Farage Softens Stance
Yesterday, the Guardian commented Nigel Farage Softens Stance in Attempt to Form Pact with Tories.
Nigel Farage has pulled back on his “drop the deal” threat to Boris Johnson in an attempt to get the prime minister to sign an election pact with the Brexit party.
Farage offered Johnson a deal last week in which his party would stand down in seats where the Tory candidate believed in a no-deal or “clean Brexit” and would want to abandon Johnson’s deal. In return, he wanted his party to have a free run at Labour heartland seats.
Farage has been criticised for the logic of his strategy to go after the vote in Labour heartlands, given that the majority of Ukip’s vote in the last two elections came from former Tory voters. His last significant inroad into the Labour vote was in 2010.
Speaking to the Guardian in Blackwood, South Wales, Farage said he would be willing to do a deal with the Tories if they accepted two principles.
“I think the deal is shocking because it is just not Brexit, but is there a way from a leaver’s perspective we can perhaps get this into a position that might be manageable? I think if you drop the clause that allows for endless extension that’s a huge head start, and, secondly, that this is a trade negotiation, not one based on political and economic alignment,” he said.
What Will Farage Settle For?
I read the above article yesterday as useless information.
Johnson would never agree to give the Brexit party free rein in any region. The proposed deal was a non-starter.
But what is Farage’s real demand?
If it is merely to drop endless extensions, that is something Johnson has already stated.
Secret Deal?
Today, the Daily Mail reports Nigel Farage IS ‘in secret talks with Boris Johnson to pull the majority of Brexit Party candidates out of the election – in return for the PM negotiating a harder deal.
There is not much “secret” about any of this. Both Johnson and Farage are all over the news.
Johnson Will Not Extend Transition Period
Please consider this YouTube Video from today.
The great new deal we’ve done with our European friends takes us out of the EU in January. Let’s build a new relationship based on free trade not political alignment. pic.twitter.com/I9KB6QxZK0
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 10, 2019
Boris Johnson says he will not extend the transition period beyond 2020.
That has been his position all along, but by emphasizing it and throwing in another small bone or two, Farage may go along.
Who Backed Down?
If there is a deal based on Johnson saying he will not extend the transition period, then it was Farage who caved.
Farage was hoping to bully Johnson into No Deal at all vs a WTO deal within Johnson’s deal.
Johnson’s position has not changed, but today’s video does emphasize a point that Farage wants.
If that changes the number of Brexit Party candidates, the it was a Farage bluff all along.
However, today’s video allows Farage to save face. Farage can claim he got Johnson to bend even if he didn’t.
We will not know until there is an official announcement.
Snatching Defeat From Jaws of Victory
Farage is under pressure in many places.
Brexit Central posted many articles discussing how Farage could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
- How Tory voters switching to the Brexit Party could deliver another hung parliament
- Nigel Farage has misjudged the mood of Brexiteers, which is why I’ve left the Brexit Party for the Tories
- Put country before party and back the Leave-backing candidate best-placed to win where you live
- If I were still advising Nigel Farage, I’d urge him to scrap his strategy that could see Brexit blocked entirely
- The Johnson deal is not perfect, but we cannot afford to delay the Brexit process any further
The Sun comments Nigel Farage’s election threat is not a political strategy – it’s a suicide mission that could let Corbyn into No10.
Farage Overplayed his Hand
Farage overplayed his hand. But we still do not know if it was a bluff.
Either way, Johnson’s strategy has been to mitigate the damage Farage can inflict.
That video today is aims at just that.
UK General Election Polls After Parliament Authorized Elections
The four most recent polls were taken after Parliament was dissolved.
Please see Opinion polling for the 2019 United Kingdom general election for all the political parties.
Six Polls Before Parliament Authorized Elections
Declining Brexit Party Support
- 4 Poll Average Since Parliament Dissolved: 7.5%
- 11 Poll Average Between Elections Authorized and Dissolution: 10.4%
- 6 Poll Average Before Election Decision: 10.5%
- Go back to Mid-September (not shown) and the average was 13%
Six Polls Before Election Announcement vs Four After Parliament Dissolved
- Liberal Democrats: 18.33% Then vs 15.75% Now (-2.76 PP)
- Brexit Party: 10.5% Then vs 7.50% Now (-3 PP)
- Labor Party: 23.17% Then vs 28.50% Now (5.33 PP)
- Tory Party: 37.83% Then vs 40.25% Now (2.42 PP)
- Greens: 4.67% Then vs 2.50% Now (-2.17 PP)
Conclusions
- The Tories are gaining at the expense of the Brexit Party
- Labour is gaining at the expense of the Liberal Democrats and Greens
- Liberal Democrat Loss + Green Loss = -4.93 PP
- Labour Gain of 5.33 PP nearly equals Lib Dem + Green Loss
Silliness of Farage’s Position in One Tweet
https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/1193623995259785219
Daniel Hannan is a true free market advocate. I would vote for him for US president in a flash if he could run.
