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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Why the threat of a confidence vote on TMay has far less poten
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Why the threat of a confidence vote on TMay has far less potency than it appears
It has been reported over the weekend that Mrs May could possibly face a challenge over the issue of whether Britain remains in a Customs Union after Brexit.
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I think TMay would probably win the confidence vote, but these things can easily take on a life of their own.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43860453
Not least because the BBC has showed footage from a 2004 Question Time showing Theresa May calling for Labour Home Office Minister to resign over some issue and yet Tories are not applying to her what she was applying to others in 2004
More seriously, Mrs M telling us what sort of Brexit we are going to have, absent any debate or decision by parliament, is not a good look.
The part about not joining a customs union is just semantics. If there is an agreement of any sort then whether it is called a customs union or not is angels on the head of a pin stuff. It might be significant here that Labour policy is to leave the customs union then join a new one, so Number 10 will not want to look as if Corbyn is running the show.
The Conservative manifesto said: As we leave the European Union, we will no longer be members of the single market or customs union but we will seek a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.
So there you go: not a new customs union but a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement. Glad that's been cleared up!
https://youtu.be/YpipqJNFDOQ
What you say is why we are leaving *the* customs union. My point is that without knowing what is intended by Number 10, whether we call it *a* customs union or a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement is moot. It is the deal that matters, not the name.
Mrs May only went to the country this time last year because she was convinced she would not only win, but win big. She doesn’t strike me as someone who would make the same mistake the same mistake twice, so I don’t think that inless and untilGraham Brady has amassed 48 letters ..... assuming any from last October have not been withdreawn...... there’ll be no question of a Tory leadership election.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/st-georges-day-celebrations-leicester-1486755.amp?__twitter_impression=true
The last three PMI numbers have all shown sharp slowdowns in growth in the bloc, and ZEW showed a large drop off in investor confidence in Germany*. Will AEP break his streak and correctly call a German recession**?
The German Manufacturing PMI was 58.2 in March, a 15 month low. Now, 58.2 (in the general scheme of things) is a ridiculously high number, so there is a lot of dropping you could get before you even got close to recessionary levels (50). My guess is that the German PMI number will come in at 52-54 for the month, showing the pace of expansion slackening, but still in expansionary territory.
France was 53.7 in March, very sharply down from February (when it was close to 60). My guess is that it will also contract, but not by a significant amount. My money would be on France coming out around the 53-53.5 level.
If I've got these two numbers right, then the Eurozone Flash Manufacturing PMI is almost certain to come out around the 52.5-53.0 level. Again showing slowing momentum, but not an outright recession.
Worth noting that Japan unexpectedly bucked the trend of downward PMI numbers this morning, and posted its first acceleration (albeit only a very small one, and from a depressed number), in five months.
* ZEW measures investor sentiment about economic conditions. It thus has essentially zero predictive power.
** No.
a) “OK then, Parliament” - which would drive the ERG still more mental
b) ignore the vote - never a good look and risking dangerous defeats later
c) play for time in some way - but the clock is ticking down to 29 March 2019 and none of the participants look in a mood to be played
a) looks like the path of least resistance at present but this morning’s reaffirmation makes it appreciably harder. So I’m guessing some form of c).
But seeing Jon Ashworth and Jeremy Hunt on TV together, I cannot help but thing of a comedy double act. Hunt looks slightly gormless and Ashworth as through the camera aspect is wrong. In their defence, I think they're looking into the sun, and apparently Ashworth did the marathon yesterday ...
It should be said that Hunt seems more uncomfortable standing beside Ashworth than vice versa.
That still won’t do her any good. If 200 Tory MPs vote for her, but 80-100 vote against, with the rest abstaining, then she’ll be holed beneath the waterline.
She won’t have anything like enough confidence in her party or in the Commons on her leadership to carry out her programme, so, unless she won convincingly, I’d expect her to stand down.
If she didn’t, the party would factionalise and she’d start to lose key votes on her legislation thereafter, eventually leading to a GE.
If the major countries of the world are so free trade (against the protectionist EU), how come the US, China, Brazil, Japan and India have so few free trade deals?
The important reasons to leave the EU are two fold: 1. It increases the democratic accountability of our politicians (and therefore hopefully increases the quality of decisions), and 2. The Continental ethos, in terms of political and legal systems, is fundamentally different to ours, and therefore staying in the EU will constantly chafe.
I believe that better governance will pay off in the long run. I think, largely due to the incompetence of Dr Fox, that we are likely to suffer meaningfully worse terms of trade with the rest of the world for the next five years or so.
This is a Parliament where she needs virtually every Tory MP on board, all the time, and there’s an extremely delicate tightrope to be walked.
