Alex

Classically liberal minded, generally disillusioned.

[Alex @Admalez]

@MrPanzin @crazyfugitive1 @ProjectLiberal Reagan was quite conservative on social issues, even by the standards of the 1980s. Immigration wasn't a controversial hot button issue like it is now so it didn't cost him to be liberal on it.

[Alex @Admalez]

@BoppusMaximus @ProjectLiberal They can quite easily distance themselves from Trump, they aren't tainted by association like Vance is.

[Alex @Admalez]

You are still stuck in 2016,LOL. There was a strong economic case for remaining inside the EU in 2016. Brexit by its very nature erects trade barriers between the UK and EU. That was not controversial and that is what you are confusing it with.

Brexit hasn't been a disaster by any reasonable definition. The UK has done just fine outside. It has consistently done better than France, Germany and Italy. Hypothetical and highly debatable projections of what might be don't negate that.

Arguing that Brexit had an economic cost and arguing that Brexit was an economic disaster are not remotely the same proposition.

[John Wills @johndotwills]

After publishing a factually incorrect article about the 'mysterious' funding arrangements for @cambridgecircre (which aren't mysterious, as they er... fund themselves), it turns out that @peterjukes and the @BylineTimes are actually secretly funded by the government.

This means that the government has engaged in a disinformation campaign against an independent research group because they disagree with them politically, and used Byline Times as stooges to do their dirty work.

Absolutely amazing stuff. One for @ShipleyWrites to add to his list of shady state influencer organisations.

[Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon]

The Byline Times is angry about a Spectator article criticising the government for giving money to the Bylines Network. Regardless of how closely linked they are (Peter Jukes is a director of both), should it be it getting taxpayers' money? 🧵

[Madeline Grant @Madz_Grant]

Ethnicity and cultural/national identity are separate things. Trying to enshrine the absence of any distinctive English ethnicity as this bill appears to, since it can now be based on how people identify even if they have no English ancestry, seems incredibly short-sighted. A) pretty much guaranteed to make people feel more protective of their ethnic identity than they were before. B) makes collecting census data a more pointless exercise if definitions are so subjective. It becomes basically the same as the national identity question. We ask about both for a reason

[Alex @Admalez]

The UK's economy has effectively been a zombie economy since 2008, this has barely anything to do with Brexit. Before that there was quite decent economic growth. The Tories were also a high tax, high spending over regulation party that sought to intrude into people's lives. It gets called a uniparty for a reason and Labour are even worse in those regards. The so-called austerity was muted by the ballooning expenses of welfare and the NHS.

As for your point about immigration, that is because it is on the other side of an exceptionally large bellcurve, Boris Johnson made a concious effort to relax visa requirements and ecourage so many people in. Which people hate him for. Brexit simply ended the automatic right of FOM for EEA citizens. The huge surge was an intentional political choice.

[Alex @Admalez]

@Noahpinion It is limited to 25 mph, LOL. That makes it quite dangerous and inpractical outside of strict urban settings or on private property. It is basically just a more luxurious golf cart with a bed.

[Alex @Admalez]

David Cameron was never an avid remainer to begin with. He was always a soft Eurosceptic, seeing the EU more as a transactional thing, rather than sincirely believing in it. His emphasis was on a reformed EU, with reformed implying less of it. Hence why it ended up with such a half hearted project fear remain campagin and they didn't make a genuinely positive political vision of Britain's membership. He left the EEP grouping in 2009 because they were too pro-EU and former close aides like Steve Hilton speculated that if he wasn't PM, he would have supported leave.

[Alex Wickham @alexwickham]

***EXCLUSIVE by @MishalHusain***

David Cameron says Britain should NOT rejoin the EU

The former prime minister warns Andy Burnham that starting a conversation about rejoining would be “very long and painful”

Speaking in a Bloomberg interview, Cameron urges Burnham not to trigger another “decade-long debate about whether should be in or out.” He also says the UK should not enter a customs union with the EU

As the PM who led the Remain campaign in 2016, Cameron’s intervention will be seen as significant. He says Britain’s economic problems aren’t due to Brexit

“Today, instead of launching an argument about rejoining, which I think would be a very long and painful argument, and who knows where it would end up, instead of that, focus on how do we be the best friend, best neighbour, best partner,” Cameron says

The former PM also warns Burnham that talking about Britain rejoining could hamper future negotiations