One should respect his opinion.
Pact or Not, Johnson is Succeeding
The polls show Johnson’s strategy is succeeding.
Johnson is slowly siphoning off Brexit Party votes.
Labour is also siphoning off votes from the Liberal Democrats and the Greens at a greater pace. However, the Greens only have 2.5 percentage points more to give.
We are at the end of the line for the Green tactical voting to aid the Remain cause. A Green reversal (deciding to vote Green), would hurt the Remain cause.
A Johnson Farage alliance or simply more vote siphoning off the Brexit Party has much further to go relatively speaking.
Unless there is a radical shift in the polls, or the polls are radically wrong, the Brexit Party will not prevent a Johnson majority.
Alliance or not my UK Election Math suggests a big Tory Majority.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I don’t think there is enough time for the Conservative lead to decline enough not to win a majority, but the Brexit Party is making a mistake – when the final deal emerges in 3 years time or later, it will be seen as a bad deal. As for Hannan, remind me which party he’s in, just in case a bit of self-interest may influence his views? Why is £39bn and probably £65bn for nothing a good deal?
I was introduced to Nigel in 2014, and he shared his political philosophy with me and my brother-in-law over a drink. It appears that he is operating under his prime philosophy of never sacrificing the main objective (of moving ever closer to Brexit) to achieve a lesser goal (in this case, hold Boris accountable). My take: there’s no secret deal or pressure to cave — I think he’s hoping to win seats and negotiate the best deal he can after that.
He said that today somewhere, I think, that he’s hoping to have a rump group – like the DUP of late – which can have a swing vote capability to keep the Gov on track. Makes sense. I suspect that most of his people are going to hold their noses and vote Tory in the end though, just to be sure they are not ‘wasting’ their vote. Even though having that rump in Parliament could prove extremely effective.
It makes me nauseous that voters will probably remain Tory loyal (pun intended).
“Daniel Hannan is a true free market advocate. I would vote for him for US president in a flash if he could run.”
Gee, Mish, you could have had Boris a couple years ago 😉
Remainers squirm.
Tories have married Brexit, or at least they are in bed.
Nicola Sturgeon worded it perfectly:
” The Tory party has now effectively become the Brexit party “
Jo Swinson followed right on cue:
” The Conservative Party are the Brexit Party now.”
Lib Dem deputy leader Sir Ed Davey said ” This shows the Conservatives and the Brexit Party are now one and the same”.
Nigel Farage is some one-man genial show, script & performance.
Has Farage found a ladder to climb down? Monday morning he cuts number of Brexit Party candidates to about 300. Will not stand against existing Conservative MPs.
That’s a big first step. Expect a few more steps before Thursday.
This is a calculated move to show that he puts Brexit before his party.
The Tories will likely lose quite a few seats to the SNP and LibDems anyway. Johnson intends to win Labour Leave seats to make up these losses. And these are exactly the places where Farage still has candidates.
OT.
We will rent in Utah for 1 year
If we like, we stay and buy
If not, we move
Possible we have a summer home further north. All kinds of options.
I highly doubt Mormons will be a problem
I think you will be fine Mish. My wife has a friend in St George who is Mormon and she made our firstborn a blanket. She had not seen my. wife in years but heard through the grapevine we were expecting and the blanket arrived literally a week after our daughter was born. We arent even Mormon or any Western religion for that matter. The climate in southern Utah is darn near perfect but it is so dry they do have wildfires there. We will likely retire somewhere like there or Sedona.
Thanks
Sedona only 5 hours away or so
North Rim 2.5
Zion 30 minutes
My wife likes death valley – I think 4 hrs away
Typing from memory
Lots of stuff to do
Went to Moab once. Visited Canyonlands, Arches and Dead Horse Point. Great for photography and camping. If you get fed up with all the quietness then Vegas is just down the road. But that to me was a bit like Hell Central.
