Maybe Corby's waiting for an email from a "member of the public" telling who to put where.
Didn't the membership vote? What kinda democracy is this?
I always used to holed up in hotels for lab reshuffles (probs just too much PB) so I'm finding this quite exciting. He needs to stop that PMQ crap though.
I see the Jan 2 Economist has an article about political betting, though it's entirely focused on the US. Says it's booming and highlights the Predictit site (licenced in New Zealan with an $850 bet limit).
My biggest fear for this year and 2020 for the Tory party is that we revert back to the 90s and are obsessed by the EU and destroy our electoral prospects.
The only way to unite the party is have the PM campaign for Leave. The Europhile headbangers can f*** off to the Lib Dems then.
You sound like a Corbynite true believer.
You sound like a europhile who would sell this country down a river to win this referendum. Oh wait, you are one.
Errr no. I'm likely to vote leave, but you keep up hiking up Mount Wrongness
I do wish my fellow Leavers would stop doing this.
I'm taking the Churchillian view. There should be a United States of Europe but Le Royaume-Uni should have nothing to do with it.
Allows me to be consistent to my Pro-EU position yet allows me to vote to leave.
The EU going forward is going to be dominated by the Eurozone and the only way we'd have any influence is if we join the Euro and I'd rather have Corbyn as PM than join the Euro.
As I've been saying for some time: I think Brexit is in the best interests of both the UK and the European Union.
The Eurozone is the splitter between us and the EU and its that issue which needs to be determined. Logic suggests there should be 2 orbits to the EU solar system.
I do get the feeling that, for most Tories at least, this is no longer an existential threat. Even if Cameron campaigns for REMAIN (which I agree is virtually laid on) the decision is not his. I think that's very important. To make sure it remains important, all MPs should be allowed to campaign as they wish with no new old Labour nastiness afterwards.
Obviously, all MPs should be allowed to campaign as they wish.
But there is an issue with Ministers and the renegotiation. While Ministers can clearly say "I think Britain would be better off outside the European Union", what they probably cannot say is "The Prime Minister's renegotiation was a sham and a disaster. He failed."
Surely this is a matter of style rather than substance. If a politician can't be nuanced then he ain't a proper politician vide Comrade JJ
We are all PB Tories now, Comrade!
(I assume you mean JC, not JJ?)
I got fed up with typing Jehadi Jez so reverted to type, lazy.
Which is why I said it would be best left to Nige given his one-dimensional nature. It's a shame the PM had a massive lack of ambition with these negotiations. He could have reshaped the nature of the continent, instead he is settling for the bare minimum and hoping it will convince enough people to get 51-57% of the vote.
Imagine an EU with a proper single market for services, the CAP/farming subsidies being shifted to a national budget remit, proper rules on freedom of movement based on per capita income. I guess the problem is that the EU would have been shown as the inflexible hostile organisation it really is and people would have voted to leave once the PM's requests were rejected.
There's no point tilting at windmills. He is negotiating to get the best amelioration of the unsatisfactory situation he inherited, subject to what is attainable. That will be better than the status quo, and the Leave side still have the option of persuading the country - not David Cameron - that we're better off out. I really can't understand what the BOOers are bitching about - this obsession with Cameron and nonsense about a 'sham' or 'lack of ambition' is just a distraction. They've got the referendum, exactly as promised (they seem to have forgotten that they said he couldn't be trusted on that), and it's up to them to make the case for leaving and laying out what the alternative might look like. It's not David Cameron's fault that they seem remarkably uninterested in doing so.
I think the best argument for leaving is that there is no "status quo" any more. If we win then it will be by convincing people that voting to stay in will mean we stay on the path to a superstate with President Merkel or something like that. Unless Dave can convince them to give us the "associate" membership that some have talked about then there is a good chance a leave vote can be achieved. I've heard that the EU has no appetite for formalising "associate" membership though as they feel the Scandinavian countries would follow us into that group, but probably wouldn't follow us out of the EU if we left.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
The difference is that Osborne could still get elected as long as the economy appears to be ticking along ok - but it'd be a loveless, technical endorsement he'd get.
I'm equally fascinated by the twin blind spot Conservatives have:
Gordon Bown borrowing lots of money and spending it badly is a bad thing
George Osborne borrowing lots of money and spending it badly is a good thing
You'll note I said "appears to be". Politics is perception.
Actually, I think you're a bit unfair on Osborne. Brown inherited a small deficit with plans in place - realised - to turn that into surplus within two years. He converted that to a huge structural deficit, exacerbated by the recession. Osborne, by contrast, has reduced both structural and current deficits without choking off growth.
