One thing that hasn't been much discussed is how a house price fall prompted by Brexit could seriously jeopardise a significant number of major engineering and regeneration projects. Certainly many of the big planned redevelopments in London are in large part funded by Developers through Section 106 agreements and CIL, but these are in turn dependent on continued high levels of property prices. If the property market slumps this could have major knock on effects on development across London and perhaps the country. And won't do anything to help housing shortages.
I still can't believe you can get 12/5, this is incredibly close.
There must be a lot of very rich people backing remain.
That is what I suspected all along.
The Remain strategy was to carpet bomb leave during the long campaign so that people thought it was all over bar the shouting in the short campaign.
I'm convinced people who can afford it putting large sums on remain was part of this to help give a narrative of overwhelming odds in favour of Remain.
Looking at the whole Remain campaign - it's looking increasingly clear that they intended to annihilate Leave early - then smother the last two weeks with football et al.
Well, that's backfired. Now they're trailing or at best level-pegging and they've nothing left - not even EdM's other kitchen sink.
Dave's Negotiated Settlement to the EU carved from dry ice?
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
That's why the Leave campaign is fundamentally bullshit. If we withdraw, future governments might choose to have different immigrants - more Pakistanis and Chinese, fewer Poles and Bulgarians. But no government *in practice* (as opposed to rhetoric) has shown any sign of wanting to reduce overall immigration seriously, because they're conscious of the huge pull demand, and there's no sign that it will change. (In particular, anyone who thinks that Boris is seriously keen on reducing immigration is deluded.)
2. I really like Corbyn, as you know, and he has huge appeal to 25-30% of the population, typically the young. But he is not the man to mobilise the older WWC anti-immigation Labour/UKIP vote for Remain. Say he somehow persuaded the broadcasters to put him on four debates between now and polling day. Do you think Fred Bloggs in South Shields is going to get more Remain as a result?
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Not to mention abortion.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
I still can't believe you can get 12/5, this is incredibly close.
There must be a lot of very rich people backing remain.
Which is madness, when you think rich people may be the ones who lose quit a lot in the financial short term in the event of brexit.
Betting on Leave would actually be a sensible financial hedge for them. I have no idea what is going on.
Its a strange form of groupthink - the unthinkable just can't happen, can it??? At the GE the polls correctly showed the Lib Dems well down in single figures yet the odds favoured a seat haul >25. In hinsight this was never going to happen. Ditto the SNP blowout in Scotland.
See also Corbyn, his odds were extremely out of kilter with the polling chances coming in. However many refused to believe it would happen even though the polls had him at a very high probability.
Sometimes it is hard to cut out the gut instinct and bias I guess.
@faisalislam: 13 Nobel scientists incl Higgs/graphene discoverers say Brexit puts UK science "in jeopardy" -& Leave claims 'naive' https://t.co/0l1BQjM6nE
We don't need no ejucashun.
You may be closer to the reality than your slightly flippant remark suggests. I'm trying to work out why there is such a class divide on this referendum. We know all the usual stuff around jobs etc but I wonder if the working classes are just much less likely to listen to 'experts', the sort of people who are symbolic of the education system that sneered at them.
I think people of all classes (but almost certainly especially the working classes) view authority figures with far more cynicism than they used to. There have simply been far too many scandals, as well as high profile miscarriages of justice on the back of "expert evidence."
That's a problem, because experts are often telling the truth, and somebody has to try and govern the country. Scepticism towards authority, rather than cynicism, should be the correct approach.
I know I shouldn't find it funny but "F*** Off [Insert whoever], we're voting leave" is the most gloriously offensive slogan.
Whilst deprecating both the violence and the offensiveness, I am glad that at least the insult is aimed at "Europe" and not at the member country the perpetrators happen to be in.
Just having to shout louder to drown out the bullshit.
You are indeed drowning in bullshit.
Go outside. Take a walk. You'll fell better.
I'm feeling fine and dandy, with a spring in my step and my hat at a jaunty angle.
But then I'm not having to peddle Remain lies all day, every day....until Brexit Day. Still, not long to go now. Then you can have a long, long walk to assess where it all went so horribly wrong for Remain. And consider how much your constant hectoring of Leavers might just have had a part...
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
That's why the Leave campaign is fundamentally bullshit. If we withdraw, future governments might choose to have different immigrants - more Pakistanis and Chinese, fewer Poles and Bulgarians. But no government *in practice* (as opposed to rhetoric) has shown any sign of wanting to reduce overall immigration seriously, because they're conscious of the huge pull demand, and there's no sign that it will change. (In particular, anyone who thinks that Boris is seriously keen on reducing immigration is deluded.)
2. I really like Corbyn, as you know, and he has huge appeal to 25-30% of the population, typically the young. But he is not the man to mobilise the older WWC anti-immigation Labour/UKIP vote for Remain. Say he somehow persuaded the broadcasters to put him on four debates between now and polling day. Do you think Fred Bloggs in South Shields is going to get more Remain as a result?
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Not to mention abortion.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
I still can't believe you can get 12/5, this is incredibly close.
There must be a lot of very rich people backing remain.
That is what I suspected all along.
The Remain strategy was to carpet bomb leave during the long campaign so that people thought it was all over bar the shouting in the short campaign.
I'm convinced people who can afford it putting large sums on remain was part of this to help give a narrative of overwhelming odds in favour of Remain.