“If you start endlessly producing this idea that we’re actually on a path to rejoining, I think you’re in danger of getting a less good partnership deal because of course the EU countries will just think: well, these guys are gonna rejoin anyway, so what’s the point in giving them a good partnership deal… If you’re not going to, you know, commit to trying to make the partnership stronger because you’re flirting with rejoining, I think there’s some dangers there,” Cameron says

“I don’t think actually necessarily joining a customs union is the right answer. If you look at the economic problems we have today, I don’t really think they’ve got anything to do with Brexit at all. I mean, our economic problems are we are overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxing, over-regulated, and far too much being spent on working age welfare. Those are a set of problems that have nothing to do with Brexit. We need a government that actually gets spending under control, gets taxes down, helps entrepreneurs, deals with our borrowing problem, reforms the welfare, and massively deregulates so we can build houses, build infrastructure. None of those have got anything to do with Europe. So that’s sort of, in a way, that’s my point. Do we really want to go into another decade-long debate about whether we should be in or out, when actually we should deal with our own problems while making the partnership model work?”

“I fought the campaign to stay in on an amended basis, and I obviously wanted to win that campaign. I was desperately disappointed that we lost that campaign. But I’m a democrat, a believer in democracy. We voted to leave, and I think the right thing now is to try and become, you know, not just neighbors, partners, and friends of the EU, but the best friends, the best neighbors, the best partners. And I think we can make that work”

Story by @ChaplainChloe: https://t.co/gKPvWA9LAu

[Milton Friedman Daily @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman:

“Private markets are the only mechanism that permits a complex, interrelated society to be organized from the bottom up, not from the top down.”

“The comparison between a free market and an army brings it out. In a military setting, the general commands, the colonel tells it to the major, the major tells it to the captain, and so on down the line until the private jumps to attention.”

“In an economic market, it’s the other way around. The consumer goes to the store and buys a toothpaste, and that order gets sent up the line until it affects what toothpastes are produced and ultimately how they’re produced.”

“Those are the only two ways you can organize society: from the bottom up or the top down.”

[Alex @Admalez]

@Rambaudian @HCH_Hill The Welsh Senedd is a joke, it has barely any power, even less than the Scottish parliament does. The structure incentivises them to meddle in lifestyle choices and public use incentives because that concerns the little power it has got. It is not entirely the voters' fault.

[Alex @Admalez]

I think Wales is just a comparatively poor area in general. Much of it is a post-industrial former mining town and once the pits closed there were no longer the jobs or investment to make it prosperous. Much of the rest, like Powys and Pembrokeshire, are fairly rural areas dotted with small market towns. Which only really leaves the M4 Corridor of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea to be the economic engine of Wales. The Adam Smith Institute published a study showing that Wales was the biggest net beneficiary of welfare.

[Alex @Admalez]

I think a big reason why you end up stupid stuff like supermarkets being made to sell alcohol twice as expensive and blanket urban 20 mph zones is because the Welsh Senedd has very little power so it forced to exercise it in areas where it does. So you just end up with more meddling in lifestyle choices or public-use interventions.

[Alex @Admalez]

@Bushra1Shaikh Nationality and ethnicity are two separate things. A Englishman who moved to Japan and eventually obtain Japanese citizenship still would never be ethnically Japanese but that doesn't mean that he can't be proud of Japan.

[Nick Krosse @nkrosse]

A lot of folks like to analogize age verification for online services to getting carded to buy alcohol, but this is like carding people to enter a grocery store that sells alcohol regardless of whether you plan to purchase it or not

[Alex @Admalez]

Super injunctions are an unhelpful and counterproductive restriction on free speech that undermine accountability for abusers. They generate media speculation and end up creating a Streisand Effect once they are lifted.

[The Sun @TheSun]

Now second well-known celeb with ‘many victims’ hides behind injunction – after Walliams lost bid to remain anonymous https://t.co/E6B8OPNcrv

[The Atlas Society @TheAtlasSociety]

Free speech protects your right to disagree. It also protects everyone else’s right to disagree with you.

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

"If you look at the economic problems we have today, I don’t really think they’ve got anything to do with Brexit at all.

I mean, our economic problems are we are overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxing, over-regulated, and far too much being spent on working age welfare.

Those are a set of problems that have nothing to do with Brexit."

[Alex @Admalez]

@BoppusMaximus @ProjectLiberal There are certain ideological overlap with several prominent Republicans such as Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. He would still be a fairly conventional Republican conservative. The Regean foundation itself is still strongly tied to Republicanism.