"This is not a customs union, it is a deep and meaningful customs partnership".
"And what's the difference?"
"Oh my God, look! There's a dead cat on the floor. Who left that there?"
More likely is that she wins the vote but then comes back from the negotiations with something that looks awfully like a CU. She will then need to sell that to all of her party as she has succeeded in doing to date. If the "membership" is restricted to the transitional period I think she will be fine.
Hopefully, we won't find out.
Also, having the trade deal in the name of the EU with the EU flag, and not the UK, just pisses some people off, I think; it delegitimises whatever is in it. Some may laugh at that and say - “why the hell does that matter?” - but it does, because, again, it goes to heart of people’s identity and their views on democratic consent, which is what this is all about really.
Those are the two red lines I’d be looking for.
To the ERG, she can say "it's not membership of the customs union, and it gives us time to get all our ducks in the row, and this was the best I could do and avoid a defeat at the hands of the perfidious Lords, and business has been desparate for a lengthy transition period, and we're still leaving."
And to Soubry et al, she can say "you know how I said seven years, well you and I know that that will get extended indefinitely, and staying in the customs union, I mean err having a customs partnership, well, it would make rejoining easier, and you really don't want a No Deal Brexit do you?"
Lots of MPs have said that Brexit is stupid, but "they have to do it"
No amount of "democratic accountability" will compensate for the losses.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/988304078005526528
However, I am bothered about the clustering effect. If this proposal were to go through in, say, 2021 we would have bank holidays on March 1st, March 17th, April 3rd & 5th and 23rd, then May 3rd and 30th. That’s 7 in 3 months. then nothing until the end of August and again till the end of November.
So when we say service focused, we're talking about persuading countries to bring down internal barriers to free markets (such as rules and specifications on service contracts that act as NTBs). That's really hard, because it encroaches on countries sovereignty in a way that physical goods do not.
I think we'll find - in the medium term - it very easy to sign deals with Canada, Australia and NZ, and I look forward to cheaper wine from these countries. I think we'll replicate the existing EU deals in time, although we've been pretty poor at making progress on this so far. I think the other targets - like the US - come with compromises we'll find very hard to swallow.
On non-tariff barriers, however, it’s made slightly easier with respect to common law jurisdictions that share similar professional standards and contract law to our own. In the medium-long term I think there are some exciting opportunities in the Commonwealth countries.
It's like Ireland. How much discussion was there in Ireland about rejoining the United Kingdom post independence?
None. (Even when Ireland was economically stagnating and the UK was surging ahead.)
The UK has chose to leave the EU. It may prosper, or it may elect Jeremy Corbyn, but whatever path is ahead, it is extremely unlikely to involve rejoining the EU.
https://twitter.com/CDP1882/status/988065256399343618
Edited extra bit: Mr. Flashman (deceased) beat me to it.
As long as she can officially quit it and it doesn’t affect the DfIT and what it is doing, she’ll be ok. But, there will need to be a degree of non-EU/UK tarriff differentiation between the EU and the UK because I doubt we will want to do the same things with importing non-EEA manufactured and agricultural goods.
Why scampi..... was going to put oranges, but thought that inappropriate in the circs!
I will defend our MPs. Most of them are good people much like ourselves: they make mistakes, but try to do a good job for their constituents and what they think is right for the country. You will find every single sin amongst them (and possibly all sins in one or two), but you will also find every virtue.
But this woman seems rather unsuitable. I would not want to be a constituent who gets on her bad side (and it sadly seems that is rather easy to do).
As I recall, when she lost an election over in Tory west London (Kensington I think), she lodged a complaint that 20,000 postal votes for her had apparently somehow gone missing.
There’s a significant minority who view our split with the EU as illegitimate, and will be agitating for us to rejoin for decades.
Question for PBers.
My wife is off for the first two and half weeks of the summer holidays. (This is LA, so this is from about the 6th of June.)
This leaves me with 16 days to entertain an 8 and a 10 year old.
I'm not going to stay home, because I'd go mad, so am going to bundle them onto a plane and do something. Specifically something awesome that they'll love. I don't mind jumping on a plane for 12 hours if I have to, and I have two million airmiles, so can afford to go practically anywhere.
Suggestions?
But, much more likely that partnership is agreed in certain key sectors, like planes and cars, for a price.
And there's only so much wandering around, eating awful overpriced food, one can put up with.
There have already been several votes on it in the Commons; Govt has won every single one...
The National Parks are the best bit of America. Further afield less crowded too, like Mesa Verde and around Taos.
Liked the comment posted a few minutes ago about he claiming the RO had ‘lost’ 20,000 of her postal votes!
With or without ham and pineapple?
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesTimes/status/988313194476294144