Given that Betfair alone have almost £23m matched on the straight remain/leave market, any serious manipulation must be costing someone in the high tens of millions.
Perfect Tory example of Remain supporter, I am rich and coining it in , vote remain you peasant losers, oh and buy my foreign made products.
He is advocating Leave...
Put down your prejudice long enough to read the thread Malcolm
I knew there would be one smart arse Tory, as you will see in my PS
ROFL
malc when they start wheeling out "prejudice", you know they're bricking it.
Prejudice is just code for" my are arguments are totally unconvincing so it must be your fault."
Slap it up him :-)
Morning Alan, hope you are well
Yes malc, village fete today so I shall be manning the book stall as ever. Looks like rain though so I could be on the paper mache stall by the end of the afternoon :-)
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
That's why the Leave campaign is fundamentally bullshit. If we withdraw, future governments might choose to have different immigrants - more Pakistanis and Chinese, fewer Poles and Bulgarians. But no government *in practice* (as opposed to rhetoric) has shown any sign of wanting to reduce overall immigration seriously, because they're conscious of the huge pull demand, and there's no sign that it will change. (In particular, anyone who thinks that Boris is seriously keen on reducing immigration is deluded.)
2. I really like Corbyn, as you know, and he has huge appeal to 25-30% of the population, typically the young. But he is not the man to mobilise the older WWC anti-immigation Labour/UKIP vote for Remain. Say he somehow persuaded the broadcasters to put him on four debates between now and polling day. Do you think Fred Bloggs in South Shields is going to get more Remain as a result?
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Not to mention abortion.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
Enjoy yourself. I'm spending far too long on here
(you probably ought to autorepost this every hour all day or people won't see this and will start conspriacy theories that you have gone off in a huff.
One thing that hasn't been much discussed is how a house price fall prompted by Brexit could seriously jeopardise a significant number of major engineering and regeneration projects. Certainly many of the big planned redevelopments in London are in large part funded by Developers through Section 106 agreements and CIL, but these are in turn dependent on continued high levels of property prices. If the property market slumps this could have major knock on effects on development across London and perhaps the country. And won't do anything to help housing shortages.
You mean people in Scotland/ rest of England will have to spend less rebuilding London , if ever I heard a reason to vote Leave that one is the topper. I knew I was voting leave for a good reason.
One thing that hasn't been much discussed is how a house price fall prompted by Brexit could seriously jeopardise a significant number of major engineering and regeneration projects. Certainly many of the big planned redevelopments in London are in large part funded by Developers through Section 106 agreements and CIL, but these are in turn dependent on continued high levels of property prices. If the property market slumps this could have major knock on effects on development across London and perhaps the country. And won't do anything to help housing shortages.
You mean people in Scotland/ rest of England will have to spend less rebuilding London , if ever I heard a reason to vote Leave that one is the topper. I knew I was voting leave for a good reason.
No they'll have to spend more, because the developers won't be there to do it instead.
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
Oh dear.
He's actually fine with leave as well
Given that Heath very nearly brought him into his government as a GOAT (my Dad decided he didn't want the publicity) that's quite a turn around!
Goat?
Coined by Brown so anchronistic (Heath called them Young Turks) Stands for "government of all the talents" - bringing in non politicians to government
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
The fiction is that governments can do half the things they claim they can do. This has northing to do with Leave or Remain but is a fiction of the whole political class.
maybe if they just promised less and did a few essential things well we'd have a better functioning state.
Perfect Tory example of Remain supporter, I am rich and coining it in , vote remain you peasant losers, oh and buy my foreign made products.
He is advocating Leave...
Put down your prejudice long enough to read the thread Malcolm
I knew there would be one smart arse Tory, as you will see in my PS
ROFL
malc when they start wheeling out "prejudice", you know they're bricking it.
Prejudice is just code for" my are arguments are totally unconvincing so it must be your fault."
Slap it up him :-)
Morning Alan, hope you are well
Yes malc, village fete today so I shall be manning the book stall as ever. Looks like rain though so I could be on the paper mache stall by the end of the afternoon :-)
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
Oh dear.
He's actually fine with leave as well
Given that Heath very nearly brought him into his government as a GOAT (my Dad decided he didn't want the publicity) that's quite a turn around!
Goat?
Coined by Brown so anchronistic (Heath called them Young Turks) Stands for "government of all the talents" - bringing in non politicians to government
LOL - I was thinking of Bringing Turkey into it when I saw Goat for entirely different reasons.
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
That's why the Leave campaign is fundamentally bullshit. If we withdraw, future governments might choose to have different immigrants - more Pakistanis and Chinese, fewer Poles and Bulgarians. But no government *in practice* (as opposed to rhetoric) has shown any sign of wanting to reduce overall immigration seriously, because they're conscious of the huge pull demand, and there's no sign that it will change. (In particular, anyone who thinks that Boris is seriously keen on reducing immigration is deluded.)
"Immigrants come because employers want them"
But, why is it the job of the Labour Party to be at the beck and call of employers?
I am not surprised that employers want a large pool of labour, because that is how wages and conditions are kept low.
If employers asked the Labour party to go lie down in the middle of the M25, you wouldn't do it, would you?