Has he done all that could be done? No. Manufacturing remains sluggish and consumer borrowing is too high to name but two, but given the gross imbalances he inherited he'd not done badly overall.
Which is why I said it would be best left to Nige given his one-dimensional nature. It's a shame the PM had a massive lack of ambition with these negotiations. He could have reshaped the nature of the continent, instead he is settling for the bare minimum and hoping it will convince enough people to get 51-57% of the vote.
Imagine an EU with a proper single market for services, the CAP/farming subsidies being shifted to a national budget remit, proper rules on freedom of movement based on per capita income. I guess the problem is that the EU would have been shown as the inflexible hostile organisation it really is and people would have voted to leave once the PM's requests were rejected.
There's no point tilting at windmills. He is negotiating to get the best amelioration of the unsatisfactory situation he inherited, subject to what is attainable. That will be better than the status quo, and the Leave side still have the option of persuading the country - not David Cameron - that we're better off out. I really can't understand what the BOOers are bitching about - this obsession with Cameron and nonsense about a 'sham' or 'lack of ambition' is just a distraction. They've got the referendum, exactly as promised (they seem to have forgotten that they said he couldn't be trusted on that), and it's up to them to make the case for leaving and laying out what the alternative might look like. It's not David Cameron's fault that they seem remarkably uninterested in doing so.
How do you explain the unknown without the certainty that it will be rationally challenged? The resulting discussion/ argument simply creates uncertainty which feeds the "better the devil you know" instinct. It's hard to see anything other than REMAIN winning quite comfortably without some additional EU disaster. The current ones seem to moving REMAIN's way too.
Here's the message: if the country you come from is a bit of a shithole and, if, by hook or by crook, you make it here to the UK legally or otherwise, you'll get asylum.
And some wonder why we have a migration crisis.
I didn't intend my post to be supportive of the decision
Here's the message: if the country you come from is a bit of a shithole and, if, by hook or by crook, you make it here to the UK legally or otherwise, you'll get asylum.
Which is why I said it would be best left to Nige given his one-dimensional nature. It's a shame the PM had a massive lack of ambition with these negotiations. He could have reshaped the nature of the continent, instead he is settling for the bare minimum and hoping it will convince enough people to get 51-57% of the vote.
Imagine an EU with a proper single market for services, the CAP/farming subsidies being shifted to a national budget remit, proper rules on freedom of movement based on per capita income. I guess the problem is that the EU would have been shown as the inflexible hostile organisation it really is and people would have voted to leave once the PM's requests were rejected.
There's no point tilting at windmills. He is negotiating to get the best amelioration of the unsatisfactory situation he inherited, subject to what is attainable. That will be better than the status quo, and the Leave side still have the option of persuading the country - not David Cameron - that we're better off out. I really can't understand what the BOOers are bitching about - this obsession with Cameron and nonsense about a 'sham' or 'lack of ambition' is just a distraction. They've got the referendum, exactly as promised (they seem to have forgotten that they said he couldn't be trusted on that), and it's up to them to make the case for leaving and laying out what the alternative might look like. It's not David Cameron's fault that they seem remarkably uninterested in doing so.
How do you explain the unknown without the certainty that it will be rationally challenged? The resulting discussion/ argument simply creates uncertainty which feeds the "better the devil you know" instinct. It's hard to see anything other than REMAIN winning quite comfortably without some additional EU disaster. The current ones seem to moving REMAIN's way too.
I dunno. Some of the posters on here I respect the most have moved from being soft Remain/undecided to soft Leave.
How do you explain the unknown without the certainty that it will be rationally challenged? The resulting discussion/ argument simply creates uncertainty which feeds the "better the devil you know" instinct. It's hard to see anything other than REMAIN winning quite comfortably without some additional EU disaster. The current ones seem to moving REMAIN's way too.
Yes, the Leave side have a huge task to persuade doubters to take a leap into the dark (or so it will appear). That's why I've consistently said, since well before the 2010 election, that a Leave result is not attainable. I wasn't expecting the Leave side not to make the attempt to provide a credible alternative, though.
I might have been wrong all along, of course! We shall see, probably in just eight or nine months' time.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
One is competent and has shown that he is capable of running the country, the other is simply not. Not that difficult.
Double pair of rose tinted specs on there I think David. I might let him run a bath but not much more.
