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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If it’s an IndyRef YES then CON can afford to lose 9 seats
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If it’s an IndyRef YES then CON can afford to lose 9 seats at GE2015 knowing it’d have a majority after partition
The plan is that the actual separation should take place in March 2016 which could have an impact on what happens in the aftermath of next May’s UK general election. For clearly on separation Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats will cease to exist and the commons will be reduced from 650 seats to 591.
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Which happened under Labour and led to the deaths of nearly a million people.
Ergo Labour can't be in charge of the partition of the UK.
Do you have the link to that NHS story?
Never mind - I found it
Labour recently had a Scottish PM and 13 years of Scottish Chancellors. The Conservatives have 1 Scottish MP. That could damage Labour in England and Wales.
Plus, Osborne being see as a git would be a positive. Everybody would be willing to believe he'd be a tight-fisted sod with the Scots.
Then we have the nightmare scenario of a Labour General Election victory but with a majority contingent on Scottish MPs. To avoid that, England would have to go blue (I also think it'd help the SNP north of the border).
But whoever wins next year will need to create a Convention in order to develop a new constitutional settlement either for the rUK or the whole UK. That should include all parties and what eventually emerges should be put to a referendum to ensure that it has full buy-in and will not be subject to continual change depending on who is in power at Westminster. Whatever happens next month we are not going to be carrying on as we are.
Always good to see someone get proper care. What is interesting is that a hospital in the heart of tourist London is dis-organised enough that it is unable to even charge patients with insurance.
(1) The GE is postponed for a year or so. Given how hard this would be to do, it would clearly require the explicit agreement from all major Westminster parties. However, if it was feasible, it would allow the independence negotiations to be conducted in an orderly fashion, followed by Scottish independence day, the publication of the rUK manifestos and then the rUK GE.
(2) The independence negotiations are concluded before April 2015 (almost a year before the SNP's proposed deadline). This amount of time is actually quite similar to what happened in other European countries separating, such as Czechoslovakia. Obviously these negotiations could then only focus on the real necessities (borders, citizenship, national debts etc.) -- lots of other issues would have to be decided post-independence in bilateral international negotiations.
If the GE takes place as planned in May 2015 and independence happens in 2016 or later, I fear the rUK parties will enter a bidding war on being toughest on Scotland (as predicted/threatened by Nigel Farage in Andrew Neil's excellent documentary two nights ago), and this would make serious negotiations almost impossible, which again would probably lead Scotland to declare UDI in 2016, stating that the UK government was breaking its word made in the Edinburgh Agreement to conduct the negotiations in good faith. A UDI would lead to the rUK being saddled with the entire national debt and no access to the nuclear weapons in Faslane. In other words, a complete nightmare scenario.
UKIP's critique just seems to get more accurate by the day.
I do not think the election date will change. Early conclusion of negotiation is unlikely because there's so much to unravel, and if it were postponed I think many voters would be less than happy.
@Speedy, FPT you mentioned trying to get something published. May I suggest you have a conversation with Morris Dancer, gent of this parish, and, if you can find him, Andy Cooke, occasional gent of this parish.
@TSE : Your presence is required on the diplomacy board in the next 17 hours. Miss this deadline like you did the last and your popularity ain't half going to drop.
More interesting is when No wins, the pressure for there to be a new settlement to address the current political imbalance (with Scotland having their own parliament but England not) will become very high.
Scotland may well get a form of a Devomax, but in return England will get a more democratic solution as well. That itself may reduce the benefit of having lots of Scottish MPs anyway.
UDI would be worse for Scotland. It would be saying 'I'm not going to negotiate'. So overnight their banks would have no lender of last resort, Scotland would have no physical mechanism to borrow or pay for public services, salaries and pensions would go unpaid, and they'd have made an implacable enemy of the rUK. It would be an almost instant meltdown. A 'run on the bank' of the national finances. They'd be literally incapable of settling bills as the Treasury in London simply could not replenish the bank accounts of Scottish public bodies. A Scottish entry into the world would be bankruptcy, riots, deaths and tumbleweed blowing down the Royal Mile. A more gargantuan fu<k-up could not be dreamt up.
Sure the rUK would have to assume liability for the 8% of debt that is Scotland's and the submarines might have no nuclear weapons to put in them. But the day to day impact in Kidderminster would be essentially zip. In Kirkcaldy they'd not be able to pay for food.