Mish, aren’t these polls very much like the polls for Hillary Clinton? They were meant to push the voters a certain way. I doubt very much that Brexit is pulling the low numbers you seem to believe in. If BoJo believes these polls then he will not be talking to Farage. He is an elite and despises Farage’s vulgarity. The ONLY reason he will talk to Farage is because he MUST.
I do not think the polls are intended to promote anything, but there are significant flaws.
I have a post coming up on the flaws
The day that Brexit wasn’t delivered (31 Oct) I said there had been a sea change of public opinion against BoJo. This was based on purely anecdotal trawl of comments on traditionally conservative social media – I said at the time it was nothing scientific. I can honestly say that the same seems to be true today. I have to admit being really stunned that the polls seem if anything to have gone in the other direction and have been looking for some sign, any movement which tends to support my thesis. There is no public evidence of this, and at the moment feel bitterly concerned and frustrated. OTHER than this one observation by Jack above. If Farage poses absolutely no threat to BoJo, then why on earth would they be talking?
It is better to have Farage on board than not.
But are they seriously talking?
It could be a made up headline.
I think we know within a couple days.
When do candidates have to be slated?
Deadline for candidate nominations is 4pm Thursday 14th Nov. Soon be here. Edited to correct date. Ooops.
Corbyn is more unpopular than Boris
Did you factor that in?
Corbyn is more unpopular ——— This is true and I think there is little doubt that the Tories are picking up some Labour support, especially when well known and respected Labour centrists are advising that way. It could also be that the people consider the Brexit Party in the context of a UK election as an entirely different proposition to the Brexit Party in the context of an EU election. Either way I have been surprised and disappointed. I don’t think the polls are fixed.
re BRINO (Brexit In Name Only) and future civil unrest.
(A) ” We don´t need Brexit perfection “
No, but we do need a version of real Brexit, not BRINO.
Bojo´s new EU-Treaty proposal is only slightly better than Theresa May´s which happened to be the worse EU-Treaty proposal EVER, worse than Moldavia´s. It even throws NI under the bus.
(B) “Let´s get it done ASAP so as to work out improvements later.”
There won´t be any “later” for many essential issues.
(C) “The crevice does not have to be jumped in one leap”
The above ignores the tremendous (and silent) EU success that Michel Barnier has imposed with the EU-most favorable sequencing of the (supposed) Brexit process. Many (most) important issues CANNOT be re-opened.
The instant Bojo´s EU Treaty proposal is accepted by the UK Parliament then BRINO wins.
The elephant in the room was the Hung Parliament. And the one waiting in the wings is the potential Brexit Parliament. May’s govt was a BRINO operation all the way; the next govt hopefully, though doubtless not all hard brexit purists, will approach all the negotiations with Brussels and processes in Parliament in a very different fashion.
Boris is rightly gun shy about pushing the No Deal option as a leading campaign pledge because far too many parliamentarians and media talking heads have succeeded in establishing the belief that it could cause a 5% economic downturn, which is sort of instant depression territory.
But if and when he gets a solid majority in Parliament, then he can force the EU to accept the the UK is leaving and will not accept being beholden to remaining within EU rules forevermore and he may very well threaten the WTO option if they insist on unending vassalage. And I still trust most of the ERG types enough to feel fairly confident that if Boris drifts into too wishy-washy a process, that they will step in to stiffen him up.
I suspect – sort of echoing Mish’s detailed analysis – that as the election date gets closer and if they have managed to persuade most that the New Deal is NOT Brino, then most of the Brexit Party voters will pull the Tory lever on Dec 12th. I also expect quite a few Labour leavers to vote Tory than expected as Corbyn’s negative anti-British animus becomes more obvious and a simple delight in just putting the Great back in Britain begins to spread. It’s way too soon to say, but a whopping victory is looking increasingly likely – barring election-insanity-surprises of course.
…” it´s way too soon to say “… [ YES ]
…” as the election date gets closer and if they (the Tories) have managed to persuade most that (BoJo´s) New Deal is NOT Brino…” [ YES ]
Problem also is TRUST.@BaronAsh ?
Can Boris be trusted you think
Always a mistake to ‘trust’ that a politician is what you think they are since their job is to sell hopes, possibilities, and also hide what’s in the sausage (since what actually goes on is too detailed and ridiculous and ghastly to even attempt to explain even were one so inclined!), but I think Boris has a sense of destiny driving him, and I think he wants to go down as a great Prime Minister who benefits the country, who enhances the destiny of Great Britain. (And by the way, although it’s a great campaign line, I believe that England is indeed the very best place in the world to live, to raise children, to run a business etc., albeit the opportunity quotient does indeed need to be more equally distributed throughout the land.)