@theobertram: We had a grid in my day. Simple idea: coordinate one big story a day. Today is trains. It's trains. TRAINS. GODDAM YOU ALL I WAS UP AT 5!
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
One is competent and has shown that he is capable of running the country, the other is simply not. Not that difficult.
Double pair of rose tinted specs on there I think David. I might let him run a bath but not much more.
I wouldn't even let him do that, might see some advantage in making the water too hot and causing me burns so I can't function without him.
Maybe that's what he did to Dave all those years ago.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
The difference is that Osborne could still get elected as long as the economy appears to be ticking along ok - but it'd be a loveless, technical endorsement he'd get.
I'm equally fascinated by the twin blind spot Conservatives have:
Gordon Bown borrowing lots of money and spending it badly is a bad thing
George Osborne borrowing lots of money and spending it badly is a good thing
This is kinda pointless but the deficit in 2016 will be approximately £100bn a year less than Osborne inherited. To rebalance our economy to that extent in the time he has is unprecedented in peace time, that is it has only happened after a major war.
To achieve this and record employment and consistent growth is a really remarkable achievement that rightly won the Tories a majority at the election.
My biggest fear for this year and 2020 for the Tory party is that we revert back to the 90s and are obsessed by the EU and destroy our electoral prospects.
The only way to unite the party is have the PM campaign for Leave. The Europhile headbangers can f*** off to the Lib Dems then.
You sound like a Corbynite true believer.
You sound like a europhile who would sell this country down a river to win this referendum. Oh wait, you are one.
Errr no. I'm likely to vote leave, but you keep up hiking up Mount Wrongness
I do wish my fellow Leavers would stop doing this.
I think the biggest threat to Leave is the in-temperateness of some of its supporters.
For better or worse, many leavers favour leave because of the peremptory manner of many EU officials.
If the leave campaign matches such peremptoriness they can expect a concomitant drift back to Remain.
Which is why I said it would be best left to Nige given his one-dimensional nature. It's a shame the PM had a massive lack of ambition with these negotiations. He could have reshaped the nature of the continent, instead he is settling for the bare minimum and hoping it will convince enough people to get 51-57% of the vote.
Imagine an EU with a proper single market for services, the CAP/farming subsidies being shifted to a national budget remit, proper rules on freedom of movement based on per capita income. I guess the problem is that the EU would have been shown as the inflexible hostile organisation it really is and people would have voted to leave once the PM's requests were rejected.
There's no point tilting at windmills. He is negotiating to get the best amelioration of the unsatisfactory situation he inherited, subject to what is attainable. That will be better than the status quo, and the Leave side still have the option of persuading the country - not David Cameron - that we're better off out. I really can't understand what the BOOers are bitching about - this obsession with Cameron and nonsense about a 'sham' or 'lack of ambition' is just a distraction. They've got the referendum, exactly as promised (they seem to have forgotten that they said he couldn't be trusted on that), and it's up to them to make the case for leaving and laying out what the alternative might look like. It's not David Cameron's fault that they seem remarkably uninterested in doing so.
How do you explain the unknown without the certainty that it will be rationally challenged? The resulting discussion/ argument simply creates uncertainty which feeds the "better the devil you know" instinct. It's hard to see anything other than REMAIN winning quite comfortably without some additional EU disaster. The current ones seem to moving REMAIN's way too.
I dunno. Some of the posters on here I respect the most have moved from being soft Remain/undecided to soft Leave.
Like I said yesterday, given the meagre EU concessions likely to be achieved by Cameron, Betfair's 3.0 decimal odds on a Leave outcome appears to offer some value. I'm expecting a close vote, i.e. probably +/- 5% or 6% either way.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
One is competent and has shown that he is capable of running the country, the other is simply not. Not that difficult.
Double pair of rose tinted specs on there I think David. I might let him run a bath but not much more.
Surely blue tinted Malc? You didn't get it the wrong way around did you?
Which is why I said it would be best left to Nige given his one-dimensional nature. It's a shame the PM had a massive lack of ambition with these negotiations. He could have reshaped the nature of the continent, instead he is settling for the bare minimum and hoping it will convince enough people to get 51-57% of the vote.
Imagine an EU with a proper single market for services, the CAP/farming subsidies being shifted to a national budget remit, proper rules on freedom of movement based on per capita income. I guess the problem is that the EU would have been shown as the inflexible hostile organisation it really is and people would have voted to leave once the PM's requests were rejected.