I have to say though the system in the states isn't always that much better. A friend of mine on a holiday in Texas was struck down with appalling stomach pain and was whipped into a local A&E. Diagnosed as gall stones it meant a stay in hospital plus an operation to remove them. She had nothing but praise for the treatment and the conditions in the hospital but, though she handed over her insurance details, never heard a thing from the insurance company or the hospital.
What do you think will happen to the negotiations if for instance the new government has made it part of its manifesto that the nuclear weapons must stay in Scotland till 2030 -- something which it would be completely impossible for any Scottish Government to accept? You can't just put independence on hold until the Scots agree. Scotland would declare UDI if that happened.
Also, I'd argue the UK would be almost ungovernable after a Yes vote. To take but one example, there's no way the UK government could have privatised the Royal Mail if Scotland had already voted Yes, given the Scottish Government's opposition to privatisation.
A UDI would be messy, and not a good start for Scotland.
Mind you, I feel this likely an academic discussion, given the polls. I certainly hope so.
and the iPlayer volume goes up to 11.. annoying, but forgivable if a nod to Spinal tap
Something along these lines perhaps:
NO Majority 0% - 15% .......... 10 - 15 years.
NO Majority 15% - 25% .........15 - 25 years
NO Majority >25% ................. 25 - 35 years
Similarly, they must finish >40 seats ahead to retain largest party status.
It could be done quick and dirty, but that would be very bad for the Scots.
John Curtice lookalike!!
"Not being complete morons..."
I think I've spotted the flaw in your post
"Scotland would declare UDI"
Really? Have you thought through how that idea would work out?
The real issue here is regulatory. We wouldn't now move them to Devonport because Devonport does not have nuclear weapons storage safety certification. The 'billions' quoted as the cost of moving is driven by an assumption of the pace, complexity and bureaucracy of doing anything in the civil service and of building like for like replicas of Faslane's facilities elsewhere. But that is a decision not a given.
For example the actual dock the subs moor against (and from which weapons are loaded/unloaded) is not a physical part of Scotland! It is large floating concrete Mulberry Harbour affair that could be tugged to Devonport.
Politicians and civil servants go 'hmm, very hard, very slow, very expensive'. Right up until one with authority (PM Dave, PM Redward?) says "Bollocks. Move the subs, move the weapons and store them somewhere physically secure, pass legislation to make this legal. Get on with it."
The Times did it again a couple of days ago in their editorial. They said the British prison population was around 85,000. In fact there are roughly another 8,000 prisoners in Scotland (and incidentally around 1,500 in Northern Ireland). The correct number for Britain is currently 85,795 + 7,848 = 93,643. This means quoting the figure as 85,000 is 10% less than the true figure.
http://www.howardleague.org/weekly-prison-watch/
http://www.sps.gov.uk/Publications/ScottishPrisonPopulation.aspx
GB
Labour 9.568m votes, 356 MPs = 26875 votes to elect an MP
Conservatives 8.782m votes, 198 MPs = 44355 votes to elect an MP
England
Labour 8.050m votes, 286 MPs = 28148 votes to elect an MP
Conservatives 8.115m, 194 MPs = 41829 votes to elect an MP
Scotland
Labour 922,402 votes, 41 MPs = 22497 votes to elect an MP
Conservatives 369,388 votes, 1 MP = 369,388 votes to elect an MP.
The really interesting finding for me was the difference in the English ratios between 2005 and 2010. In 2010, as I mentioned in my post yesterday evening, the Conservatives needed about 10% FEWER votes to elect an English MP than Labour (33,360 vs 36,871) while in 2005, the Conservatives needed almost 50% MORE votes than Labour to elect an English MP (41,829 vs 28148). So clearly the distortions/quirks/benefits/whatever of first past the post vs "pure" PR are not constant over time, and can swing hugely between elections.
Incidientally, when I went onto the BBC's website, I could find 2005 election results for Scotland, Wales, each of the English regions and the UK as a whole, but the link for England did not work. Why is that so appropriate?
At present, to reach a majority, Labour needs to win 68/374 of the non-Labour seats (exc. NI), or 18.2% of the available seats.
In rUK, they would need to win 79/356, or 22.2% of the available seats.
