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Why being a Rejoiner can make you the next Prime Minister – politicalbetting.com
Why being a Rejoiner can make you the next Prime Minister – politicalbetting.com
51% of Britons think Brexit has been more of a failure than a success. This view is highest among 2024 Labour voters, with 65% considering it more of a failure. Reform UK voters are most likely to see it as an overall success, although still less than half at 38%. pic.twitter.com/o1aRMap8Yj
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https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/33/4/1125/6825293 discusses the relevance of the Chagos ruling to the UK sovereign bases (SBA) on Cyprus. I quote:
“This section applies the law outlined in Chagos to the creation of the SBA. A comparison between the two is appropriate because, in both cases, a part of a colony was separated before independence in order to create a military base under British sovereignty that remains in operation today. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged from the outset that there are differences between how this happened in each instance. These differences suggest that the RoC will find it more difficult than Mauritius, albeit not impossible, to challenge the legality of the separation of its territory. This section focuses on four such differences. First, while Mauritius achieved independence in 1968 – at a time when the existence of the right to self-determination was virtually undisputed – the RoC was created in August 1960, four months before the passing of Resolution 1514 [the UN resolution on which the Chagos decision was based]. Second, Chagos was separated from Mauritius without any consultation with the local population. Conversely, the separation of the SBA was preceded by intense negotiations and a general election. Third, while Mauritians agreed to Chagos’ separation and their independence without any support from third states, Greece and Turkey were actively involved in the negotiations for the independence of the Republic and the creation of the SBA. Fourth, the separation of Chagos from Mauritius became possible through the forced displacement of some 2,000 Chagossians.[98] Nothing similar happened in Cyprus.”
Closer ties with the EU could deliver growth of up to 2.2%.
Clawing back up to half of the damage caused by Brexit.
Delivering double the impact of a UK-US trade deal, according to the govt's own analysis.
And all within Starmer's red lines.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/84236071-b88f-4dc6-b52e-9ca7a6cb4053
Per https://bsky.app/profile/davidheniguk.bsky.social/post/3lhq6sawe7s2r
One could also simply declare that Social Security is now "pay as you go", and write off that debt.
Of course, the first set of debt isn't real debt at all (anyone who thinks the Japanese or the ECB will ever pay back their QE debt is insane). While eliminating the second lowers the debt burden, but increases the structural deficit.
Neither has any impact on the US governments obligations.
Only fundamentally changing Social Security (i.e. giving people less money) and reforming Medicare/Medicaid (i.e. giving people less money and healthcare) will make a genuine dent in the US fiscal position because the US government is an insurance company with a small military attached.
The Tories need to make a net gain of 205 seats at the next election to win a majority of 2.
The most net gains they've made since 1945 is 108 and that was under David Cameron.
The Tory clown show was in charge of implementing it.
Let's see how things are by the end of this Parliament.
The difference is crucial.
Starmer does this, he opens up 80-100 seats to be lost to Reform.
Which means there's probably a real risk that negotiator extraordinaire Starmer does it.
Bear in mind doing so removes damage, which is what we want to do.
If you take the example of AI, for example, it is possible that non alignment with the overly restrictive EU regime "could" create x% of additional growth in the UK (and possibly result in us being taken over by AI, but that is another issue).
Whether we want to align with the EU in any given area is something that is in our discretion. There are some areas where it makes sense to do so. Doing so effectively requires mutual recognition at any given point in time. It is up to both sides to decide whether or not to grant that, whether we have the same regulations or not. If the price of mutual recognition is that we undertake to impose any restriction dreamed up by Brussels in the future it is too high a price to pay.
Looking through the Brexit lens, Farage is the only Brexit backing candidate left standing, whereas there are lots of candidates who are likely to want to go further and faster in unwinding 2016-20. The comparison isn't Farage vs. Streeting, it's Farage vs. the sum of multiple Labour possibles, some of them unknown.
