Google tells me that David Lammy said that in early 2019. Anyway, I think he was right about this bit:

Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US.

Sure it would be better if America was doing more to support Ukraine. But I think it’s good news that they are at least allowing Ukraine to have these Patriots, since they are important for Ukraine.

I’m not trying to give too much credit to the US of course. Trump’s administration is terrible. I’m just saying it could have been worse, if the US refused to allow Ukraine to have any Patriots.

their Welsh leader is still in prison for taking money from the Russians. Somehow though, their popularity has not diminished as much as it should have

Reform supporters believe that the idea of Russia being a threat has been made up by the liberal media to distract everybody from immigration. I wish I was kidding.

You could argue it’s a deal that some Brits voted for, but definitely not all Brits of course.

Only 51.89% of those who voted in the Brexit referendum in 2016 voted for Brexit.

In 2019 there was a general election, and during that election campaign, Boris Johnson promised to “get Brexit done”, but only 43.6% of voters in that election voted for Johnson’s party, the Conservatives. So a majority of voters in that election voted against the Conservatives.

It would have been possible to leave the EU while staying in the single market and/or customs union, but the Conservatives chose a particularly hard version of Brexit, cutting more ties than necessary with the EU.

Some Brexiteers suggested that Brexit would be a softer affair, in the lead up to the referendum.

Tory peer Daniel Hannan (formerly an MEP) said in 2015: “absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market”. And yet we did leave the single market, as part of the hard Brexit pursued by the Tories.

But yes I suppose other leading Brexiteers didn’t make details explicit. Perhaps, after the Brexit referendum, we should have had a second referendum to determine what shape Brexit should take. We could have remained in the single market for many industries (similar to Norway/Switzerland/Iceland) or the customs union (similar to Turkey), or both.

Brexiteers are famously supportive of “democracy” so they shouldn’t have had any objections to a second referendum.

I’m just going to leave this here.

Maybe the economy does indeed need fixing. I wonder how many Brits agree with the Lib Dems’ suggested fix, which is to rejoin the EU single market and customs union:

We need to fix our trading relationship with Europe to tackle the cost of living crisis and grow our economy.

Liberal Democrats are calling for the UK to join the single market and customs union, to fix the damage done by Brexit and get our country back on track.

I can respect the fact that they’re more certain about what they want to do. I think Burnham is alright, but his position on Europe seems to be “I don’t know yet; we’ll try to get closer to Europe, but we don’t know what that looks like yet”.

I wonder if it will cost them more trying to defeat the tax, than if they just paid the tax.

They’d probably be okay with that anyway. They probably enjoy paying more just to watch poor people squirm.

I definitely think Europe should have strong relationships with good allies, like Canada and Japan. Hopefully they would both be reliable.

Mexico, potentially yes, they could be a reliable ally. As for India I’m not so sure, because India seems to want to be quite friendly with Russia (I think India buys a lot of military equipment from Russia), and Russia has been waging war against Europe for the last 12 years.

I’ve noticed that irony too. For example, in 2024:

Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against the UK’s Labour Party, accusing it of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election

And then, in 2026:

JD Vance backs Orbán’s re-election bid in Budapest visit

It’s funny that conservatives are all about “law and order” and then they’ll happily break the law (fleeing Brazil illegally) when it serves them

I think more Europeans need to realise that the only countries which care about the security of European countries are European countries.

Trump on 13th June 2020:

We are ending the era of endless wars

Trump on 5th October 2024:

I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war

That second link has other examples too.

Oppressive authoritarianism? But tankies told me that China is a place of unbridled liberty. A land of milk and honey. Unlike the evil West which is always horrible and terrible.

Michel Barnier, formerly the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said earlier this year that the UK wouldn’t need to adopt the euro to rejoin the EU (source):

“I am speaking about Schengen, I am speaking about the single currency: there are other member states who are not in them. It is perfectly possible to have opt-outs in these fields.”

Coming and going over and over again would probably not be sensible. But the UK could definitely rejoin the EU if it wanted to. It just depends on whether there’s enough political will to make it happen. Currently there probably isn’t, but I think the UK could rejoin the EU during my lifetime, or at least the UK could certainly forge a much closer relationship with the EU even without membership. Similar to Norway or Switzerland, for example.

Voters chose leaving the EU by a slim margin, but the UK could have still taken part in the EU single market without being an EU member, like Norway does.

So you could say that blame for the way in which Brexit turned out lies with politicians, specifically Tory politicians who pushed through a hard Brexit without consulting the public on it. So much for “democracy”.

Very true. It would have been entirely sensible for the UK to have had a second referendum regarding which kind of Brexit should be pursued. We could have stayed in the single market, or parts of it, while still leaving the EU. We could have stayed in the customs union; Turkey is in the EU customs union while not being an EU member.

Alas, the Tories chose a hard Brexit on a whim.

This is why I think we need politicians in Europe who want to build sovereign European technologies, in areas like defence, and space, and so on.

Europe should never again choose to rely upon the US, a country which has proven itself to be unreliable.

Him seeming like a “weirdo” makes more sense when you look at his background. He was influenced by the hippie culture of the 60s and 70s. He travelled to India when he was a young adult and he got into Buddhism. I think all of that stuff inspired him to try things which are unconventional in western countries.

As for what you mentioned about jumping to the front of a transplant queue, yes that’s obviously selfish and wrong, if he did indeed do that.