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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Long standing Brexiteer, Corbyn, needs more than just threats
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Long standing Brexiteer, Corbyn, needs more than just threats if he’s to budge on a referendum
There comes a time when threats to quit need to be followed up with actions or else they will just be ignored pic.twitter.com/sPBxu4LcAa
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FPT: To be renamed Patisserie Mrs Doyle. Ah go on, go on, go on.
What if they say no?
"why, what do you need it for?"
"umm...... because we can't agree on anything except the need for cake and unicorns"
Without going into our policy in the Pacific, announcing that we are there to “deter China” seems unnecessarily provocative at this rather delicate moment in our history.
It turns out Tesla's self-driving cars may not be quite as safe as they or the NHTSA claimed. Instead of being 40% safer than self-driven cars, the (admittedly small) dataset says it is 59% less safe.
You say cock-up. I say conspiracy.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-tesla-autopilot-cut-crashes-40-that-was-bogus/
China had been expected to lift their bans on British poultry and cosmetics which have not been tested on animals.
The agreements would have opened up access to markets worth an estimated £10.2billion over five years.
Mr Hammond was expected to return to Britain on Sunday triumphantly clutching the two Memorandums of Understandings with China.
He doesn't care about centrist rebels or splits at the moment because momentum and union money will kill them off at the next election.
He wants purity - the left to have complete control of the Labour party machine and candidates. Then they will appear united which the electorate use as an indicator of competence. They then wait for the voters boredom with the Tories to exceed their fear of Labour and then the long march is over.
Similarly if there is a market for most seats at the next election - any Labour split will increase the chances for the Conservatives to win most seats, and so that becomes a decent proxy.
One of the benefits of these proxy bets is that they have a fair chance of winning even if there isn't a Labour split - though the downside is that if the split is less effective than the SDP breakaway, or the Tories split harder, then they could end up as losers.
One thing they aint is stupid. They know what they are doing.
But what about the tribe of Remainers/New Labour/social democrats types who can't stomach another day of Jezza and his hard left agenda?
Every marginal has people like this.
Party discipline is what it'll come down to. For those of a science mind, if you want to use physics and the Standard Model as a metaphor of British politics, party discipline is like the 'strong force'. It tends to only work at short ranges of course - within the Westminster Bubble!
In any by-election, the LDs will fancy a go at it, and Corbyn's Labour candidate will sweep up a decent number of 'socialist' votes in urban constituencies. The right will just sit there, not make any progress, but not shed many votes.
In a way, splitters from the Leave side of Labour might be more successful.
As usual, Vince Cable has been utterly silent on this. You wonder what on Earth he does do.
To me, that's stupid.
Even though the overall result was in favour of Leave there were 16 constituencies with >=75% of the vote for Remain against 74.9% being the highest vote for Leave in any constituency. 11 of those 16 seats are in London.
EDIT: I've realised that I have voted in three of the top ten most Remain-y constituencies. Can anyone beat that?
Then a snooze.
Then maps the timetable for his party to go back to their constituencies to prepare for power!
aka Countdown.
With a jaffa cake.
the key is being and remaining in charge of labour at that point.
*Yeah, I know it's officially a cake, but that just sounds wrong.
There is a rare difference of opinion on all this between Corbyn and McDonnell. Corbyn doesn't feel strongly about membership, thinks referendums divide working-class voters, and sympathises with the MPs in Leave seats who say that a referendum will just make life horrible for them. He doesn't bother with electoral calculations much - he reckons you should do what you think right, and voters will respect it in the end. McDonnell wants to win the next election as the main priority, and is also much more of a Remainer anyway, so he's both keener on a referendum and more worried about splits.
Personally I think Labour is missing a trick in not being Remain champions - it would have a good shot at keeping on board a lot of centrist voters who are uneasy about other things, and the number of Labour voters who hate the EU more than they dislike the Tories is small. But I'm more like McDonnell in looking for electoral advantage.
Only electoral defeat can begin the restoration of sanity in the Labour Party.