Besides, two of the main scenarios (Starmer going pre-election and Starmer going a couple of years after his second win) lock Farage out. That 25% looks looks like it has a chunk of England fans hopepunting to me.
But we can also note that election results seem to be getting more extreme, so maybe 205 is possible. And Badenoch doesn’t need an overall majority to become PM.
I would also note it is possible for Badenoch to be next PM without winning the next general election. Let’s say Labour win the next general election, maybe without an overall majority and a coalition arrangement fails after a couple of years. Badenoch is seen to have done well, so stays on as Opposition leader. There’s then another general election and Badenoch wins.
I’m not saying all of this is likely, but you can get 8/1 on Betfair.
1) Starmer to decide that he wants to lead next election campaign for Labour.
2) Badenoch to still be LOTO at the GE
3) Con to be largest party after next GE.
I don't think any of those 3 will happen.
It's a crap deal.
I’m mildly surprised about how cowardly Starmer & co have been. The pre GE suggestion was that Labour were only pretending to be Tory lite to placate the red tops and would pivot progressive when they had their majority. Turns out they were exactly who they said they were.
(2) Maybe the Tories will learn that repeatedly dumping their leader doesn’t yield great results.
(3) I agree with you on this one, but is it that unlikely? Give the electorate a few years to forget recent Tory performance. Maybe Reform UK collapses (something that has happened to a Farage party before). Then the Tories emerge as the main recipient of anti-government sentiment.
The EU want to continue taking a lot of fish out of our waters. They seem to be offering a deal on mutual recognition in exchange. It is for our government to decide if that is a good deal for UK plc or not. As with all deals the devil will be in the detail of what is being given for what.
According to Ukrainian figures, yesterday Russia passed 10,000 tanks destroyed/damaged/captured.
And another Russian oil refinery appears to have had a debris-related accident.
And a Russian oil tanker has gone boom at dock in the Baltic. Apparently whilst trying to start the engine...
If he doesn't achieve growth, he's toast anyway.
You might not like it, and will no doubt vent all manner of insults, but it's not unlikely he grasps at the straw - which may or may not turn out to be some sort of help with the economy.
Your appealing to Labour's electoral interests as an argument against it, is pretty desperate stuff.
The smaller the country, the less likely they are to be able to do produce everything themselves. So you need to control for that.
Ultimately, you have to ask yourself a question: is the government the best arbiter of where you spend your money, or should people (as much as possible) be allowed to make their own decisions?
Or flipped round, if the UK desires lots of autonomy, how distant a relationship are we prepared to put up with?
The post 2016 story has been to pinball from denial of the trade-off, to noisily wanting autonomy no matter what, to some stepping back. But the fundamental "something for something"ness of the process hasn't really entered the public consciousness.
For you, Rejoining is much more important than Labour and you'd sacrifice much politically at its altar.
That doesn't mean they should or would agree.
Which countries do you have in mind @williamglenn?
I cannot believe people are still using that pathetic line.
Tons of people, including for some reason many politicians, go by something other than their first name. Saying its for his character is such a lame way of making that quite normal thing look phony.
Theres enough to criticise him for without making such a reach.
Like with the NI border pre-Windsor much of our "trading frictions" with the EU aren't actually structural but organised institutional pedantry, and are neither essential nor necessary.
The idea is to get the British cucks to fold, which is absolutely what many on the Rejoin side would willingly do, because it then creates a smoking-gun for full Rejoin on the basis "we should have votes on the rules that already affect us."
ChatGPT informed him that his company is run by a famous 18th/19th century master builder/developer.
The advantage of Trump returning to power is that the UK is needed for it's Defence ability in ways that were not so essential to the EU last summer - that puts us in a stronger position to negotiate with the EU than before.
Spend on Defence and countries won't attack you.
Spend on Lawyers and they can.
The only time we didn't in my lifetime was the rebate in the early 80s and that took many years and all of Margaret's stubbornness to get a bit of our own money back.
