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Time for Starmer to be less timid about the Brexit? – politicalbetting.com
Time for Starmer to be less timid about the Brexit? – politicalbetting.com
The above is from YouGov and has the latest view on Brexit. The data I always look to in Brexit polling is the one here on the far right on the table – what the C2DE split is. These, of course, were always regarded as the big drivers of the referendum outcome and have tended to remain supportive. But that has changed. Look now and 55% think it has been more of a failure compared with just 11% saying a success.
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Instead as the Telegraph reported at the weekend the Labour plan is to be very cautious at the next general election and promise to respect the Brexit vote to ensure a Labour majority. Then in a first time align closer to the EU, perhaps along the lines of the NZ deal with the EU on food exports and maybe rejoin a customs union too. Then only if Labour look to be heading for a second term would they consider going for rejoining the EEA or full EU after a second EU referendum
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/05/27/labour-keir-starmer-plan-take-britain-back-eu-brexit/
So we will get nothing before the election, but afterwards we're heading for Norway light.
"Brexit was a stupid idea, I plan to do nothing about it" doesn't sound great.
"Brexit was a stupid idea, I plan to renegotiate it" might be OK but it sounds a bit lame, and he'll be pressed to rule out unpopular things like restoring freedom of movement. If he rules out all the domestically unpopular things then he won't be able to actually renegotiate anything meaningful because the EU won't agree.
"Brexit was a stupid idea, I plan to reverse it" is bold and glorious and he can make massive free spending commitments with all the extra GDP it would bring. But reversing it isn't in his power, it has to be agreed by all the EU member states. His opponents will credibly claim that he'd have to join the Euro and Schengen, which are way less popular than just "rejoin".
Whether this translates into genuine pro-EU sentiment after the election of a Labour government is another question.
"Brexit will shrink our economy because a lack of imported labour will stop us growing." Net immigration a record.
"Brexit will cause Sterling to go into a tail spin boosting inflation". Sterling one of the stronger currencies in 2023.
"The UK will have a year long recession because of Brexit." Nope, it won't.
"The UK will be the slowest growing of the G7." Nope. About average actually.
Every day there is more nonsense blaming Brexit for some ill. Its exactly the same nonsense that we used to get in reverse when the EU was blamed for all our ills when we were members. Maybe, just maybe, Starmer, Sunak and, nah Davie is a completely lost cause, well, some of our politicians might start to address our real problems. A horrendous balance of payments deficit that built up whilst we were in the single market. A serious training gap that arose because freedom of movement disincentivised training of our own people. A disconnect between our education system and the skills actually needed.
Or we can just keep blaming the bogey man. I suppose its easier.
Because it would be a massive mistake to say anything beyond "like everything else, the Tories have made a total mess of Brexit; the first step for a Labour government is to do the hard work of rebuilding our reputation around the world, especially with our closest trading partners in Europe."
And "would you take us back in" is I repeat of that - "No government can tie the hands of its successors, but, given that the Tories made a total mess of Brexit, the first step...etc..."
Starmer will continue to be timid over Brexit, but the Tories campaigning on "Brexit under threat if Starmer PM" will just push more votes to Labour when the voters want Brexit under threat.
The Tories have snookered themselves.
They will be talking about it for decades to come and for all the right reasons.
Brexit also wholly determined the governments we've had since 2019, and not to our benefit.
Whereas membership was status quo.
You just followed the party line.
There is a stubbornness to people, but even allowing for that, potential for Brexit to become even more unpopular.
We were right to leave.
The Tories have made an arse of it.
Hopefully the next government will do a better job of it.
That's where I sit.
In that sense, I think Brexit has been a total failure; I’ve got family and friends all over the world, but I still think of myself as a European, not as a citizen of some artificial grouping around the Pacific rim!
So for me, Brexit is a total failure.
Sooner or later one or both PM and LOTO will have to follow the public in their opinion of Brexit.
I mean in less than a decade the Tory leadership went from being pro Section 28 to introducing same sex marriage.
Had Remain narrowly won in 2016 the 2020 election would certainly not have been the Tory landslide Boris got in 2019.
Instead Corbyn may even have become PM of a Labour minority government in a hung parliament with new pre election PM Osborne leaking Tory votes like a sieve to a resurgent Farage and UKIP
Tories are notoriously capable of a reverse ferret. I might even consider voting Tory again if they came out as the party of Rejoin.
SKS won't want to startle the chavs with any flashy Brexit announcements this side of a GE. After the election he'll leave them examining the Cheesy Wotsit dust in their navels while the government subtly realigns with the EU.
