96 Comments
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Mary's avatar

Time to join Rupert Lowe & RESTORE BRITAIN now Jacob. Reform & Conservatives are doomed. Farage / Zia duo will fail.

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Tim Almond's avatar

Your party were in charge for what was it? 14 years as incapacity benefit ballooned, immigration skyrocketed.

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Horus's avatar

Obviously we need to repatriate/deport most of the 18 million foreigners your party and Labour have brought here, and for that we need to replace the whole ruling class, fire all their appointees, close their institutions, repeal their laws, seize their assets and put them on trial for treason.

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Incognito's avatar

Demographically, the mass importation of thirdworlders commenced by the Blair/Brown regime is a disaster, and nothing short of mass forced remigration will work: https://controlc.com/8a8fe841. That will effectively amount to a civil war, but it remains the least worst option.

Economically, the post-1948 welfare state amounted to national suicide. The UK took a historic wrong turn in 1948 by de facto embracing socialism, setting in motion a prolonged economic decline. Its post-war story has been one of managed deterioration, occasionally masked by short-lived and unsustainable stopgaps - joining the EU, privatising state assets, the North Sea oil boom, monetising housing stock, printing money, suppressing interest rates, and ever-rising taxes and borrowing. Like passengers on a sinking ship frantically jettisoning furniture to delay the inevitable, these measures offered only fleeting buoyancy while the structural rot deepened. Now the barrel is empty. Those with the means (and skill set/employability) to do so would do well to leave: https://bit.ly/UK_collapse

The only solution - but it's a fantasy - is a regime with Pinochet-levels of robustness, which (a) expelled at bayonet-point all post-WWII thirdworld immigrants and their families except those who could prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are net economic AND cultural assets (a tiny minority); and (b) the total dismantlement of the welfare state. As I say, it's a fantasy, but it's the UK's last, best hope.

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BigOinSeattle's avatar

The United States is the UK on steroids. You have the advantage of being an island, whereas any purported “asylum seeker” can fly to Mexico, central or South America and make their way to the land of endless gibs. It matters not that real asylum seekers are supposed to find refuge in the next safe jurisdiction. Many organizations are happy to help them in their quest for paradise and it looks to be only slightly better under Trumpy.

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Carlos Collarte's avatar

All this problems are shared -with differences on the relevance or local characteristics- by the rest of main European countries.

Solving all this issues, I'd say that is not possible under a political system where parties are looking just to what is going to happen in the next election; you need that all the political forces align on what needs to be done and, as it happens in other countries -i think about my country, Spain- this is never gonna happen.

The other reason to be pessimistic is that the political measures are going to be dictated by the demographics and they are all against this type of changes.

Either you go into a strong leadership or you just keep falling into an Argentinian style, where you only going to change one you touch the bottom which it is still far away and you will only reach it when the main demographics -people whose income relies on public finances- feels the pain.

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Louis's avatar

Hi. Net Zero will cost 350ish billion. That's a £350bn investment in the economy that will circulate 5 times over. It pays for blue collar skills. It improves housing which reduces health problems. This is not a cost, it's an investment opportunity. The real problem to solve is that we need better financial instruments to reduce upfront costs for people and pay back in energy savings over 20/30 years. This will come (I work in this industry and on this very subject). Saying net zero is an insanity is just uninformed.

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James's avatar

I listen to the two main politics podcasts in the UK fairly regularly- The Rest is Politics and Political Currency - and most of these issues do not get discussed.

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Thomas Jones's avatar

Yes I suppose Farage might decide to rejoin the EU, boomer.

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Phil H's avatar

Ugh. I'm glad you're trying to think about this stuff, but if your diagnosis of Britain begins with "it's too woke", then you're starting off on the wrong foot. You know how you pointed out that Britain's institutions aren't positive towards young people? An MP writing to criticise rap performances is pretty emblematic of that negativity.

Please focus your attention away from the culture wars and to the substantive stuff later in your essay.

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Aeron Laffere's avatar

This is really very good, Neil. Feel very grateful to have you as a friend of the podcast.

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Cheryl Cooper's avatar

Interesting you bemoan our falling fertility rate and labour’s cancellation of the two child benefit. Surely young couples today need incentives to rally the birth rate? They can’t afford rent let alone a baby. Struggling couples aren’t going to make the best parents - they’ll be stressed out and pass that stress to their kids leading to more mental health problems. If politicians don’t bolster young British couples now, the UK will become a land of asylum seekers

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Cheryl Cooper's avatar

I said British couples as an inclusive term for all settled brits. He suggested it was becoming an island full of immigrants/asylum seekers. I’m using his terms. You don’t know me so stop projecting your negative views on me

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JH's avatar
Jun 1Edited

Less than 5% of immigration is asylum seekers. Anyway, I'm not sure how happy Neil will be about "young British couples" having children when he bemoans British-born children of being a different ethnicity. By suggesting you have to be white to be British, you only make more young people feel the UK is racist.

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James's avatar

5% of a huge number is a large number.

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Swami's avatar

Just spitballing here from the other side of the Ocean…

1. Require every able bodied person to work after a reasonable temporary transition period.

2. Stop all illegal immigration and forcibly deport every person in UK that doesn’t belong.

3. Deport any person/family of a legal immigrant living off public funds.

4. Require 100% of immigrants to speak fluent English and have either a college degree and/or a job offer. Then triple the taxes on that person and their employer to fund pensions and welfare programs for native Brits.

5. Change taxes so that singles and those with one child fund their own pensions and retirement. Basically, not having 2 or more kids needs to be both socially and economically painful.

6. Drop the green energy insanity and drill and import low cost energy.

7. Create special economic zones with minimal regulation (other than allowing immigrants) to attract and create new entrepreneurial talent.

These steps, and others like them would be extremely painful. However, I would suggest the alternative will be incomparably worse. From this side of the Atlantic, I can’t imagine the UK avoiding either complete collapse or civil war in the very near future. And I am an optimist.

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JH's avatar
Jun 1Edited

You forget that most of the "immigrants" and their descendants in the article are British citizens.

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Swami's avatar

? If they can’t deport them, then most of the other points still apply. Point is that the UK needs to get serious about reform and soon, or whoever crawls out of the rubble will do it for them.

As a side note, Europe should have figured out ways to get immigrants from Central America decades ago (instead of people from the Mideast). They make much better immigrants.

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JH's avatar
Jun 2Edited

Firstly, very few immigrants in the UK are from the Middle East. Secondly, the USA is literally deporting immigrants from Central Asia. Thirdly, British citizens are all equal, so the other points about immigrants don't apply.

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BBA's avatar

I believe the point is to incentivize work and not being on the dole from government. That, quit incentivizing not working.

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Liam's avatar

I'm legitimately surprised this was written by an MP.

It's heartening to know there are people that actually care about the bigger issues.

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Katie Finlayson's avatar

I don’t agree with the entirety, but there is a lot of reasonable analysis here, particularly on the impacts of demographics. I guess the question is, do you have clear policy proposals that would make a difference? I think most would agree that it would be a good thing for more people to find fulfilling work and homes, a positive feeling about our country and the future, and both *want* to have families and feel able to do so - but what are the changes you’d propose to encourage that to happen?

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