There's no point tilting at windmills. He is negotiating to get the best amelioration of the unsatisfactory situation he inherited, subject to what is attainable. That will be better than the status quo, and the Leave side still have the option of persuading the country - not David Cameron - that we're better off out. I really can't understand what the BOOers are bitching about - this obsession with Cameron and nonsense about a 'sham' or 'lack of ambition' is just a distraction. They've got the referendum, exactly as promised (they seem to have forgotten that they said he couldn't be trusted on that), and it's up to them to make the case for leaving and laying out what the alternative might look like. It's not David Cameron's fault that they seem remarkably uninterested in doing so.
How do you explain the unknown without the certainty that it will be rationally challenged? The resulting discussion/ argument simply creates uncertainty which feeds the "better the devil you know" instinct. It's hard to see anything other than REMAIN winning quite comfortably without some additional EU disaster. The current ones seem to moving REMAIN's way too.
I dunno. Some of the posters on here I respect the most have moved from being soft Remain/undecided to soft Leave.
Like I said yesterday, given the meagre EU concessions likely to be achieved by Cameron, Betfair's 3.0 decimal odds on a Leave outcome appears to offer some value. I'm expecting a close vote, i.e. probably +/- 5% or 6% either way.
I hope you're right. I think Leave could run it to a narrow 53/47 result for Remain but not the way it's currently carrying on.
Too many Leavers aren't satisfied with a possible Leave vote for a diverse range of opinions and reasons to work on.
They want a definite Leave vote and for the same reasons they do or not at all.
I think another large factor will be the timing of the referendum, if it is going to be in September then it will come after a summer of a refugee crisis in Europe that we will be asked to chip into.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
One is competent and has shown that he is capable of running the country, the other is simply not. Not that difficult.
Double pair of rose tinted specs on there I think David. I might let him run a bath but not much more.
Surely blue tinted Malc? You didn't get it the wrong way around did you?
Happy new Year by the way.
I missed that one David, too obvious I plead (:. Happy New Year to you too.
I think another large factor will be the timing of the referendum, if it is going to be in September then it will come after a summer of a refugee crisis in Europe that we will be asked to chip into.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
The difference is that Osborne could still get elected as long as the economy appears to be ticking along ok - but it'd be a loveless, technical endorsement he'd get.
The polls are more or less level right now. There's no evidence of an intrinsic Remain majority. Maybe there is such a thing, maybe there isn't.
There will be a kick-the-Government vote. Not vast - most people will vote on the issue - but it will exist.
The country's culture has been anti-EU for a generation. If you asked the public to name one positive thing about the EU most of them would draw a blank.
Supposedly the massed battalions of the establishment will win people over. In reality the endorsement of business leaders will be two-edged.
There will be a migration crisis story running all summer. The EU will look chaotic and dangerous on our TV screens.
Leave could shoot itself in the foot and seems to be trying but even that may not be enough to save Remain.
I think another large factor will be the timing of the referendum, if it is going to be in September then it will come after a summer of a refugee crisis in Europe that we will be asked to chip into.
I do think it better than odds on that there is going to be another wave of panic/sovereign debt crisis by the summer. I used to think Italy was the obvious target given its fairly horrendous performance but it may be that we will get a re-run of Greece or a copy cat crisis in Portugal where a new government is going to be unstable and reluctant to follow the script.
I am less convinced this will have any material affect on our referendum.
The status quo has won the last two votes of this nature, almost all the political establishment and the BBC will be for Remain (some print media will back Leave but many will be reluctant Remainers).
People, wrongly, see the status quo as inherently being less risky. There isn't the single compelling vision or the single compelling leader for Leave.
Which is why I said it would be best left to Nige given his one-dimensional nature. It's a shame the PM had a massive lack of ambition with these negotiations. He could have reshaped the nature of the continent, instead he is settling for the bare minimum and hoping it will convince enough people to get 51-57% of the vote.
Imagine an EU with a proper single market for services, the CAP/farming subsidies being shifted to a national budget remit, proper rules on freedom of movement based on per capita income. I guess the problem is that the EU would have been shown as the inflexible hostile organisation it really is and people would have voted to leave once the PM's requests were rejected.
There's no point tilting at windmills. He is negotiating to get the best amelioration of the unsatisfactory situation he inherited, subject to what is attainable. That will be better than the status quo, and the Leave side still have the option of persuading the country - not David Cameron - that we're better off out. I really can't understand what the BOOers are bitching about - this obsession with Cameron and nonsense about a 'sham' or 'lack of ambition' is just a distraction. They've got the referendum, exactly as promised (they seem to have forgotten that they said he couldn't be trusted on that), and it's up to them to make the case for leaving and laying out what the alternative might look like. It's not David Cameron's fault that they seem remarkably uninterested in doing so.
