Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

David Cameron announces resignation

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 345 posts

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#141

Post by abotley »

geff82 wrote: post #42

He'll go down in history as one of the worst leaders the UK ever had. Which he already was before yesterday. By the way, if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU, why does he not let his people vote on whether they want total surveillance or not? If they want a police state? Why can't they decide on stuff that affects their daily lives in a potential negative way? Or will they ignor…

"if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU"

That was a popular demand by the public as the UK hadn't had a referendum on EU membership in 40 years. He made a promise to hold the referendum because of this and fulfilled his promise. If a politician keeping a promise is a problem, then we're all doomed

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#142

Post by jacquesm »

adwf wrote: post #136
Angostura wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't just to silence opposition within his own party. It was also to stop the haemorrhaging of support from all mainstream parties towards UKIP. It was a reasonable gamble that failed.

Yes, people forget that he'd already had two MPs jump ship to UKIP. If he hadn't promised a referendum the party would've split down the middle. What I don't get, and didn't get with the Scots referendum either, is why on earth they didn't require a super-majority? Surely with something as critical as this, you'd want a bit more convincing than a 2% margin? It doesn't have to be a 3/4ths or even 2/3rds, but a 60.1/39…

> If he hadn't promised a referendum the party would've split down the middle.

And now you have a country split down the middle.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#143

Post by bonif »

abotley wrote: post #141
geff82 wrote: post #42

He'll go down in history as one of the worst leaders the UK ever had. Which he already was before yesterday. By the way, if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU, why does he not let his people vote on whether they want total surveillance or not? If they want a police state? Why can't they decide on stuff that affects their daily lives in a potential negative way? Or will they ignor…

"if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU" That was a popular demand by the public as the UK hadn't had a referendum on EU membership in 40 years. He made a promise to hold the referendum because of this and fulfilled his promise. If a politician keeping a promise is a problem, then we're all doomed

Making that promise was an error in the first place

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#144

Post by DanBC »

geff82 wrote: post #65
fredley wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theresa May is one of the scariest contenders as far as I've seen. Very pro-surveillance and anti-open internet. She would be a (nother) disaster for UK tech. If there's anybody left who hasn't moved to Dublin/Berlin by October.

The problem we currently have in politics it demography. People get older and older, the baby boomers forgot to "produce" children. Elder people tend to be deeply conservative and anti-technology. And as they are the majority now, they vote for stuff that they think is right ("let's 100% control that freaking thing called internet") and totally strangle the younger generation with their bad taste and shortsightedness…

> The problem we currently have in politics it demography.

I misread that as "demagoguery", and was going to vigorously agree.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#145

Post by k-mcgrady »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #135
k-mcgrady wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "It's highly unlikely that Jeremy Corbyn would remain as the leader of the Labour either since there seems to be an outrage amongst Labour MP's due to the overwhelming number of their core constituencies voting to leave." I was pretty happy with Corbyn so far but his complete lack of doing anything throughout this campaign is embarrassing. I'm guessing he didn't want to lose working-class votes but that makes him…

He was out campaigning for a Remain vote but this was largely ignored by the media.

Any interviews with him I saw he didn't really take a strong position. He was remain but he didn't seem to care very much.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#146

Post by monk_e_boy »

gambiting wrote: post #126
IshKebab wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many friends under 30 have bought a house (without parental help) Wow really? Do you live up north? Or have rich friends? I mean I think the UK economy is in pretty good shape (especially compared to the rest of the world), but let's not pretend that houses are remotely affordable.

You can buy a house in the North for 100-200k without any problems, and saving 10k for a deposit is not exactly difficult if you have a job. I'm in the same situation as OP, live in UK, everyone I know is quite well off and the economy is doing very well for us(or was until today).