One thing that hasn't been much discussed is how a house price fall prompted by Brexit could seriously jeopardise a significant number of major engineering and regeneration projects. Certainly many of the big planned redevelopments in London are in large part funded by Developers through Section 106 agreements and CIL, but these are in turn dependent on continued high levels of property prices. If the property market slumps this could have major knock on effects on development across London and perhaps the country. And won't do anything to help housing shortages.
You mean people in Scotland/ rest of England will have to spend less rebuilding London , if ever I heard a reason to vote Leave that one is the topper. I knew I was voting leave for a good reason.
are u a Leaver? I thought u support Scottish independence. Out of both unions....atleast it's consistent.
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
Enjoy, David, and many thanks for the interesting articles you produce so regularly.
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
So if we leave the excuse will be removed. Sounds healthy, what is objectionable about that?
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
So the removal of that convenient excuse will render our Governments that much more accountable to the voters.
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
The fiction is that governments can do half the things they claim they can do. This has northing to do with Leave or Remain but is a fiction of the whole political class.
maybe if they just promised less and did a few essential things well we'd have a better functioning state.
When a major plank of the Leave argument is "take back control" it has everything to do with the referendum though. What's going on in Wales is a prime example, of which what happened at Port Talbot must be having a major effect. Which really was little to do with the EU, and to the extent that it was was the result of British Government lobbying against protections which might otherwise have been put forward.
Perfect Tory example of Remain supporter, I am rich and coining it in , vote remain you peasant losers, oh and buy my foreign made products.
He is advocating Leave...
Put down your prejudice long enough to read the thread Malcolm
I knew there would be one smart arse Tory, as you will see in my PS
ROFL
malc when they start wheeling out "prejudice", you know they're bricking it.
Prejudice is just code for" my are arguments are totally unconvincing so it must be your fault."
Slap it up him :-)
Morning Alan, hope you are well
Yes malc, village fete today so I shall be manning the book stall as ever. Looks like rain though so I could be on the paper mache stall by the end of the afternoon :-)
Lucky you! The Peppa Pig travelling fair has come to our town so i have to go there...
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Not to mention abortion.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
That is some discount rate! Like most 67-year-olds, fifty years' time I find somewhat academic. And it's a lot easier to father five times than it is to have five pregnancies, which is why I stand by my paraphrase. Some women like to be pregnant; rather more don't. The more choice a culture gives them, the fewer - in total - they give birth to.
Correction to my earlier quote: it was the doctor, not the preacher, who "don't know when".
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
I guess there's some logic in that somewhere, if one were to dig very deep and then dig some more!
Perfect Tory example of Remain supporter, I am rich and coining it in , vote remain you peasant losers, oh and buy my foreign made products.
He is advocating Leave...
Put down your prejudice long enough to read the thread Malcolm
I knew there would be one smart arse Tory, as you will see in my PS
ROFL
malc when they start wheeling out "prejudice", you know they're bricking it.
Prejudice is just code for" my are arguments are totally unconvincing so it must be your fault."
Slap it up him :-)
Morning Alan, hope you are well
Yes malc, village fete today so I shall be manning the book stall as ever. Looks like rain though so I could be on the paper mache stall by the end of the afternoon :-)
Lucky you! The Peppa Pig travelling fair has come to our town so i have to go there...
Ah the joys of fatherhood.
They'll be teenagers soon enough and then they'll be hiding from you !
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
That's why the Leave campaign is fundamentally bullshit. If we withdraw, future governments might choose to have different immigrants - more Pakistanis and Chinese, fewer Poles and Bulgarians. But no government *in practice* (as opposed to rhetoric) has shown any sign of wanting to reduce overall immigration seriously, because they're conscious of the huge pull demand, and there's no sign that it will change. (In particular, anyone who thinks that Boris is seriously keen on reducing immigration is deluded.)
2. I really like Corbyn, as you know, and he has huge appeal to 25-30% of the population, typically the young. But he is not the man to mobilise the older WWC anti-immigation Labour/UKIP vote for Remain. Say he somehow persuaded the broadcasters to put him on four debates between now and polling day. Do you think Fred Bloggs in South Shields is going to get more Remain as a result?
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Obviously I know what is, and I'd dispute your assertion.
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
That's why the Leave campaign is fundamentally bullshit. If we withdraw, future governments might choose to have different immigrants - more Pakistanis and Chinese, fewer Poles and Bulgarians. But no government *in practice* (as opposed to rhetoric) has shown any sign of wanting to reduce overall immigration seriously, because they're conscious of the huge pull demand, and there's no sign that it will change. (In particular, anyone who thinks that Boris is seriously keen on reducing immigration is deluded.)
2. I really like Corbyn, as you know, and he has huge appeal to 25-30% of the population, typically the young. But he is not the man to mobilise the older WWC anti-immigation Labour/UKIP vote for Remain. Say he somehow persuaded the broadcasters to put him on four debates between now and polling day. Do you think Fred Bloggs in South Shields is going to get more Remain as a result?
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Obviously I know what is, and I'd dispute your assertion.
If you think Levitt is wrong, please post a link - perhaps you've explained it on his blog
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
The fiction is that governments can do half the things they claim they can do. This has northing to do with Leave or Remain but is a fiction of the whole political class.
maybe if they just promised less and did a few essential things well we'd have a better functioning state.