That's a proportionate increase of 22.1%
John Curtice reckons that requires an extra 1% swing, or 2% lead...
1) If the Syrian army is using home-made barrel bombs with home-made explosives and those explosives don't go off then they are likely going to give off nasty fumes of one kind or another.
2) QE is life support for the banks. It's not helping the wider economy because it's not designed to help the wider economy.
3) The actual economic problem is the over dominance of banksta oligarchs in western economies and in particular their desire to move all production where the cheapest labour is. The fundamental flaw in this is if all the supply side of the equation has no money where is the demand going to come from?
It's very simple but because the banksta oligarchs have bought both sides of the political argument nobody points it out. The other problem is if/when they get it they'll all want the other oligarchs to spread their production around or pay their workers more but not them.
4) The Gulf states on team petrodollar - with or without US assent or encouragement - have been funding the various anti-Assad groups including Isis although I suspect they panicked and stopped when Isis blew back into Iraq. On top of that the US flooding Syria with weapons means the price goes down so anyone with cash will be able to trade for those US weapons.
As I keep saying it could be done quick and dirty but I don't think Scotland would be happy with the result.
On the one hand, John Curtis says Scotland leaving means only a 1% extra swing is needed for Labour to win a majority.
On the other hand, the Tories already have a majority if Scotland leaves the Union.
Pretty big difference between those two ways of looking at things.
(*) They wouldn't really repeal it, because it would be the kind of good, sensible policy that's hard to introduce, but once introduced never gets repealed.
As far as I'm aware Germany etc didn't get the same.
I don't think it's an academic discussion at all. Scotland feels like it's about to vote Yes, especially due to the participation of lots of people who previously couldn't be bothered to vote, and this group is likely to be underrepresented in opinion polls. However, a voter's a voter for aw that!
The fact there was a war over the agreed outcome *but it was still implemented in that timescale anyway*, shows that even in the most difficult of circumstances, when delaying implementation to avoid a war may seem attractive or when one side of the agreement is in an battle for its own survival, such a timescale is achievable.
Are you suggesting that if YES wins by less than 10% there should be another referendum in 5 years about returning to the UK? How do you think and to what end would Scotland be governed in those 5 years?
A small YES means Yes and a small NO means No.
The existing organisation then maintains the data, whilst the Scottish one is set up. Indeed Scotland may continue to outsource some services.
The decision just needs to be made, then there may be a number of different tracks down which services are slowly peeled away after independence.
E.g.
Faslane - 3 years.
Currency - 2 years.
DVLA - 1 year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/great_egg_race/
Thankfully he's still about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Wolff
Óglaigh na hÉireann was one thing, C(r)apita, ATOS(spot) and G4S(hit)'s contracts are quite another !
Are Labour going to agree to a delay in an election where they would be minus 40 seats?
But March 2016 looks a dreadfully tight deadline to have all the is dotted and ts crossed given the colossal nature of the modern state.
If there was something genuinely hard to reverse then a reasonable UK government would split off the Scottish part first, as we discussed with the Royal Mail. I can't think of anything that would be hard to reverse, could be split after independence, but couldn't be split before independence as part of whatever the restructuring was that would be hard to reverse. But if there was something like that, I suppose the UK would want to go slow on it.
And as for the bombs being 'home-made' as claimed on the previous thread: perhaps Tehran-made is more applicable:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10809186/West-fears-Iran-is-supplying-chlorine-bombs-to-Syria.html
The big practical difficulty in a separation of Scotland form the UK is the data. Where is it? What format is it in? Are there any computers that can be procured to run it it in its present format and run the existent software? Who owns that software, what licence fee will they charge? Crikey the list goes on and on.
The idea that a reasonable and seamless separation between rUK, really England, and Scotland in 18 months is lunacy.
So some rUK tax is collected and processed in Scotland and some Scottish tax is collected and processed in rUK. Rather than untangling all those specifics before independence is achieved there only needs to be an agreement on how to proceed (keep existing arrangements where sensible, an orderly transition to new arrangements where not).
Scottish independence does not have to wait for all rUK employers to deal with the Shipley accounts office of HMRC rather than the Cumbernauld one.
http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/RNADCoulport#fnr1_1
(note to NSA I googled the chlorine info just now so don't drone me)