I think I'm one of those rare people who lurk on hackernews, but who's friends are normal working types. Nurses, janitors, teachers, teaching assistants, plumbers, electricians, carpetenters, fisher men. None of these people are on your facebook feed, or hackernews comment section. These are the people who have had enough of all this crap. We're not stupid. We're just poor.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#147

Post by lmm »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #100
thomasfoster96 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prime Ministers in countries that have them are usually the leader of the largest party in the lower house of their Parliament. David Cameron doesn't have to resign immediately, because he's still the leader of the largest party. He's resigning (or rather has announced he will resign before October) because he had certainly given the impression to his party that if 'Remain' didn't win, he'd resign. He could try and s…

So he resigns, but he was elected as a representative in the lower house. That means he won't be PM anymore, and he goes back to being a member of the lower house? Does the house pick one of its own members for the job, or does the majority party get to pick anybody at all that they want to be PM? Do PMs that leave go back to being house members? Seems like that would be kinda weird.

> So he resigns, but he was elected as a representative in the lower house. That means he won't be PM anymore, and he goes back to being a member of the lower house?

Yes.

> Does the house pick one of its own members for the job, or does the majority party get to pick anybody at all that they want to be PM?

Officially they can pick a member of either house of parliament. In practice picking a Lord would be extremely controversial and probably lead to some rapid constitutional reform.

> Do PMs that leave go back to being house members? Seems like that would be kinda weird.

They usually won't stand in the next election, and go off and do something else - either private business or charity, or one of the less direct parts of government (the house of lords, embassies or the like - traditionally Europe was another destination but I guess no longer). In theory they could stay on and work as foreign secretary or whatever for the person who replaced them (or return to the back benches) but yeah that would be weird.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#148

Post by DanBC »

verbify wrote: post #71
geff82 wrote: post #42

He'll go down in history as one of the worst leaders the UK ever had. Which he already was before yesterday. By the way, if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU, why does he not let his people vote on whether they want total surveillance or not? If they want a police state? Why can't they decide on stuff that affects their daily lives in a potential negative way? Or will they ignor…

Do you forget what a shambles Tony Blair was? Led us into a pointless war that cost 100,000s of lives. As bad as David Cameron was, he kept us out of war.

David Cameron wanted to bomb Syria, but didn't because of massive public opposition and the commons vote.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783

I agree that Blair was a war-monger.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#149

Post by panic »

fredley wrote: post #139
panic wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming people (older people, immigrants, whatever) for our problems isn't productive. Let's figure out what's broken about the systems we're living in instead of alienating the people we should be working with to fix them.

In both the US general election and this referendum, the primary forces at play are emotive campaigning backed by false or at the very least misleading information (in our case: portrayal of immigrants, the '£350m a week' figure that has already had some very serious backpeddling, etc. etc.). We have an electorate that is woefully misinformed for a whole host of reasons. How you address this is beyond me.

Honestly I think our best bet is to focus on education and childcare, then try to hold on for a generation. Many parents don't have time to raise their children as well as they'd like. Teachers are underpaid, under-respected and have in many cases had their agency taken away by standardized tests. It's no wonder so many people find it difficult to stay informed when they're starting from so far behind.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#150

Post by gonvaled »

lmm wrote: post #140
gonvaled wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not suggesting that the UK leaving the EU will be done on UK terms only, do you? Like "we get that funding chunk and then we leave" or "we attend that EU parliament session and then we leave" or "we don't say how or when, we'll just leave, whenever it suits us, and please don't disturb because I am too busy doing important things which you can not hope to comprehend". How long do you think the EU will wait fo…

We signed a treaty, as did the rest of the EU; we will comply with that treaty and they should too. And according to the treaty it's us who kick off the article 50 process. If the EU doesn't believe in following its own treaties then what is it even for?

We will respect that treaty. But, as all treaties, there is room for interpretation, which requires good will. Good will towards the UK has run out, and EU should be looking at its interests and nothing more.

During the negotiations process, the UK should be treated as what it is, a soon to be ex-member. For example:

> Meanwhile, Elmar Brok, a German MEP, CDU member, and chairman of the European parliament committee on foreign affairs, told the Guardian that the European parliament would call on Jean-Claude Juncker to strip the British commissioner Jonathan Hill of his financial services brief with immediate effect and turn him into a “commissioner without portfolio”.

Dozens of measures like this should be taken. Whatever is legal according to the signed treaties should be done in order to hasten the exit of the UK from the EU.

Post reply on HN