When a major plank of the Leave argument is "take back control" it has everything to do with the referendum though. What's going on in Wales is a prime example, of which what happened at Port Talbot must be having a major effect. Which really was little to do with the EU, and to the extent that it was was the result of British Government lobbying against protections which might otherwise have been put forward.
Cameron and Osborne decided to suck up to the Chinese and said stuff the steel industry. That's simply an example of a country ( us ) using the EU infrastructure to piss everyone else off. It could just as easily have been France on farming, Germany on cars or Poland on pierogi.
@NickPalmer - if Jeremy Corbyn is seriously the best the Labour left can do, then things are even worse than I thought. What a golden opportunity for the left of the party your support for JC is squandering. If, that is, power really is something you are genuinely interested in.
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
I guess there's some logic in that somewhere, if one were to dig very deep and then dig some more!
I don't know - I think everyone should vote Leave for that reason.
One thing that hasn't been much discussed is how a house price fall prompted by Brexit could seriously jeopardise a significant number of major engineering and regeneration projects. Certainly many of the big planned redevelopments in London are in large part funded by Developers through Section 106 agreements and CIL, but these are in turn dependent on continued high levels of property prices. If the property market slumps this could have major knock on effects on development across London and perhaps the country. And won't do anything to help housing shortages.
You mean people in Scotland/ rest of England will have to spend less rebuilding London , if ever I heard a reason to vote Leave that one is the topper. I knew I was voting leave for a good reason.
No they'll have to spend more, because the developers won't be there to do it instead.
Can I suggest you study a book on economics 101 - supply and demand.
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
Yep, Brexit will clearly deliver huge disappointments to a lot of people, particularly with regards to wage growth and immigration. The right will be happy, though, as we'll see more public services cut and greater restrictions on workers' rights.
One thing that hasn't been much discussed is how a house price fall prompted by Brexit could seriously jeopardise a significant number of major engineering and regeneration projects. Certainly many of the big planned redevelopments in London are in large part funded by Developers through Section 106 agreements and CIL, but these are in turn dependent on continued high levels of property prices. If the property market slumps this could have major knock on effects on development across London and perhaps the country. And won't do anything to help housing shortages.
You mean people in Scotland/ rest of England will have to spend less rebuilding London , if ever I heard a reason to vote Leave that one is the topper. I knew I was voting leave for a good reason.
No they'll have to spend more, because the developers won't be there to do it instead.
the vulture speculators sucking up our money you mean to benefit themselves and their buddies. If it is so great let them spend their own money instead of sucking the public dry. far too much spent there to the detriment of the rest of the country.
I still can't believe you can get 12/5, this is incredibly close.
There must be a lot of very rich people backing remain.
That is what I suspected all along.
The Remain strategy was to carpet bomb leave during the long campaign so that people thought it was all over bar the shouting in the short campaign.
I'm convinced people who can afford it putting large sums on remain was part of this to help give a narrative of overwhelming odds in favour of Remain.
As far as a strategy it probably makes sense trying to create the feeling that remain are far ahead with Bookmakers.
I know many people who say "look where the money is, bookies always know".
Which is obviously BS, bookies tend to just try balance their books they aren't generally predictors. However many people think they do predict events.
If bookies DID know, they would place bets with other bookies.
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
Have to say I'm glad I'm off - to the Czech Rep and Slovakia - for the last week of this as frankly it's doing my head in.
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
Your fatal mistake in your logic is assuming that your kids, let alone grandkids, will believe what you do. If that was the case we'd never have any progress in science, education or culture and we'd still be in a backwards community where contraception and abortion etc are forbidden. Those who believe in allowing contraception and abortion today have ancestors (if not direct parents or grandparents) who do or did not.
Instead look at the real world and the extreme cultures you've described are antiquated, they've been replaced in the west by those who practice differently. I could name lots of nations where abortion was illegal but is no longer illegal, can you name any that has gone the other way around.
Hard to judge. There must be at least one fired-up Remainer, because they go around trashing the Leave posters overnight, but other than that, Remain are quite invisible. Not seen a single poster for Remain yet down here in Devon.
Perfect Tory example of Remain supporter, I am rich and coining it in , vote remain you peasant losers, oh and buy my foreign made products.
He is advocating Leave...
Put down your prejudice long enough to read the thread Malcolm
I knew there would be one smart arse Tory, as you will see in my PS
ROFL
malc when they start wheeling out "prejudice", you know they're bricking it.
Prejudice is just code for" my are arguments are totally unconvincing so it must be your fault."
Slap it up him :-)
Morning Alan, hope you are well
Yes malc, village fete today so I shall be manning the book stall as ever. Looks like rain though so I could be on the paper mache stall by the end of the afternoon :-)
Lucky you! The Peppa Pig travelling fair has come to our town so i have to go there...
Ah the joys of fatherhood.
They'll be teenagers soon enough and then they'll be hiding from you !
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
Your fatal mistake in your logic is assuming that your kids, let alone grandkids, will believe what you do. If that was the case we'd never have any progress in science, education or culture and we'd still be in a backwards community where contraception and abortion etc are forbidden. Those who believe in allowing contraception and abortion today have ancestors (if not direct parents or grandparents) who do or did not.
Instead look at the real world and the extreme cultures you've described are antiquated, they've been replaced in the west by those who practice differently. I could name lots of nations where abortion was illegal but is no longer illegal, can you name any that has gone the other way around.