That doesn’t mean he might not cock up mightily, but there’s a chance with him of something much better than average, put it that way.
And perhaps was over-imagining, but I got the sense that he pulled off quite a miracle with that deal in October, and also that quite a few European leaders started to treat him with genuine respect, and in Macron’s case even admiration.
Am reading his book on Churchill. If nothing else, he is a truly gifted writer and having deeply studied such a truly gifted ‘Great Man’ of destiny who so quintessentially embodied the spirit of the nation of which Boris is now Prime Minister, I think he’s going to try to do well – very well – and might just pull it off. Certainly, under his leadership the country will move forward, cheer up and have more fun again.
And what more can one ask of a politician, moreover a Prime Minister?
So… can we TRUST him ? Hmmmm….
Baron. I liked both of your posts. But the thread of your argument assumes an awful lot. I know we are dealing with British politics and perhaps the most complex of all issues to face us, but I have great suspicion that there are easier and simpler explanations and more logical ways of joining up the dots. My concern is that BoJo simply doesn’t give a hoot about Brexit and simply wants to sweep the whole issue under the carpet with a ‘been there, fixed that’ message as soon as possible and then move on to more exciting things. You pays your money and takes your chance but can you honestly, ‘no ifs or buts’, ‘dead in a ditch’ etc hand on heart say that he creates any other impression?
I hear you about Boris. But I think that along with wanting to be liked, as many who know him (and those who hate him) have observed, I think he also wants to be great. He is arguably brilliant and has shown far more grit and savvy than your typical Oxford Classics scholar who writes pithy, witty Telegraph columns. He’s still only in his 50’s. No, he wasn’t a brave military man too like Churchill, but he’s not just an empty suit either. Time will tell.
I think he is doing extremely well at connecting with the working class core in England, but I do wish he gave a few more speeches that were less ra-ra and more just calmly walking through what the big issues are. He is also right to be pushing that Britain can be a great country. His main problem there is that he probably doesn’t want to look like someone following Trump’s lead, but I think the slogan ‘Let’s put the Great back in Britain again’ would be a hit, and furthermore that there is more substance to it. Britain is one of the world’s truly great countries, as Hugh Grant’s fictional PM so well immortalised in that Beckham’s right foot speech! And those Olympic opening ceremonies weren’t bad. And if they actually do bring the North up to speed and get the fisheries back and stop all this endless Euro-sludged ‘dither and delay,’ well, the UK is going to be a great place again, and Boris is the right man at the right time for such a bounce. I know it’s hard for any of us to take without oodles of salt, but things might just be looking up!
Meanwhile, a development. I still don’t know what Farage is up to, but it looks like he was trying to get his people behind actually, in the end, supporting BoJo’s ‘Great New Deal.’
From the Telegraph:
(sorry, I can only reply, I cannot make a stand-alone comment here for some reason (all blockers etc. disabled):
12:23PM
Farage: Boris’s pledge to end political alignment good enough for me
Explaining his decision to stand down candidates, Mr Farage told supporters in Hartlepool that he had been reassured by Boris Johnson’s promise to negotiate a “Super Canada” trade deal.
He said that it marked a significant departure from Theresa May’s proposal for close alignment, describing it as a “huge change”.
Mr Farage confirmed that the Brexit Party will now “concentrate all our efforts” on the seats occupied by Labour, as well as the Liberal Democrats and other smaller Remain parties.
hear you about Boris. But I think that along with wanting to be liked, as many who know him (and those who hate him) have observed, I think he also wants to be great. He is arguably brilliant and has shown far more grit and savvy than your typical Oxford Classics scholar who writes pithy, witty Telegraph columns. He’s still only in his 50’s. No, he wasn’t a brave military man too like Churchill, but he’s not just an empty suit either. Time will tell.
I think he is doing extremely well at connecting with the working class core in England, but I do wish he gave a few more speeches that were less ra-ra and more just calmly walking through what the big issues are. He is also right to be pushing that Britain can be a great country. His main problem there is that he probably doesn’t want to look like someone following Trump’s lead, but I think the slogan ‘Let’s put the Great back in Britain again’ would be a hit, and furthermore that there is more substance to it. Britain is one of the world’s truly great countries, as Hugh Grant’s fictional PM so well immortalised in that Beckham’s right foot speech! And those Olympic opening ceremonies weren’t bad. And if they actually do bring the North up to speed and get the fisheries back and stop all this endless Euro-sludged ‘dither and delay,’ well, the UK is going to be a great place again, and Boris is the right man at the right time for such a bounce. I know it’s hard for any of us to take without oodles of salt, but things might just be looking up!