How do you explain the unknown without the certainty that it will be rationally challenged? The resulting discussion/ argument simply creates uncertainty which feeds the "better the devil you know" instinct. It's hard to see anything other than REMAIN winning quite comfortably without some additional EU disaster. The current ones seem to moving REMAIN's way too.
I dunno. Some of the posters on here I respect the most have moved from being soft Remain/undecided to soft Leave.
I agree there are still ifs and buts, but still a while to go and Cameron fires the starting pistol, but within a narrowing window. Mixed metaphors, loads of buts, how much more uncertainty do you want? I still fancy REMAIN and hope that I'm right.
The status quo has won the last two votes of this nature, almost all the political establishment and the BBC will be for Remain (some print media will back Leave but many will be reluctant Remainers).
People, wrongly, see the status quo as inherently being less risky. There isn't the single compelling vision or the single compelling leader for Leave.
I think Remain will win, and at a canter.
What surprises me, is that there's been plenty of legwork on both sides.
On the remain side, there was a Hague-led review of competencies in 2013 that provided the most comprehensive and official review of the effects of the EU on the UK to date. It concluded that membership was significantly in the UK's interests and there were no major areas where the 'balance of competency' should switch back to the UK.
On the leave side, there was that competition for the paper on Brexit won by the Foreign Office official, actually showing what Out might look like and how the UK might get there.
I don't understand why both sides are ignoring some substantial research that would help their case, in favour of trading insults and dull slogans. These would provide plenty of reassurance for swing voters.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
One is competent and has shown that he is capable of running the country, the other is simply not. Not that difficult.
Double pair of rose tinted specs on there I think David. I might let him run a bath but not much more.
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
The difference is that Osborne could still get elected as long as the economy appears to be ticking along ok - but it'd be a loveless, technical endorsement he'd get.
I'm equally fascinated by the twin blind spot Conservatives have:
Gordon Bown borrowing lots of money and spending it badly is a bad thing
George Osborne borrowing lots of money and spending it badly is a good thing
This is kinda pointless but the deficit in 2016 will be approximately £100bn a year less than Osborne inherited. To rebalance our economy to that extent in the time he has is unprecedented in peace time, that is it has only happened after a major war.
To achieve this and record employment and consistent growth is a really remarkable achievement that rightly won the Tories a majority at the election.
But we all know your views are fixed on this.
'fixed' is one way to put it, but I for one am grateful for you pointing out a few facts. From what I read net borrowing reached a peak in 2009/10 with £167.4bn. It would be interesting to see how critics would sustain the economy and cut that deficit at the same time. In fact the govt made a good job of for instance making welfare cuts in its first 5 years.
If people want to look at the real cause of all our problems then at 20011/12 prices total managed govt expenditure was 439bn in 94/95, 444bn in 2000/01, but 707bn in 2009/10. Just work out what an increase of 268 is on top of 439 !! A massive increase and pulling the rug from under that is not easy. Just take a look at what happens when welfare cuts are threatened.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
One is competent and has shown that he is capable of running the country, the other is simply not. Not that difficult.
Double pair of rose tinted specs on there I think David. I might let him run a bath but not much more.
Afternoon all. One of the benefits of doing Dry January is that I've had more time to catch up on my reading list and have just finished 'Why the Tories won' by Tim Ross. Overall it is a jolly good read. One thing that struck me was how good Labour thought their 'Ground Game' was. This turned out to be a fallacy as the Tory game was far more tightly focused. The other parties failed to notice it and assumed that theirs was better. I thought that I would have heard about Labour's ground game on here first.
Not dissimilar to Corbyn's simplistic worldview. "Isn't talking better than war?" "Yes, Jeremy, but the other side keep beheading innocent people and trying to commit genocide." "Let's negotiate!" "After you, Jezbollah."
Not dissimilar to Corbyn's simplistic worldview. "Isn't talking better than war?" "Yes, Jeremy, but the other side keep beheading innocent people and trying to commit genocide." "Let's negotiate!" "After you, Jezbollah."
Will my soul burn in eternity for betting on Trump ?
BBC piece on destruction of mangrove swamps accidentally fails to mention a leading cause (as well as growing food [rice]) was the rush for biofuel a few years ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35198675
I think Indonesia was particularly good at cutting down pristine forest for palm plantations, so middle class guilt-ridden Westerners could feel better about themselves.