His family don't call him Boris. They use his first name.
He only uses it "professionally", when running for office.
It's a character.
The upside of being in the EU is that we only had to negotiate with the EU as they did an awful lot of the negotiations outside with the rest of the world.. That is one reason our foreign and trade departments are so much bigger than they used to be before we left - we now have a lot more work to do...
Normally when you see an article like this, you'd suspect it had been 'planted' with a friendly journalist by someone on political manoevers. But I'd expect Harris's record of freethinking 'truth to power' journalism would hopefully prevent him from sinking so low?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/09/keir-starmer-politics-labour-growth-reform-uk
The question is what we do now - this is the question that the pro-Brexit side never agreed an answer to. We're already aligned with EU laws and regulations but demanded that we be treated as if we are not. We suffer a pain in the arse trading agreement because we're demanding to be Kazakstan rather than Iceland.
These Eurocrats could have had the guile to keep the UK in the tent. Their failure to do so showed that compromise was an alien concept within The Project. And that was within the comprehension of the majority of UK referendum voters.
Party X, let us say the Labour party, has a clear policy of remaining outside the SM and the CU. It currently runs the country.
The voter is entitled to demand of Labour three things: That it believes the policy; that it believes it is a compelling and good way of running the UK; that it then goes and does so competently.
I suspect most voters don't really think that the government holds the first two beliefs, and that therefore it is less convincing about the third.
Reform's USP in this sense is that voters think it believes the first two and that no-one else now does. Possible Reform does so believe. As to competence, the evidence is completely lacking.
If I am right it explains both Reform's surge but only minority support, and the lack of enthusiasm for any other. The three demands listed above need to be three lemons in a row at the fair.
Remember we weren't voting for what we had versus leaving we were voting for what Cameron had got us but couldn't explain versus leaving..
Can you accept that Rejoin is not a silver bullet solution to all our problems? If things were objectively better before Brexit then we would not have had Brexit. Our decline - the thing we need to arrest - started long long before Brexit, and won't be fixed by magically reversing course.
Aside from some nebulous idea about "sovereignty", or the ability to eat bananas that look how we goddamn want, the major motivating force behind Brexit was immigration. Surely no one can dispute that.
And since Brexit, immigration has seen a huge increase. While I'm not 100% sure peoples' lives have improved demonstrably. I challenge people, even political sophisticates on here, to name me three sovereign measure that we have implemented now that we couldn't have in the EU (I happen to know one or two).
Which circles back to immigration. Brexit has failed on the one tangible measure that so many people voted for it to address.
People then worry about what voters might think of any party that doesn't continue it.
Madness.
It might have been slightly more useful for the header to look at some of the runners and riders and their chances, perhaps identifying where there might be some value, but hey, we'll work with what we have.
So if you lack export experience but you want to trade internationally you pay for the skills or (in the past) have departments within the government (or Consulates) to aid you. With Brexit, we simply jumped off a export cliff without the structures being in place to develop new skills in trade.
You could argue that physical trade was dying on the alter of cheap chinese tat, or GM infused meat, but the damage was done as there was no plan. This lack of planning is what will kill this current government as it wanders from issue to issue or whatever is on the Telegraph's front page.
A bit of background on steel and aluminum imports ahead of the expected announcement of 25% tariffs (and the cancellation of existing exemptions/ exclusions?) tomorrow --
US steel imports are ~ 25m tons, and stable..
https://x.com/Brad_Setser/status/1888806816798167476
Bottom line is that the US steel industry failed to take market share as a result of the last round of tariffs, and probably won't this time.
The aluminium tariff is even more likely to be self-defeating.
And the impact on China is minor compared to that on US neighbours.
I'm not sure why Trump feels it necessary to piss on every western alliance, but that's undoubtedly what he's doing.
Very chilly here in the Midlands - again.
FPT:
The President Must vs the rule of law clash is coming to a head more quickly than I expected.