Explain why generations of people vote tribally for Tory or Labour then?
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
So the removal of that convenient excuse will render our Governments that much more accountable to the voters.
Absolutely - without the EU's skirts, our politicians will have to own what happens - and the civil service won't have so much gold-plating to do either.
London, NI and Scotland Remain, and the rest of us Leave.
I think the most amusing result would be Remain by < 20 k.
Because Gibraltar (largely Remain) would have determined the result.
Which is funny - because those people most likely to stand up for Gibraltar against the Spanish are the Leavers.
(And of course if the result <20K there could be a legal challenge re extending voter registration and abuse of Government funds to target specific areas of population to register)
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
Enjoy, David, and many thanks for the interesting articles you produce so regularly.
Seconded - have a great holiday David and many thanks for all your threads for PB.co which are greatly appreciated.
Not least your piece this morning and your somewhat brave forecast, imho, that the referendum turnout will be 62%-64% when most seem to be going for an appreciably higher figure.
This has reinforced my view that Ladbrokes' offering of 11/8 that turnout will be within the range of 60% - 70% probably represents the best political bet going right now.
Hard to judge. There must be at least one fired-up Remainer, because they go around trashing the Leave posters overnight, but other than that, Remain are quite invisible. Not seen a single poster for Remain yet down here in Devon.
It's leave's vote to lose now. All the momentum is with them because (sadly but unsurprisingly) the single issue of the campaign is migration and remain have no answer. So far the campaign has traded increasingly ludicrous claim and counter claim with "facts" that patently aren't.
But a lot of people aren't going with their head, they are going with their gut. And that tells them they are unhappy with the status quo, aren't happy with where the country is going, and even if leaving the EU isn't a silver bullet cure all, it's a start. Or at the very least a scream of defiance against an establishment which for two long has offered (as Galloway put it) two cheeks of the same arse.
It'll be leave. It won't be close.
I'm increasingly in agreement with this. The question is how they will react when they discover they've voted for the 'continuity' Tories rather than the 'real' Tories. But still end up with Tories whose fundamental view of the world is free market neoliberalism (with added protection for their own interests, but not yours).
They'll have a vote in the 2020 election.
Quite. The whole point is that it's for the British people to decide who governs them - and to be able to give the buggers a P45 at the ballot box if we don't like what they do.
Amusingly, the party that might benefit most from this independence would be a centrist liberal party, but the LDs inexplicably love the EU more then the rest of them!
The Leavers are maintaining a fiction that many of the limitations on what modern Government can achieve are caused by the EU. What will be discovered if we leave is that the EU is often a convenient excuse, and actually the limitations are more a consequence of the globalised world in which we live.
So the removal of that convenient excuse will render our Governments that much more accountable to the voters.
Asking people to vote for you so they can find out you're wrong is pretty peculiar.
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
I guess there's some logic in that somewhere, if one were to dig very deep and then dig some more!
For him it's all about sovereignty - but he's ok (just about) with the current set up. He thinks that a 50.01% victory with Remain would make the EU think very carefully before pursuing further integration. I disagree...
But he's voted Leave anyway (by post). It was mildly amusing the other day when the chairman of the firm (who is a serious Establishment figure) decided not to discuss the referendum as he suspected that he would would be the only pro-remain voice at the table!
Have fun, all. I'm off on holiday now for a week so am unlikely to be posting again. I've not taken off in a huff or despair - just want to tune out for a while. And yes, it is a huge and important vote (which I'll be back for), but I've not really found it in me to campaign for Remain so my presence won't be missed there as it would be for a regular election.
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
Have to say I'm glad I'm off - to the Czech Rep and Slovakia - for the last week of this as frankly it's doing my head in.
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Not to mention abortion.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
That is some discount rate! Like most 67-year-olds, fifty years' time I find somewhat academic. And it's a lot easier to father five times than it is to have five pregnancies, which is why I stand by my paraphrase. Some women like to be pregnant; rather more don't. The more choice a culture gives them, the fewer - in total - they give birth to.
Correction to my earlier quote: it was the doctor, not the preacher, who "don't know when".
This issue is already causing a huge and growing crisis for Israel though as the reproduction rate of Muslims and Ultra Orthodox Jews is far outstripping the birth rate of the Secular western Jews who have always run the place since 1948.
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
I guess there's some logic in that somewhere, if one were to dig very deep and then dig some more!
For him it's all about sovereignty - but he's ok (just about) with the current set up. He thinks that a 50.01% victory with Remain would make the EU think very carefully before pursuing further integration. I disagree...
But he's voted Leave anyway (by post). It was mildly amusing the other day when the chairman of the firm (who is a serious Establishment figure) decided not to discuss the referendum as he suspected that he would would be the only pro-remain voice at the table!
I've heard that view from a lot of people (including @SeanT): they want a 51:49 victory to Remain, because that would (a) make it clear how unhappy we are with the EU project; (b) leave the door open to another referendum if there are significant changes; but also (c) minimise the economic risk.
It's a view I have considerable sympathy with. But wouldn't it simply be easier to have EFTA/EEA as the explicit destination?
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
Your fatal mistake in your logic is assuming that your kids, let alone grandkids, will believe what you do. If that was the case we'd never have any progress in science, education or culture and we'd still be in a backwards community where contraception and abortion etc are forbidden. Those who believe in allowing contraception and abortion today have ancestors (if not direct parents or grandparents) who do or did not.