It's almost as if we should consider what other countries do when putting together policies around the environment. Hmm.
'fixed' is one way to put it, but I for one am grateful for you pointing out a few facts. From what I read net borrowing reached a peak in 2009/10 wth £167.4bn. It would be interesting to see how critics would sustain the economy and cut that deficit at the same time. In fact the govt made a good job of for instance making welfare cuts in its first 5 years.
If people want to look at the real cause of all our problems then at 20011/12 prices total managed govt expenditure was 439bn in 94/95, 444bn in 2000/01, but 707bn in 2009/10. Just work out what an increase of 268 is on top of 439 !! A massive increase and pulling the rug from under that is not easy. Just take a look at what happens when welfare cuts are threatened.
These figures in fact substantially understate the extent of our problems. By 2010 public spending was not only increasing at a completely unsustainable rate, it had several drivers built into it which meant that it was likely to increase into the future whether the tax revenue was there or not.
So we had major problems in funding public sector pensions which were prohibitively generous with the result that even those in the public sector who contributed were in fact paying less and less of the costs.
We had huge "off balance" sheet liabilities for PFI that had major negative implications for future spending in both health and education.
We had allowed Housing Benefit to run completely out of control, not just in London but elsewhere. As generation rent increased so did the drain on the public purse.
We had eliminated all of the benefits that the public purse would normally get from increased employment. In fact increased employment increased benefit spending as the next 5 years showed all too clearly.
And of course it is now clear that the structural deficit exceeded the actual deficit by a significant amount as tax income still reflected bonus payments from the City and corporate profits of earlier years whilst current losses meant that some of our largest tax payers, such as the banks, would not be paying tax for many years.
To keep the deficit on a downward track despite these numerous headwinds has been incredibly difficult and has not been helped by the poor economic performance of our main trading partners in the EZ. The reforms to pensions, benefits, especially HB, and the improved terms on PFI have all given us a fighting chance of the situation improving yet further in the years ahead. But we remain vulnerable to world events and should not pretend otherwise.
Moody Slayer Diane Abbott and Jess Phillips have arrived in Corbyn's office. #LabourReshuffle https://t.co/h6dN2UlCvJ
Maybe something sexual is afoot?
Benn oot is what is afoot.
Quite right. What is the point of everyone in the party electing a Marxist antiwar tramp with terrorist chums to lead and then letting some Johnny-come-lately fake Tory be shadow Foreign Secretary. I hope he delivers for the members. Let's pray it is Ken Livingstone or Diane Abbott.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight Harriet Harman, who was acting Labour leader for four months after the party lost the 2015 election, said: "We can't have a men-only leadership when we are party for women and equality.
"Women expect to see men and women working together and we can't have an all-male leadership again and therefore we need to change the rules."
Not dissimilar to Corbyn's simplistic worldview. "Isn't talking better than war?" "Yes, Jeremy, but the other side keep beheading innocent people and trying to commit genocide." "Let's negotiate!" "After you, Jezbollah."
Just shows people have short memories and react to what is in the news. Since Gove was moved, attention has been deflected and Morgan doesn't spend every day looking for a dust up with the blob (IMO she should, plenty still to do).
@MrJacHart: Does Corbyn's #reshuffle actually matter? Without an effective Leader of the Opposition - shadow ministers all but redundant.
@Robert___Harris: The very definition of futility: a shadow cabinet "reshuffle" of people doing imaginary jobs in a future government that will never exist.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight Harriet Harman, who was acting Labour leader for four months after the party lost the 2015 election, said: "We can't have a men-only leadership when we are party for women and equality.
"Women expect to see men and women working together and we can't have an all-male leadership again and therefore we need to change the rules."
Calm down dear...
To be honest, if Labour had an all-female front bench it might help. With the (admittedly sizeable) exception of Abbott, the complete and utter disaster areas are all men, no?
Moody Slayer Diane Abbott and Jess Phillips have arrived in Corbyn's office. #LabourReshuffle https://t.co/h6dN2UlCvJ
Maybe something sexual is afoot?
Benn oot is what is afoot.
Quite right. What is the point of everyone in the party electing a Marxist antiwar tramp with terrorist chums to lead and then letting some Johnny-come-lately fake Tory be shadow Foreign Secretary. I hope he delivers for the members. Let's pray it is Ken Livingstone or Diane Abbott.
Let's pray it is Ken Livingstone or and Diane Abbott.