Meanwhile, a development. I still don’t know what Farage is up to, but it looks like he was trying to get his people behind actually, in the end, supporting BoJo’s ‘Great New Deal.’
From the Telegraph:
(sorry, I can only reply, I cannot make a stand-alone comment here for some reason (all blockers etc. disabled):
12:23PM
Farage: Boris’s pledge to end political alignment good enough for me
Explaining his decision to stand down candidates, Mr Farage told supporters in Hartlepool that he had been reassured by Boris Johnson’s promise to negotiate a “Super Canada” trade deal.
He said that it marked a significant departure from Theresa May’s proposal for close alignment, describing it as a “huge change”.
Mr Farage confirmed that the Brexit Party will now “concentrate all our efforts” on the seats occupied by Labour, as well as the Liberal Democrats and other smaller Remain parties.
Well it will be interesting to see what he does in Westmorland and Lonsdale (my constituency) which unusually is a LibDem / Con marginal. Its ripe for falling into Con hands from Tim Farron – the trend has been towards Con the past couple of elections and last time there was a recount. My expectation is that Farage will pull his candidate and Farron will have a hard time hanging on.
We shall see, but still
(1) ” the Tories don’t seem to grasp that if they don’t form a non-aggression pact with the Brexit Party their seats in the South of England and the West Country will be taken by the Liberal Democrats…”
(2) Mish, what… me worry ?
In your very last post only 2 days ago you calculated that Labour can only pick up 2% of seats, right ? Did I interpret you correctly per data below ? So why would Labour suddenly become a problem from one day to the other ?
(3) Mish, you conclude that ” The Tories are gaining at the expense of the Brexit Party ” .
So what is this sudden concern over Brexit Party syphoning off votes that (supposedly) belong to the Tories ?
Why worry about Farage ´snatching defeat from the jaws of victory´ stuff and JC at 10 Downing Street if the Brexit Party has (supposedly) halved its voters lately ?
Probabilities Based on Current Polls
Bob, if you have no interest there is a simple solution.
Don’t comment. Instead, comment on posts of interest to you.
Seems pretty easy to me.
I haven’t commented about Brexit in a long time. Done
I was just apologizing over the nonsense on the previous (car loan) post
There are too many socialists commenting about how to wreck the US capitalist economy — when most of the problems in the US (war machine, colleges, healthcare, homelessness, etc) are caused by central economic planning. The disease isn’t the cure.
Its your blog, and your retirement hobby. If you find my comments annoying, you are going to have a lot of trouble dealing with the Mormon community in Utah. Good luck
What makes you think the Mormons will have any interest in my blog?
If you mean can I deal with Mormons in general, I have been to Utah many times and not once did any of them ever bother me.
The evangelicals on Twitter are more of a nuisance and that won’t change.
Visiting an area as a guest, and living in an area are two very different things. As a (former?) New Yorker, I visited many places in the south many times before moving. Being a guest was always fun.
When I moved… I was warned it would take 3-4 years (at least) to really assimilate. It took all of that. Now my neighbors and friends, they tell me what a fast talking ball of stress I was when we arrived. And I still sometimes slip back into “NYC think”
The Mormons are good people. Years ago, my son was really good friends with the son of a Mormon Church leader who was living “out east” (near NYC) for a few years. The kids got along pretty well, as children don’t have any of the religious baggage / history that adults have.
But Christmas and Easter rolled around each year, and this other boy was the son of a senior Church leader. In this instance, the Mormons were “visitors” — most of the community was protestant of one form or another. The son of a Church leader could not be seen “getting corrupted”…. it was the hang up of church elders, not the kids. I’m not sure the other dad (the Mormon Church leader) was all that worked up, but his advisors certainly had LOTS to say. The Mormon child was eventually pulled from school to protect him from non-Mormon “contamination”.
In Utah, you will be the outsider. It will be different if you are living there, instead of a visiting guest.
It was a big change leaving NYC (you are leaving Chicago?) and we didn’t have to contend with major religious differences. We thought it would be easy! It took a lot of work.