Instead look at the real world and the extreme cultures you've described are antiquated, they've been replaced in the west by those who practice differently. I could name lots of nations where abortion was illegal but is no longer illegal, can you name any that has gone the other way around.
Explain why generations of people vote tribally for Tory or Labour then?
Do they? Oct 74 Lab 11.457mn, Con 10.463mn 1983 Con 13.012mn (+24.4%), Lab 8.457mn (-19.2%) 1992 Con 14.093mn (+8.3%), Lab 11.560mn (+36.7%) 1997 Lab 13.518mn (+16.9%, +59.8% since 83), Con 9.600mn (-31.9%) 2010 Con 10.704mn (+11.5%, +28.1% since 01), Lab (-36.3%)
We get very dramatic swings in less than a generation all the time. The idea anyone only ever votes the way their grandad did is absurd.
But, why is it the job of the Labour Party to be at the beck and call of employers?
I am not surprised that employers want a large pool of labour, because that is how wages and conditions are kept low.
If employers asked the Labour party to go lie down in the middle of the M25, you wouldn't do it, would you?
First, we're not debating my personal views here. As I've said, I like the EU, I think we belong there, and we'd be nuts to leave. But I'm not the issue.
But no rational government is actually against employers per se. If we take the largest employer, the NHS, they are utterly dependent on immigration. In theory we could be training masses more doctors and nurses and technical staff. In practice we don't - indeed,the current government has CUT nursing training. That, at some level, is undoubtedly because they can get qualified labour more inexpensively from immigration. We could reverse that, if we diverted a bigger chunk of NHS spending to salaries and spent 5-10 years massively increasing training. But in that case either we'd have big cuts in NHS services or a sharply rising NHS budget.
In inudstry, the situation is slightly different. The problem is that the availability of cheap labour has made automation less attractive, so investment is at pathetic levels - summarised by the Economist headline "Let's try to catch up with Upper Volta".
The point is not what you or I think should be done, but what will actually happen. Do you see any plausible government actually changing this any time soon? I don't, which is why the whole "enable us to curb migration" argument is built on deception.
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
I guess there's some logic in that somewhere, if one were to dig very deep and then dig some more!
For him it's all about sovereignty - but he's ok (just about) with the current set up. He thinks that a 50.01% victory with Remain would make the EU think very carefully before pursuing further integration. I disagree...
But he's voted Leave anyway (by post). It was mildly amusing the other day when the chairman of the firm (who is a serious Establishment figure) decided not to discuss the referendum as he suspected that he would would be the only pro-remain voice at the table!
I've heard that view from a lot of people (including @SeanT): they want a 51:49 victory to Remain, because that would (a) make it clear how unhappy we are with the EU project; (b) leave the door open to another referendum if there are significant changes; but also (c) minimise the economic risk.
It's a view I have considerable sympathy with. But wouldn't it simply be easier to have EFTA/EEA as the explicit destination?
Leave has to deliver substantial reductions in immigration. Can't do that with EEA/EFTA.
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
The LEAVE Tories, together with UKIP supporters are nowhere near enough to win it for LEAVE on their own, they need a mighty wodge of Labour voting LEAVERS to push them over the line.
The way the numbers work out could eventually prove to look something like this:
Conservative Leavers ..... 60% x 35% = 21.0% UKIP Leavers .................. 90% x 15% = 13.5% Labour Leavers ............... 45% x 30% = 13.5% Other Parties' Leavers ..... 15% x 20% = 3.0%
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
I guess there's some logic in that somewhere, if one were to dig very deep and then dig some more!
For him it's all about sovereignty - but he's ok (just about) with the current set up. He thinks that a 50.01% victory with Remain would make the EU think very carefully before pursuing further integration. I disagree...
But he's voted Leave anyway (by post). It was mildly amusing the other day when the chairman of the firm (who is a serious Establishment figure) decided not to discuss the referendum as he suspected that he would would be the only pro-remain voice at the table!
I've heard that view from a lot of people (including @SeanT): they want a 51:49 victory to Remain, because that would (a) make it clear how unhappy we are with the EU project; (b) leave the door open to another referendum if there are significant changes; but also (c) minimise the economic risk.
It's a view I have considerable sympathy with. But wouldn't it simply be easier to have EFTA/EEA as the explicit destination?
I agree. Corbyn will own Brexit almost as much as Cameron and Osborne. But he'll be far less concerned. And the party membership will not hold it against him.
Two important points here, also relating to the article from electiondata.
1. There is not actually a solution that we can in any honesty offer on immigration. Not only is free movement an indssoluble part of the free market, and we'll do people on low incomes (and everyone else) a real disservice if we leave that. But also it's primarily a pull issue. Immgrants come because employers want them. That's why we still have 50% of migration from non-EU countries. We could reduce that to zero if we wanted to - but we don't, because the NHS and numerous other employers would be ruined.
Electiondata stops short of saying what he thinks should be done. There's a reason. What the disaffected voters want is not achievable. We can only win them over if we successfully lie to them, as the Tories have been doing for some time. It's both wrong and a mistake, because eventually they figure out they're being lied to, and go for more extreme groups who don't get into government and can therefore promise anything.
We have enjoyed much higher rates of growth, with much lower levels of immigration, in the recent past.