@MrJacHart: Does Corbyn's #reshuffle actually matter? Without an effective Leader of the Opposition - shadow ministers all but redundant.
@Robert___Harris: The very definition of futility: a shadow cabinet "reshuffle" of people doing imaginary jobs in a future government that will never exist.
It would also help if shadow ministers either were allowed to take a consistent policy position and the leadership would back it, or the leadership would provide it.
Even if Remain wins I find it hard to see how George Osborne is the man to heal the wounds of the referendum campaign. What you'd want would be a widely respected moderate sceptic, surely. Someone who won't try to reopen the issue but would reassure Leavers that he (or she) wouldn't sign up for Son of Lisbon.
Osborne strikes me as a run-against-the-party candidate with the fatal (especially for that type of candidate) flaw that the public don't like him. I don't see how he wins in the membership vote unless he's up against an obvious duffer.
Osborne will play the moderate sceptic well. You only need to see the fights he has had against the FTT, the regulation of UK banks, the protection of the City and his regular critiques of EZ economic policy to see that. He will make it clear that we stay in for now but that we keep the EZ issue under review and watch developments carefully.
And the idea he is running against the party is absurd. He is utterly dominant within it in terms of policy and the placement of acolytes. He may be less popular with the membership as a whole but he will definitely be one of the candidates and there is no outstanding opponent who will sweep him away.
Hmmm
bit of a conservative blind spot methinks.
Tories :
Corbyn is popular with the membership but the public dislike him so he'll never get elected
Osborne may be disliked by the public but he'll get elected because the membership back him
Same coin, same sides.
The difference is that Osborne could still get elected as long as the economy appears to be ticking along ok - but it'd be a loveless, technical endorsement he'd get.
Comments
https://twitter.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/684032292621291520
Sophy said that last week!!!
RESHUFFLE OFFICIALLY CANCELLED
Actually, I think you're a bit unfair on Osborne. Brown inherited a small deficit with plans in place - realised - to turn that into surplus within two years. He converted that to a huge structural deficit, exacerbated by the recession. Osborne, by contrast, has reduced both structural and current deficits without choking off growth.
Has he done all that could be done? No. Manufacturing remains sluggish and consumer borrowing is too high to name but two, but given the gross imbalances he inherited he'd not done badly overall.
I might have been wrong all along, of course! We shall see, probably in just eight or nine months' time.
Good. Hope Jeremy Corbyn's swept the room for surveillance equipment owned by #SKY #BBC #MI5 #NSA #TonyBlair. https://t.co/HXpZBaLT5Y
Maybe that's what he did to Dave all those years ago.
To achieve this and record employment and consistent growth is a really remarkable achievement that rightly won the Tories a majority at the election.
But we all know your views are fixed on this.
If the leave campaign matches such peremptoriness they can expect a concomitant drift back to Remain.
Happy new Year by the way.
Wonder how much of it is incorrect? :-) Also, some might say, GET A F##KING LIFE...
The climate of anti-politics means that the voters will not make it as easy for remain as you perhaps expect.
They'll want to see some serious sweat on those plutocrat brows.
There are actually some people who don't know who Hannibal Barca is.
Too many Leavers aren't satisfied with a possible Leave vote for a diverse range of opinions and reasons to work on.
They want a definite Leave vote and for the same reasons they do or not at all.
That's a recipe for a clear defeat.
I think Mr Sox was right that the best available bet on this is the 8/1 on 60-65% remain.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-01/greek-savers-still-wary-of-tsipras-after-2015-financial-tumult
The polls are more or less level right now. There's no evidence of an intrinsic Remain majority. Maybe there is such a thing, maybe there isn't.
There will be a kick-the-Government vote. Not vast - most people will vote on the issue - but it will exist.
The country's culture has been anti-EU for a generation. If you asked the public to name one positive thing about the EU most of them would draw a blank.
Supposedly the massed battalions of the establishment will win people over. In reality the endorsement of business leaders will be two-edged.
There will be a migration crisis story running all summer. The EU will look chaotic and dangerous on our TV screens.
Leave could shoot itself in the foot and seems to be trying but even that may not be enough to save Remain.
I am less convinced this will have any material affect on our referendum.
The status quo has won the last two votes of this nature, almost all the political establishment and the BBC will be for Remain (some print media will back Leave but many will be reluctant Remainers).
People, wrongly, see the status quo as inherently being less risky. There isn't the single compelling vision or the single compelling leader for Leave.
I think Remain will win, and at a canter.