The Tories would never take the UK back into the EU, a future re elected Labour government might but again it would be a future Tory leader and Tory Party accepting that not the Tory Party leading on it
The interesting bit is if (and I emphasise if) the numbers continue to drift. Labour are reasonable to fear 30% of the electorate, especially with FPTP. But there's some threshold where the democratic thing is to ignore the minority. Twenty percent? Fifteen percent?
And then, if Norwayish is the next thing to try... What aspects of life is the UK going to tag along with the EU on, and where are we taking a different path? And if nearly all the rest of the continent is involved in one political setup, do we really want to be outside that? You might say "we don't want the politics", but how do you get democracy without politics?
6/6 This is how it works: shill for the Kremlin, add some Marxoid claptrap for members of the cult, deny genocide...but for the @ucu delegates just wrap it all up in pacifism and "both sides" with a bit of anti-Israel stuff thrown in ... as below. It's a political technique that, if it was an academic paper, would get a fail. But a slim majority fell for it.
Translation for tankies in @ucu ... Russia fired 37 cruise missiles and 30 drones at Kyiv last night ... they were shot down using American/German supplied weapons saving countless lives. There's your moral equivalence - maybe explain it to any survivors of the UK blitz 🤷🏻♂️
https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1662860900414439426?cxt=HHwWhIC2gbjL1ZMuAAAA
As the French surrealists (IIRC) said, during the time of General Franco, "If you want to see the Middle Ages, just cross the border."
good result for the free speech union.
Brown should have joined the eurozone and then Labour should have painted Tory and UKIP efforts to bring back the groat as similar to 1690-ism. If Italy could manage to join! Prudent Gordon's five tests were total toss.
The EU will also change. Poland is a coming power in the EU and will build a group that will shape the EU more to their liking. Our good relations with Poland over the Ukraine will make this another opportunity. The French will be unhappy about how things are going but we might just cope with that as well.
I mean, if people are turning against their own support of Brexit they're going to vote Labour or LD anyway, and while people may often say they don't know what Keir stands for they know he's not a Tory (outside the minds of Corbynites anyway). He can point to things as they are and promise vaguely to fix it, he doesn't need to add 'and btw, what a bunch of fools anyone who voted for Brexit is, right?', which is the impression I get of what some want.
That's just not necessary and it may be motivated by a desire for vindication, but when someone is on their knees, you help them back to their feet, if they react against what they did you can save the gloating for later, lest you push them back to their old position.
Term 2 - formal assosciation with EU/explicit talk of rejoining
Term 3 - rejoin EU
The EU would want at least that long to see if the Brexit desire had become an acceptably small part of the electorate.
The issue for its few remaining supporters is that it hasn't actually solved any problems at all. They are unable to point to something and say, that's a clear benefit of Brexit. Yet they have so little curiosity about why their project has failed so comprehensively.
(The funniest future history is the one where the next government manoevres the UK into independently agreeing with almost everything the EU does in order to allow the four freedoms so that the economy works. Then it's the Conservatives who rail against this in a "we are a great nation and should be in the room, leading not following" way. To save EEA types the time, it doesn't matter how rational or true this is. We left because of the feels, if we rejoin it will be because of the feels.)
No shit.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/may/29/2-tax-uk-rich-list-families-raise-22bn-year-reform-inequality
...The campaigners said similar wealth taxes in Norway, Spain and Switzerland had helped to reduce inequality and eased the cost of living crisis for some of the poorest people in those countries...
Or it might raise nothing at all - Norway saw a net decrease in revenue with their wealth tax.
The only party in the next generation who could take the UK back into the EU would be Labour with LD support
Or just how badly they've played their cards.
A defensive alliance is just a defensive alliance. Although I suppose you could say that by its very nature it's necessarily reactionary...
Leaving was and is a disaster.
But we can't rejoin - so we need to make the best of it now. The Brexiteers have failed to do that, time for a competent Remainer to give it a go.
Get Brexit Undone!
The clamour is getting so loud even the Trappist Monks in the Shadow Cabinet must be hearing it.
Great argument you've got there. Relying on X=X but saying other people can't analyse. Who were NATO defending themselves against in Afghanistan or Serbia?
I can't see any good reason to take that idiot Paul Mason's scribblings seriously.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=351906
..."In particular, Vietnam is now home to major smartphone manufacturers' production bases. Korean semiconductors are used as intermediary goods in Vietnam to produce finished IT goods," the report added.
The report noted that Vietnam's abundant low-wage workforce and high accessibility to the Chinese market are prompting global businesses, including those from Korea, to build manufacturing facilities in the Southeast Asian country.
