What Sal Paradise missed with his lazy caricature is the more realistic and dramatic implication of what would have happened if Labour had won the election and Corbyn was PM.



Labour would still be in the 6 month period of renegotiating the trade deal with the EU before putting it to a referendum with Remain as the alternative on the ballot paper. When this pandemic hit, they would have agreed to extend Article 50 by a year.



Potentially if both the UK and the EU were savaged by a recession in 2021, they would extend by another year.



The timescale for the trade negotiation and the referendum would probably be 2022. Labour would also have reduced the voting age to 16 by then as that was in their manifesto.



Forecast two years forward, with all the extra cohorts of people who were only aged 10 at the time of the last referendum now being able to vote, with older generations dying off (including at a high level during the 2020 pandemic) and you would probably have a Remain vote in 2022.



That would have been the most dramatic implication of covid following a Labour victory.



On nationalisation, the interesting point is how it will start to enter more into Conservative ideology - they have already effectively nationalised the rail networks. I think the Conservatives will come not from the angle of public v private but from British owned v foreign owned, particularly in the context of China. There's a big backlash in Australia right now against Chinese firms buying up Aussie companies that are in distress as a result of lockdowns. It will not go down well in some conservative circles, who were already spooked by the security issues of Chinese ownership of aspects of our energy network and Huawei 5G, if the knock on effect of a virus which started in China, leads to a large increase in Chinese ownership of UK industry. It's not like the Cameron/Osborne clique are in charge, who hailed these kind of takeovers as evidence that "the UK is good at attracting foreign investment".



There is also a EU/Brexit angle to this. The Cummings approach of wanting to ensure the UK was separated from the EU state aid regime in order to provide UK government funding to support struggling industries in the north/midlands regions that would be banned in the EU is unlikely to change as a result of this, I think it will be strengthened. A lot of energy and transport operators in the UK are owned by European firms - often state owned(!) - and these are in sectors where consumers get bad outcomes. So I wouldn't be surprised if they look at this and say hold on, privatisation isn't supposed to be about letting European state owned firms use UK consumers to earn excess profits to subsidise their own domestic consumers.



So I expect a lot more state activism on this front from the Conservative government. They won't approach it ideologically in the same way that Corbyn would, and it may be more about the UK government blocking takeovers and providing support and buying stakes in firms than compulsory purchase orders, but I am pretty confident in predicting now that by the time the next election comes around, the share of UK state ownership of UK industry will be higher than it has been since the early privatisations in the 1980s. And I think this will be something that attracts support from both Labour and Conservative voters.

Most people can see why we need some form of border control - perhaps we should be keeping out Albanian gangsters, Asian drug lords, Russian Oligarths etc. I don't think anyone begrudges the NHS the staff it needs - it was no surprise that as soon as the pound fell against the € there was an exodus of workers!!

You can’t keep out Russian oligarchs because without them where would the Conservatives get their funding and the London housing market would collapse.

With regards your last argument I think most Europeans left not because of the exchange rate but how unwelcome they were made to feel by the government after Brexit.

I think you are being very selective/lazy in your analysis - under Labour we would never have got another referendum we just would not have been allowed to leave. You know as well I do the deal negotiated by Labour would be so close to existing terms as to be embarrassing to offer to a public vote as an alternative to remain. It would possibly have caused civil unrest leading up to a vote. Now if Labour offered their deal against leave no deal it would sort this once and for all but we know they didn't have the balls for that so even if we voted again to stay it would simply be delaying what has already been a festering boil for decades.



The government will hand back the rail franchises by the end of this year and that will that - I don't see any future intention to bring further services back into public ownership - I would be interested in where you think the government will intervene? I could see them blocking lucrative sales of UK assets to undesirables and I can see more restrictions on rich Russian types - but if you that you run the risk of UK firms being unable to procure non UK assets?



Time will tell if your Socialist utopia come to pass - under Starmer I see a clear out of the hard left especially in the shadow cabinet and I see the likes of Milne, Formby and a reduction in the influence of Lansdown and McClusky and a definite shift to the centre. There is one big bonus we wont have to listen to more drivel from John McDonald as he tries to present an acceptable face to his extreme Marxist leanings.

We must agree to differ

The Tories will always find funding - if not the Russians it will come from somewhere else. Its supporters are the ones that really generate a lot of money

The cash that you are "happy" to confirm ie £40bn is not even the tip of the iceberg here and the cost to the country in terms of business closures and bankruptcy will be massively higher this time around.

The lockdown will be followed by a prolonged recession and I'm sure that you realise this.

Indeed, it was in one of your own posts where you suggested that very, very few companies carry a 3month (and it could be more) slush fund.

This will take on a look of a world record domino toppling contest but, this time with businesses falling in place of the dominos.



I really hope that I'm wrong but, really, I cant see any other outcome.

The "support" for business in terms of furloughing staff and rates relief will help a little but, it wont be anywhere near enough.

Then you have to factor in the huge reduction in tax receipts, both vat and corporation tax and you begin to see what lays ahead.



It's unprecedented in peace time but, the rebuilding of the ecconomy WILL be worse than the last recession.

I think the generate/have dichotomy is at the heart of many of our disagreements!



On the original topic title, if the PL season isn’t restarted do y’all think Liverpool should be crowned champions (natural justice) or not (rules are rules and they didn’t win it)? Or some sort of asterisk-footnote type of solution?



Both the first two options feel like BS to me, for differing reasons.



I appreciate there much bigger fish to fry, but just to shoot the breeze.

I'm a man utd fan so would insist the season has to be finished or declared null and void!

They have plenty of very wealthy supporters, the difficulty sometimes comes on just how some of those supporters made their money ??

Arsenal fan here...



I would award Liverpool the title, it will always have an asterisk to this season but they are clearly ahead and deserve it. If it was a situation where say they were 3 pts ahead of Man City who had a game in hand and superior goal difference then I'd just say nobody wins.



I wouldn't have promotion or relegation. Effectively run the 2021 competitions on the same team lists as 2020, so Champions League / Europa League in 2021 would be based on qualification from the 2019 season.