Given the identity of those campaigning for remain, its more of a kick the establishment vote than a kick the government vote.
The whole thing is just too cosy for remain to win easily. Just look at those who support it. Team Davos. Team Bilderberg.
On the remain side, there was a Hague-led review of competencies in 2013 that provided the most comprehensive and official review of the effects of the EU on the UK to date. It concluded that membership was significantly in the UK's interests and there were no major areas where the 'balance of competency' should switch back to the UK.
On the leave side, there was that competition for the paper on Brexit won by the Foreign Office official, actually showing what Out might look like and how the UK might get there.
I don't understand why both sides are ignoring some substantial research that would help their case, in favour of trading insults and dull slogans. These would provide plenty of reassurance for swing voters.
Diane Abbott and Jess Phillips have arrived in Corbyn's office. #LabourReshuffle https://t.co/h6dN2UlCvJ
From what I read net borrowing reached a peak in 2009/10 with £167.4bn. It would be interesting to see how critics would sustain the economy and cut that deficit at the same time.
In fact the govt made a good job of for instance making welfare cuts in its first 5 years.
If people want to look at the real cause of all our problems then at 20011/12 prices total managed govt expenditure was 439bn in 94/95, 444bn in 2000/01, but 707bn in 2009/10.
Just work out what an increase of 268 is on top of 439 !!
A massive increase and pulling the rug from under that is not easy. Just take a look at what happens when welfare cuts are threatened.
Corbyn risks the aversion of the majority turning to ridicule. That would indeed be fatal as Ed could tell him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEAJrT8PeOo
One of the benefits of doing Dry January is that I've had more time to catch up on my reading list and have just finished 'Why the Tories won' by Tim Ross.
Overall it is a jolly good read.
One thing that struck me was how good Labour thought their 'Ground Game' was.
This turned out to be a fallacy as the Tory game was far more tightly focused.
The other parties failed to notice it and assumed that theirs was better.
I thought that I would have heard about Labour's ground game on here first.
Indeed. To me, many voters are somewhere in between.
http://nottspolitics.org/2016/01/04/jeremy-corbyn-george-lansbury-reborn/
Lansbury.
Not dissimilar to Corbyn's simplistic worldview. "Isn't talking better than war?" "Yes, Jeremy, but the other side keep beheading innocent people and trying to commit genocide." "Let's negotiate!" "After you, Jezbollah."
CON 39 (-2)
LAB 29 (-1)
LIB 6 (=)
UKIP 17 (+1)
GRN 3 (=)
Fieldwork 17th-18th December
BBC piece on destruction of mangrove swamps accidentally fails to mention a leading cause (as well as growing food [rice]) was the rush for biofuel a few years ago:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35198675
I think Indonesia was particularly good at cutting down pristine forest for palm plantations, so middle class guilt-ridden Westerners could feel better about themselves.
It's almost as if we should consider what other countries do when putting together policies around the environment. Hmm.
Was there speculation he would be SSOS?
Mr. Pulpstar, no. The Flying Spaghetti Monster understands.
So we had major problems in funding public sector pensions which were prohibitively generous with the result that even those in the public sector who contributed were in fact paying less and less of the costs.
We had huge "off balance" sheet liabilities for PFI that had major negative implications for future spending in both health and education.
We had allowed Housing Benefit to run completely out of control, not just in London but elsewhere. As generation rent increased so did the drain on the public purse.
We had eliminated all of the benefits that the public purse would normally get from increased employment. In fact increased employment increased benefit spending as the next 5 years showed all too clearly.
And of course it is now clear that the structural deficit exceeded the actual deficit by a significant amount as tax income still reflected bonus payments from the City and corporate profits of earlier years whilst current losses meant that some of our largest tax payers, such as the banks, would not be paying tax for many years.
To keep the deficit on a downward track despite these numerous headwinds has been incredibly difficult and has not been helped by the poor economic performance of our main trading partners in the EZ. The reforms to pensions, benefits, especially HB, and the improved terms on PFI have all given us a fighting chance of the situation improving yet further in the years ahead. But we remain vulnerable to world events and should not pretend otherwise.
"Women expect to see men and women working together and we can't have an all-male leadership again and therefore we need to change the rules."
Calm down dear...
CON: 41%
LAB: 18%
UKIP: 5%
LDEM: 4%
(via YouGov)
@Robert___Harris: The very definition of futility: a shadow cabinet "reshuffle" of people doing imaginary jobs in a future government that will never exist.
orand Diane Abbott.