Demography isn't your subject, is it, Sean?
It's clearly not yours.
That's the kind of reply I expected from you. Do you even know what it is?
For the benefit of others: whilst immigration is indeed linked to economic activity, there is a stronger correlation with the need to replace in the workforce those Brits who didn't get born due to easily available contraception and legalised homosexuality - it's Levitt's argument on the drop in US crime rates in a different field of activity.
It may only be for one generation, however, or however long it takes the robots to arrive...
Not to mention abortion.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
That is some discount rate! Like most 67-year-olds, fifty years' time I find somewhat academic. And it's a lot easier to father five times than it is to have five pregnancies, which is why I stand by my paraphrase. Some women like to be pregnant; rather more don't. The more choice a culture gives them, the fewer - in total - they give birth to.
Correction to my earlier quote: it was the doctor, not the preacher, who "don't know when".
PS - I'd disagree about the much easier to father them. It dosen't end when you have bought them into existence. Its just beginning. Personally I would have preffered to quit at three but she who must be obeyed had other ideas :-)
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
. I could name lots of nations where abortion was illegal but is no longer illegal, can you name any that has gone the other way around.
Certain US states are doing their darnedest. As a guess somewhere in the Middle or Far East that has done from a Secular to Islamic government in the last 30 years may have banned abortion.
To be fair in the States that's because they never actually wanted abortion legalising but it was forced upon them by SCOTUS. So the culture has never flipped back.
If we take the largest employer, the NHS, they are utterly dependent on immigration. In theory we could be training masses more doctors and nurses and technical staff. In practice we don't - indeed,the current government has CUT nursing training. That, at some level, is undoubtedly because they can get qualified labour more inexpensively from immigration. We could reverse that, if we diverted a bigger chunk of NHS spending to salaries and spent 5-10 years massively increasing training. But in that case either we'd have big cuts in NHS services or a sharply rising NHS budget.
If leaving the EU leads to us investing (through higher taxes) in developing needed skills for our society, then so be it. Twice the PM has faced questions linking cuts to nursing training to the ability of the government to bring in ready-to-go labour.
Cultures which practice contraception and abortion will inevitably be replaced with cultures that do not.
Cocaine for horses, not for men Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
It would be wrong though.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
. I could name lots of nations where abortion was illegal but is no longer illegal, can you name any that has gone the other way around.
Certain US states are doing their darnedest. As a guess somewhere in the Middle or Far East that has done from a Secular to Islamic government in the last 30 years may have banned abortion.
To be fair in the States that's because they never actually wanted abortion legalising but it was forced upon them by SCOTUS. So the culture has never flipped back.
True. I did edit my previous post though, Chile banned previously legal abortion in 1989.
Good morning all. Firstly, thanks to David for another quality article; hope you enjoy your holiday!
Secondly, Mr Dancer referenced Lord Lisvane earlier. Here's the apposite quote:
" I think that action at this stage will depend on the margin of the referendum vote. If the result is narrow and the turnout is low then the possibilities become a lot more complicated. Remember that the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum was 55.3 per cent No, 44.7 per cent Yes, on an extremely high turnout of 84.59 per cent. If the result on June 23 was, say, 51 to 49 in favour of Leave on a turnout of 55 per cent then that would move quite a lot of goalposts – especially if Scotland had voted to stay and England to leave. The Prime Minister could say that such a result is not sufficiently decisive and so we will negotiate heads of agreement on withdrawal, and then have a second referendum to decide whether to trigger the exit process on that basis."
He raises an interesting point. The politics of a close Brexit are fascinating.
If we take the largest employer, the NHS, they are utterly dependent on immigration. In theory we could be training masses more doctors and nurses and technical staff. In practice we don't - indeed,the current government has CUT nursing training. That, at some level, is undoubtedly because they can get qualified labour more inexpensively from immigration. We could reverse that, if we diverted a bigger chunk of NHS spending to salaries and spent 5-10 years massively increasing training. But in that case either we'd have big cuts in NHS services or a sharply rising NHS budget.
If leaving the EU leads to us investing (through higher taxes) in developing needed skills for our society, then so be it. Twice the PM has faced questions linking cuts to nursing training to the ability of the government to bring in ready-to-go labour.
I made an out-of-the-box suggestion the other day that the NHS might open, expand or work with training colleges in large non-EU cities like Mumbai or Manila, which would reduce training costs while maintaining standards and allow skilled foreigners an immigration route to the UK. The closed EU and NHS mindsets don't seem to allow this sort of thinking - surely better to try and fail than not to try at all?
It's something I predicted a few weeks ago could happen if Leave win. I suspect the Conservative Party would rather kill off Cameron than let him do that, though.
I imagine our definitions of right wing are very different. They believe in reducing the taxes of the best off, cutting public services, restricting trade union rights and shrinking the size of the state. That's right wing in my book.
I thought Karl Marx designed the ultimate theory for the abolition of the state. So Marxism is 'right-wing'...?
Just catching up on Question Time. What I hadn't seen on here is Eddie Izzard's suggestion that not only could Scotland leave the UK if we vote to leave, but Wales might follow. He's going to have a nasty shock on June 24 - if the UK as a whole has voted to leave, I think it's very likely that Wales has too.
