy.

We are all already independent sovereign nation states which is the first and foremost massive difference, quite unlike the US states.

The whole point and reason why the EU has it's so-called 'democratic deficit' is precisely because those independent sovereign nation states do not want the EU to gain additional powers through a 'supra-national' democratic 'legitimacy' of its' own over them and their own.

The last thing anyone (sane) wants is a disasterous situation of competing and conflicting popular mandates (although those who fundamentally are simply the 'enemies' of the whole idea of the EU & it's collective cooperative intent will quite happily flit from point to point to try and stir up and play those kind of 'problems' off against one another).

The EU is actually run by and exists to implement the plans & policies agreed by those national governments (in the shape of Prime Ministers/Presidents/Chancellors or the various government Ministers) and their nominees (those people nominated and appointed to things like the EU Commission); that is the prime consideration in it's nut & bolt mechanics so as to keep things workable and sustainable: however imprefect it may be it works like that.

The directly elected EU Parliament is a much lesser 'being' in the scheme of things; they have powers to review and revise but their scope to propose law is limited.

This situation is actually all about ensuring the supremacy of the nation states.

I would agree though that it does leave things open to political opportunists who would promote any scare story they can no matter how contradictory and 'play both ends against the middle' as they try and claim the EU is dictatorial, undemocratic, controlling, a superstate etc etc blah blah blah.

(most of Ireland already has)

- I disagree.

Ireland was divided, politically, approx 80yrs ago.

Since then there have been formal political agreements, umteen 'summit meetings' and growing links and greater understanding specifically in relation to NI between the British & the Republic of Ireland governments (the 'Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985 for instance) and since the 'Good Friday/Belfast Agreement' of 1998 further formal political, economic and cultural links have been established and are growing.

Northern Ireland has it's problems with the rest of Ireland, I agree, but to characterise it all as further or growing division is the opposite of what is really going on there, however patchy or even small some of that progress might be.

Really, what is happening over there? Can Americans ever really understand what's going through your minds?

- I don't think it's so hard.

Elements within one British, or should I say mainly English, political party are clutching at any straw they can to gain 'traction' and make their political come-back and the rest is merely a matter of getting a more accurate perspective on what the EU is all about and how it really is/works.

================================================================

Originally posted by infinite
to behonest, im starting to agree with you that he my not even make the general election.

- We shall see, but, I think disquiet in the ranks has plenty of time to grow and grow.

(the flip side of this will be tories and their pals in the tory press attempting to counter this with ever more stories about what a 'problem' it is for everybody, apparantly, that Tony Blair hasn't quit yet or said when he'll quit :O )

Yeah, he is ahead in the polls and the public would like him as Prime minister than Brown/Blair

- Well in the interests of fairness and accuracy it has to be said that Brown heads Cameron on several issues.

......and beware a mere couple of polls showing the tory party ahead by a few points several years out from an election.

would the Conservative Party want to keep a leader who is (well) seeming more center Left, than right wing to me

- Given that the 'grass roots' tory party is so right-wing I expect major problems ahead.

Who knows maybe the element of sanity will exert some control and realism but I keep hearing loads of Cameron's empty cuddly soft soap and yet on issues like Portillo & the fundamentals of the UK we get nothing, absolute silence.

That kind of massive inconsistency IMO is going to be very damaging to him/them in the long run amongst the wider people/electorate.
It might not be the same as Hague's being haunted by the an unwitting level of visual pantomime but avoiding the tricky issues and lacking substance may well be Cameron's flaw.

I had even wondered if it might have been a calculated & nice little 'soft-ball' for him to theatrically jump all over and whack right out of the park so as be seen to demonstrate his 'wider appeal'.
You know, exercising some sort of backbone & authority (esp someone expendable like Portillo who is very much a minor bit-player in tory ranks these days and who was apparantly claiming to be a bit of a reformer) and that narrow English-centric chauvinist element he is supposed to be so against.

But no there is absolutely no sign of that and as I said what we do hear are ridiculous empty statements with nothing of point or value to anyone.