Anyway, good luck.
PS — I don’t use Twitter. I don’t watch CNN or Fox news — I try not to watch any of that garbage. Its all click bait and a$$holes who want to force their way of life on people who didn’t ask them.
CB – We are renting for 1 year.
If we like Utah we stay and buy
If not, we move
What US capitalist economy? I’m not seeing much left to “wreck”.
BTW, it’s usually bad form to assume you speak for millions of people, in this case Mormons. Either you wear magic underwear or this is a projection of megalomania.
I have little if any interest in the Brexit fiasco. I would note that one hundred years ago give or take, the UK was THE global super power. A combination of pseudo-socialism and a bloated bureaucracy transformed that global power into an EU side show that now struggles to regain control of their own destiny… and the bureaucracy seems unable to actually pull the trigger.
The UK is a sad tale of what used to be and what could have been, if only they didn’t shoot themselves in the foot. I only hope the citizens of the USA use England’s mistakes as a cautionary tale
We (the UK) were the global superpower because we raped India for 400 years, along with most of the rest of the undeveloped world.
Don’t even ask what we did in Africa for 200 years.
The UK is a small, overpopulated island that is now dependent on 70% imported food, imports all it’s natural gas and N. Sea oil has been in steep decline since 1999.
The future, the immediate future, is dire for the UK.
I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. There are plenty of places you can import food from, but not many places the EU can sell to to make up the loss of the UK as a customer. I think they’re more frightened of no deal than you are.
…”raped India”…
Another self-flagellating white middle class dumbkopf virtue signaling with their lack of historical knowledge…
You should talk with some Indians in India. Many still see the Railways, Schools, Universities, Roads, Healthcare, Legal System etc… has ensured that India doesn’t look like Africa does now.
If you want to hand-wring about injustice, have a look at what the Portuguese and Spanish did in their “empires”, or the Italians, or the Belgians, or the Dutch…or the USofA…
Do you have any hard evidence whatsoever to support your theory that the UK economic success in the 19th century was due to “raping India” or are you just virtue signalling? The academic consensus is that 19th century colonial empires were an economic drag for the colonial nations.
How about putting 600% tariffs on Indian exports? How about growing cotton in India but ending Indian Cotton manufacturing? How about no shipbuilding industry in India? How about the railways leading from where the raw materials were to the coast and no where else? How about no school system at all? No roads to speak of? How about when the captive market was lost British industry went into a steep and fatal decline? You should be careful reading British apologists for Empire. A few million Brits might believe them but 2.4 billions don’t. [ India + China] The Raj played lip service to free trade but made sure their subjects operated under a very unfree trade system.
How about addressing the actual claim that the UK economic success was due to “raping India”? That colonial countries exploited their colonies is indisputable. But it’s a far cry from establishing, as was claimed, that their entire economic development was due to that or even that the net result was beneficial especially when so many western countries without a colonial Empire had the same or even better economic trajectory (e.g. US, Germany)
Instead of reading garbage UK historians try the following ” Inglorious Empire ” by Dr Sashi Kapoor MP. Kapour is a Congress MP and gives the Indian view of the Raj, if you think his conclusion is bad then I suggest you seek out what BJP historians are saying.
Kapoor is not an historian and clearly partisan on this issue.
By that reasoning Churchill was not a historian. Of course he is partizan he is Indian. Garbage UK historians are partizan.
Of course Churchill was not an historian and I would not trust his historical analysis apart from specific events he was directly involved in. What’s your point?
Of course Churchill was a historian, if you are questioning that then you really need to get out more.
Churchill was absolutely NOT an historian. He was a politician and a writer. Writing a few historical books doesn’t make someone an historian anymore than writing books about science makes you a theoretical physicist.
If that’s your standard for historical material, I’m not surprise you consider Kapoor as a reliable source.
I think there is some truth in what you say NeverReady. Certainly I got the impression from my hosts in Mumbai some years back their view was ‘Sure we’ve been invaded lots of times, but India takes what it can and takes the best from those temporary administrations. That is the way that India moves forward.’ I have no doubt that the East India Company was deeply immoral, but at least it, or at least its successor DID at least leave something of a legacy. Niall Fergusson’s book on Empire is a very interesting and easy read if you are interested.
By the way, therein lies the crux of the problem with the EU. As an exercise in empire building – for that is what it is – it has completely, totally, utterly and completely failed to assimilate its subjects. Brexit is the symptom of a failed new state.