For instance, Samsung Electronics relocated its smartphone and computer production bases to Vietnam from 2018 to 2020. Apple also moved parts of its iPad production lines from China to Vietnam last June, while Google is also considering such a relocation.
The revival of Vietnam's economy is another encouraging factor. While its economy had slowed during the COVID-19 lockdown, it rebounded sharply and achieved 8 percent growth last year. ..
The Tories are trying to make out that Starmer will take the UK back into the EU at a bat of an eyelid, but they're having difficulty making the charge stick. They would love Starmer to go all in on rejoin.
Is that as any good as "The Predator" or "The Batman"?
My personal view, is that over time more pragmatic politicians will exist both in the UK and the EU, and maybe even in France. This will lead to more flexibility on the main areas of friction that exist at the moment, it will be an evolving process.
Leisure centres could not take cash despite many older people still unable to use the internet" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/28/juliet-casciano-leisure-centre-kent-cash-pensioners-tennis/
Mr. B, wealth taxes aren't about generating revenue, but trying to financially penalise those who have committed the sin of prosperity.
How you resolve it in a way that allows everyone still use things is an interesting question. I suspect we need the post office or similar to create a cash card...
I simply read into it that Starmer is (rightly) terrified of what might happen if he announced either EFTA+ or EEA as Labour's position (with or without a referendum).
Starmer is looking at the current situation and going for a simple, "Don't rock any boats. Oppositions don't win GE, governments lose them, and at the moment the government is losing it."
He'll say nothing and then AFTER he's won, point out that hidden within a microdot on page 34 of their manifesto was a commitment to join the EEA [1] and therefore implement that.
We're inching back towards the EU. Doubt membership is on the cards this decade, and possibly not even the next, but I would hazard a guess we'll be members again in the 2040s (assuming the world still exists in some recognisable format like it does today).
[1] Along with the captains message.
A lot of the red wall dislikes outsiders. Their community was proud due to cotton / steel / coal etc and quite insular. Someone from outside the area is suspicious enough, never mind foreigners.
These places have been broken economically and socially. They need levelling up as they have nothing. So their lack of services / jobs / prospects is only made worse by outsiders competing for jobs and resources.
Get rid of the outsiders, spend money on local services for local people - that's why a wall of non-voters turned out both for Brexit and then Boris.
@BritainElects
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 43% (-)
CON: 28% (-1)
LDEM: 9% (-2)
GRN: 7% (+2)
REF: 6% (-)
via @OpiniumResearch, 23 - 26 May"
Of course I do not consider myself 'European' in your terms and Brexit has made no difference to my ability to have friends and family all over the world. And given that (unsurprisingly) all the dire warnings of disaster that were promulgated by the Remain campaign have failed to happen, I consider Brexit to have been a success. It achieved its aim of getting us out of the (for me) undemocratic political institutions of the EU.
It could be even more of a success were we to have a sensible Government that took us into the EEA but I am content at the moment with where we are along the road.
Oh, and if the government has not blocked your cards because you are a terrorist paedophile serial killer on the run or have posted something disrespectful about the Prime Minister.
Furthermore, bringing a new gas field onstream is a one-off event, liquefaction takes place on every import.
I respect your knowledge of the industry deeply, but I also cannot consider you entirely unbiased in this area given your professional interests. It's not that I'm accusing you of trying to talk up your pocketbook, but I do think that working for a certain industry in a certain country carries inherent biases in favour of that interest and against competitors. I believe the same to be true of Richard's views on fracking. I take into account both your career backgrounds when I consider what you're saying on these subjects.
Just pretend that it never happened, like the Truss Premiership.
There may be important psychological reasons not to want to use them, but that's a different thing.
(We've got to make better, more dignified use of Post Offices, as a place in every parish where money can be handled securely, officially and efficiently. Shame the recent management have screwed up the dignity- in several senses- so badly.)
If you look at Labour pollster Deborah Mattinson's analysis, one key marker was loss of "destination" high street stores. Perhaps the government should incentivise Marks & Spencer. Though as you imply, the underlying cause is often the loss of the one industry in one-industry towns.
Not sure what it has to do with my post though. Was it intended for another post?
And UK could have been a force for good in that journey.
What troubled people in such places wasn't local immigration, it was that when they went to the big city, or even just watched telly, they would see a changed country, and one doing a lot better than their locale.
Though of course this is broad brush, even in Hartlepool or Boston 30% voted Remain, and in Cambridge or Brighton 20% voted Leave.
https://twitter.com/triggerpod/status/1659563447305089024