I mean ffs, his latest 'young people, they're not all bad' has been headline comment here for 2 days (a fact that's about as sad & pathetic as his comments)!

That sort of thing really doesn't say 'PM-in-waiting' to me and I suspect I'm not alone in that.


[edit on 10-7-2006 by sminkeypinkey]

The key is, and always have been, is the UKIP vote.

During European elections, "grass root" blue-blue Tories decided to exodus to UKIP and in the local elections, the traditional Tory right went to the BNP.

In the media, everyone is talking about the Labour Left, but the Conservative right is much more powerful then the Labour Left. Left wing, liberal Cameron may be appealing to the popualist vote and going with the trends, but its his own voters are the ones who should be concerned about.

I actually read the Daily Mail (well I like the cartoons)

But the acticle that this thread is based around was teeny tiny in the paper, one of those footnote stories that fills up spaces in the corners of pages.
I know I'm not throwing my hat into the ring with this post but I just thought you all might like to know how the article was presented in the paper itself.

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest PJ (you'll note my obvious scepticism about this imagined "growing backlash" they claim right at the start of this).

My bet is they're positively schizophrenic about this one and aren't really sure how to go with it at all!

(One the one hand appealing to the English nationalist element on the other possibly helping wreck the hard-won relative unity of HM's realm.......

.......hmmmm, there must have been some hysterically funny editorial meetings to have witnessed & been in on! )

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
(you'll note my obvious scepticism about this imagined "growing backlash" they claim right at the start of this).

Honestly, I don't think the relations between the union countries are any worse than they were ten years ago, if anything their stronger.
I think the issue has simply come around in the political scene (as all issue tend to) concerning Scottish MP's voting on English matters, of which I oppose.



[edit on 11-7-2006 by Prometheus James]

Originally posted by Prometheus James
Honestly, I don't think the relations between the union countries are any worse than they were ten years ago, if anything their stronger.

- I fully agree.

The one difference if there is any at all is that some English people think that with devolution they are missing out on something.

(they could have their own English Assembly/Parliament but they're not turning Westminster, the UK Parliament, into a semi-English Parliament.....well, not if they are serious about maintaining the UK's existance they're not.)

I think the issue has simply come around in the political scene (as all issue tend to) concerning Scottish MP's voting on English matters, of which I oppose.

- I can understand what some see as the principle in this and that some oppose the current situation but I think at the end of the day a mountain is being made of it by that minority who would attempt to merely use the issue to create division.

It wasn't such a massive concern to many (of those self-same English MPs or media) people when the Scots or Welsh (or NI) people had huge majorities of mainly English MP's voting & deciding on what was going to happen, legal and permissable in their countries.

If the English really don't like the current idea then they should get their own devolved institutions up and running but Westminster is the UK Parliament and not an English one.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
If the English really don't like the current idea then they should get their own devolved institutions up and running but Westminster is the UK Parliament and not an English one.

England was offered assemblys, but it was rejected in a public vote in the North of England. I believe, Lord falconer (think thats his name) said that an English Parliament would result in a break up of the Union. Thats why it seems to be a "no no"...but its getting to the point now, where one is either created or the other parliaments (Welsh and Scottish) are removed.

Originally posted by infinite
England was offered assemblys, but it was rejected in a public vote in the North of England.

- That is very true (although the several regional Assemblies aren't quite the same thing as an English Parliament/Assembly.......which the English general public don't seem to want either).

That's why the attempt (by a few) at turning Westminster into a neo-English Parliament is such a complete fraud.

I believe, Lord falconer (think thats his name) said that an English Parliament would result in a break up of the Union. Thats why it seems to be a "no no"

- Lord Falconer can express his own personal views as much as he likes but they are not agreed Labour party policy nor a election manifesto commitment, they are merely the personal opinions of a senior figure within the Labour party/government.
Good luck to him in his campaign and all, but, those comments aren't policy.

...but its getting to the point now, where one is either created or the other parliaments (Welsh and Scottish) are removed.

- How can one just be created or forced on the English people if the English don't want one?