He has 2 court rulings stopping allegedly illegal access to state records in in its tracks whilst the Courts consider - one from an Obama appointed judge, and one from a Regan appointee. His GOGEy setup is getting a its wings clipped.
MAGA peeps are going for the the Obama appointee, and demanded that he be impeached, and that he be allowed to do whatever he wants. But not the other one.
He's going to get his wings and his balls clipped if he does not watch it.
On bat tunnels, jumping spiders and European Union Law, there are two main pieces of UK legislation that govern the protection of species, The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, and more importantly in a recent context (because we were still able to build things in the 80s and 90s), The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations of 2017.
Both were implemented in order to enshrine EU law, despite the fact that in 2017, we'd already voted to leave.
The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 enshrined the Birds Directive and the Bern Convention into UK law. It was enacted primarily to implement these European Council Directives: 79/409/EEC on the conservation of wild birds and the Bern Convention, which focuses on the conservation of wild flora and fauna and their natural habitats in Europe.
The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 implements guidelines from the European Union's Habitats Directive (Council Directive 92/43/EEC) and the Wild Birds Directive (2009/147/EC) specifically within the UK context.
This regulation applies to anyone planning land or property development projects and requires compliance with strict parameters, such as conducting appropriate ecology surveys and obtaining a European Protected Species Licence (EPSL) when necessary.
It also mandates that any plan or project proposal affecting a European site must undergo a Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) to ensure it does not significantly harm the designated features of the site.
The regulation is enforced by various organisations including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), and Natural England, among others.
Hopefully this helps some PBers who have been in denial over this issue.
And we have a legitimate choice about whether to implement what comes out of the negotiations we do unfortunately have to mess up, rather than just rubber-stamping it in Parliament to give the illusion of democracy, as we did with around 80% of our laws before we left.
It's a conversation I overheard a couple of hours ago, here's what I posted:
Sitting in a posh-ish Bangkok restaurant having lunch. Overheard two older businessmen discussing global politics - one Israeli (judging by the accent) - one Singaporean Chinese (I think)
They did a quick resume of the world:
America - still powerful, Trump is mad
China - scary
France - perhaps the most beautiful country, really poor politicians
Russia - scary
Britain - “it just gets worse and worse every year, Boris was bad enough, this new guy is terrible. Brits aren’t the brightest”
Oh dear. However they did then spend 10 minutes discussing British cultural references - from the royals to Piers Morgan - so at least we’re still talked about
[from this I took several lessons, one of which is: Boris might be unique in being a leading politician known worldwide by his first name]
Steel and Aluminium are the products typical spoken about in 1970-90's conversations about tariffs. So I'm not surprised about the focus on them nor the reality that the raw(ish) materials Trump is adding tariffs on are things that the US market is built around receiving - which will be those steels from Canada / Mexico and heavy oil from Canada going to North East state refineries.
So we have the case that Trump is looking at the obvious text book tariffs without reading anything beyond the headline without regard to the consequences because all he wants is another headline to make his supporters feel like he's doing what he promised. And screw the consequences because those will be felt by other people and true Trump supporters will happily accept the pain (more fool them).
In which fucking universe is a Novotel posh-ish?
Apart from it being a generally good thing to have politicians with principles that they have the courage to defend, it’s actually very good practice for successful politicians to have to lay out a vision of difficult ideas that they believe in.
AFAICS she is marmite amongst Tory MPs, and when you only have a rump party left that does not seem to be a good position in which to have placed yourself.
Novotel is quite a chic brand in Asia, but 4 star rather than 5. So, posh-ish
The right to determine your own destiny is no small thing.
I'd also argue the EU is in the worst of worlds. It lacks the competitive spirit of numerous nation states doing their own thing to try and be the best, and it lacks the same degree of uniformity and common policy (with corresponding advantage for its relatively large size) that China and the USA has. It's integrated enough to meddle, too integrated to be competitive on a member state level, not integrated enough to take real advantage of its size.