And there were reports recently that some PV campaigners wanted a motion/amendment put forward and disagreed on strategy, so not impossible that some would back it publicly.
Would that every Labour supporter were as sensible as you and I!
May's Deal vs No Deal would
1) get Corbyn the Brexit he so wants
2) still allow Labour to paint any post-Brexit horrors as owned by the Tories and
3) honour the referendum result
4) show up the People's Vote bunch as only wanting Remain, not avoid the tsunami of shit of No Deal Brexit.
"I'm only 36, I hope to have a long and prosperous career and when someone says might you want to one day run for leader of the Liberal Democrats the answer is honestly, I don't know."
"Next Wednesday would be a great definition of 'one day' if that's ok with you"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47231504
I wonder if they have a joint audacious flattery desk in MOFA doing brexit and Trump.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47236841
I find it somewhat anachronistic that the low water level on a major river is being cited as a brake on economic growth in this day and age.
Someone said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) if we don't like it they can jolly well stuff it up their jumper.
This is China today, on a military issue of some importance. I don't know the right needle to thread between antagonistic towards an expansionist China and still wanting to trade with them as our economy depends on it. But, also, I am not the Defence Secretary nor the Chancellor.
Who will it be tomorrow?
I do expect Labour to pay a very heavy price if it is in any way seen as being complicit in enabling Brexit. McDonnell seems to get this. Not so sure about the one with the beard though.
The way I read things Labour would be dumb to come out for Ref2 at this point.
They are in an enviable political position. Their compromise offer gives them cover for a No Deal outcome in the unlikely event of TM allowing that to happen. On the better assumption that No Deal would be an act of such negligence and stupidity by a UK government that it is in reality not an option, all Labour have to do is hold the line in opposing the deal in order to produce an endgame which works for them whichever way it goes.
If the deal squeaks through, the DUP could collapse the government with GE to follow. If it doesn't go through, TM could resort to calling a 'back me or sack me' GE. Or perhaps a GE can be secured as the Labour price for ultimately allowing the WA (but not the PD) to pass.
Point is, all of these roads lead to what Labour needs to get into government - a GE.
And if the GE is pre-Brexit, as it could well be, they might then judge that offering Ref2 in their manifesto would significantly increase their chances of winning it. If so, that is the time to do it and not before. Doing it now risks muddying the waters, letting the Tories off the hook and in any event far from guarantees the holy grail of Ref2.
The best way to get Ref2 is with Corbyn as PM. I'm surprised centrist Labour MPs such as Chuka et al cannot see this. It's almost as if they are only slightly bothered about Brexit and not bothered at all about replacing this Tory government with a Labour one. It's almost as if what is driving them above all else is antipathy to Jez.
This has more to do with the increasingly nationalist Xi Government in China than Brexit
I think I've heard worse strategies.
The alternative view (to which I subscribe, and I suspect Jezza does too) is that the best approach is to try to destroy it in its current form by leaving, and being the first of several dominoes to topple until the Brussels apparatchiks wake up and do something about it.
Edit: If Italy leaves the Euro, that will really kick things off.
And it would also feel counter-productive for any new grouping to formally split and come up with a strongly-defined "how we would deal with Brexit" policy, when the likelihood is it won't face an electoral test until after we leave/should have left - ie why would you launch something now which becomes known as "The Second Referendum Party", and then needs to handbrake into "The Rejoin Party" in 7 weeks' time.
So my guess is that pre-B-day, all we get is groups working in the Commons tearoom (like the Spelman-Dromey thing) on specific Brexity stuff. The extent of that may or may not lead to moves outside of the narrow policy band above, with corresponding numbers of lost/resigned whips and frontbench changes.
But I think anything more formal than that will come after we leave, or after we delay for campaigning in a GE/Ref2.
https://twitter.com/Ross_Greer/status/1095998687669571584
China is more agressive about asserting its interests. However, our current predicament requires a judicious approach and tone, not Alan Patridge on a gunboat.