The plain fact is that beyond certain 'newspapers' and the small band of us that are so politically interested there is little or no huge interest in this, no widespread 'backlash', 'groundswell', 'movement' or any of the rest of the supposed 'mood' for this amongst the general English public......

....... and no amount of the years of campaigning by tories or their pals in the media has made the slightest difference about this.

The fact of this is most obvious and visible in the complete lack of any English public pressure amongst the general public for either the English Parliament (probably at the historic site of Winchester); even the regional Assemblies were being pushed mostly by business, not the general public there.

BTW the chances of Scotland or Wales giving up their devolved powers are absolutely zero......

......and given Englands' overall dominance in terms of where the power lies within the UK I don't agree that this slight 'imbalance' is such a great big deal.
(as has been said many times before when the 'boot was on the other foot' no-one in England was that bothered then either)



[edit on 12-7-2006 by sminkeypinkey]

Former Tory minister Michael Portillo called last night for Britain to be broken up because England and Scotland would be better off without each other.

Ha ha ha, what wrong he does not have anything else to do, This guy is just disgrunted trying to grab headlines, he is done with.

Everyone knows Portillo is trying to get back into politics after his humiliating defeat way back.

His anti scottish feelins will only lead to more confontation between scottish MP's and English MP's (bad if you ask me).

Will only increase the resentment between the english and the scottish towards each other.

So you realy think the whole of scotland wants the UK to break up??

Answer: NO

Look at the ways all four countries in the UK benefit from each other. Look what happenned in the former Yugoslavia, history should tell you what happens when countries split up.

I thought the Daily Mail was supposed to represent "British" values!? Is it now okay to be proud from the country that you come from!? Oh, wait...it's coming from Portillio, a jaded political hack who's on the fringes of his own party and will hopefully (God willing)go the way of Richard Kilroy-Silk and take up residence in his respective garden shed. Oh, how we laughed like drains when UKIP and Veritas got humiliated in the elections. *Well I did!*
Damn, what is with the madmen in politics? Anything for a headline eh? Well, I guess we couldn't expect more from a paper that is so steeped in tradition, and Britain's glorious past, that they in turn conveniently forget their own. This is the paper that once supported Oswald Mosely, Benito Mussolini, and Adolph Hitler and Fascism in general. Still at least they don't anymore.
At least they didn't go down the way of Fascism, and started picking on minorities, women, homosexuals, left-wingers, communists...

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
. . .if Americans keep on trying to view the EU as some kind of approximation of the USA & it's constituent states you'll never really 'get' it.The EU is nothing like that, it really is a poor analogy.

We are all already independent sovereign nation states which is the first and foremost massive difference, quite unlike the US states.

The whole point and reason why the EU has it's so-called 'democratic deficit' is precisely because those independent sovereign nation states do not want the EU to gain additional powers through a 'supra-national' democratic 'legitimacy' of its' own over them and their own.

This situation is actually all about ensuring the supremacy of the nation states.

An American footnote here.

Originally, before the present Constitution was drafted (1789, I think) there were a few years under a document usually referred to as the "articles of confederation."

That earlier document was designed to preserve the thirteen states as independent nations. After a few years, it was found to be unsatisfactory, because politicians at the state level would hide behind their state-citizenship any time the confederation would have required anything of them.

What is now referred to as the Constitutional Assembly was actually called up to revise the original articles, not throw them away and start over.

The articles had no real provision for a permanent popular national assembly, and each state chose it's own representatives however it liked. Some were appointed, others elected.

You may be familiar with all this.

Just musing over the future changes the EU may adopt to avoid the sorts of political stalemates the American states faced . . .

Also, the states kept their individual sovreignty up till the civil war, when some of them chose to leave the union and were invaded to prevent them from doing so . . l

(Ironically, the American states have more actual sovreignty that they've enjoyed in 125 years. Law enforcement is basically a manifestation of state government in the US. Regardless of DHS and FBI, each state proceeds as it chooses. I have seen FBI and US Marshalls drop cases where the state was not interested in prosecuting . . .)

Just curious on your thoughts about the potential for a "revision" of EU's constiution . . .