Should LEAVE prevail on 23 June, it will be Labour voters wot won it for them. Reflecting Corbyn's decidedly lacklustre level of support for the party's official line as being for REMAIN, the rank and file of their supporters are so far clearly not convinced.
Total LEAVERS .................................... 51.0%
It's fascinating how cross-party the Leave campaign is - I'm sure I've seen posters here using whatever leaflets/signs are most appropriate for their area, irrespective of their own politics.
I'm pushing LabourLeave stuff quite hard. They've a really compelling BS free message. GrassRootsOut have some great nuggets too. VoteLeave are impressing me with video evidence/rapid rebuttals/big announcements.
I don't want to believe the polling - but the trend seems to be coming our way.
It is often said that Rupert Murdoch likes to support the winning side and that's certainly a logical stance for a newspaper proprietor to take, i.e. in not wishing to alienate one's readership. I suspect there's also a small, probably very small percentage of the electorate who want to back the winner. Even if this percentage is < 1%, this could prove crucial in what looks like a very close contest.
My Dad has voted Leave because he wants Remain to win, but not by very much!
I guess there's some logic in that somewhere, if one were to dig very deep and then dig some more!
For him it's all about sovereignty - but he's ok (just about) with the current set up. He thinks that a 50.01% victory with Remain would make the EU think very carefully before pursuing further integration. I disagree...
But he's voted Leave anyway (by post). It was mildly amusing the other day when the chairman of the firm (who is a serious Establishment figure) decided not to discuss the referendum as he suspected that he would would be the only pro-remain voice at the table!
I've heard that view from a lot of people (including @SeanT): they want a 51:49 victory to Remain, because that would (a) make it clear how unhappy we are with the EU project; (b) leave the door open to another referendum if there are significant changes; but also (c) minimise the economic risk.
It's a view I have considerable sympathy with. But wouldn't it simply be easier to have EFTA/EEA as the explicit destination?
Leave has to deliver substantial reductions in immigration. Can't do that with EEA/EFTA.
I suspect that Labour Leavers are more motivated with giving politicians, experts, and the elite in general a bloody nose. Up yours. Driven by anger at not sharing in prosperity and being generally ignored. "Take Control" will resonate with them even though they will be even less in control after Brexit under a right wing government.
I also suspect that a Brexit will lead to a EEA/EFTA arrangement which will be very similar to the present arrangement. The only difference is that it will be more appealing emotionally to some, and it will lead to an extended period of economic uncertainty with more cuts and less jobs for a time. No change to immigration though. It's a false promise that will only reconfirm Labour Leavers contempt for politicians.
If we take the largest employer, the NHS, they are utterly dependent on immigration. In theory we could be training masses more doctors and nurses and technical staff. In practice we don't - indeed,the current government has CUT nursing training. That, at some level, is undoubtedly because they can get qualified labour more inexpensively from immigration. We could reverse that, if we diverted a bigger chunk of NHS spending to salaries and spent 5-10 years massively increasing training. But in that case either we'd have big cuts in NHS services or a sharply rising NHS budget.
If leaving the EU leads to us investing (through higher taxes) in developing needed skills for our society, then so be it. Twice the PM has faced questions linking cuts to nursing training to the ability of the government to bring in ready-to-go labour.
I made an out-of-the-box suggestion the other day that the NHS might open, expand or work with training colleges in large non-EU cities like Mumbai or Manila, which would reduce training costs while maintaining standards and allow skilled foreigners an immigration route to the UK. The closed EU and NHS mindsets don't seem to allow this sort of thinking - surely better to try and fail than not to try at all?
That would be a 10 year project, and does beg the question: Why not just expand medical and nursing schools in the UK? Both are oversubscribed applications at present. Bond bursaries to working for the NHS if needed.
A 'tariff' on imports is not paid for by the provider but by the consumer (via higher-costs). Outwith import-substitution we have to pay-up or go without. [And I am firmly B.O.O.!]
If we take the largest employer, the NHS, they are utterly dependent on immigration. In theory we could be training masses more doctors and nurses and technical staff. In practice we don't - indeed,the current government has CUT nursing training. That, at some level, is undoubtedly because they can get qualified labour more inexpensively from immigration. We could reverse that, if we diverted a bigger chunk of NHS spending to salaries and spent 5-10 years massively increasing training. But in that case either we'd have big cuts in NHS services or a sharply rising NHS budget.
If leaving the EU leads to us investing (through higher taxes) in developing needed skills for our society, then so be it. Twice the PM has faced questions linking cuts to nursing training to the ability of the government to bring in ready-to-go labour.
I made an out-of-the-box suggestion the other day that the NHS might open, expand or work with training colleges in large non-EU cities like Mumbai or Manila, which would reduce training costs while maintaining standards and allow skilled foreigners an immigration route to the UK. The closed EU and NHS mindsets don't seem to allow this sort of thinking - surely better to try and fail than not to try at all?
Comments
Shame they are timestamped, isn't it?
The opposite is when remainers can't accept another recession will happen anyway.
Sometimes it is hard to cut out the gut instinct and bias I guess.
That's a problem, because experts are often telling the truth, and somebody has to try and govern the country. Scepticism towards authority, rather than cynicism, should be the correct approach.
(edited to add: Good morning, everyone)
But then I'm not having to peddle Remain lies all day, every day....until Brexit Day. Still, not long to go now. Then you can have a long, long walk to assess where it all went so horribly wrong for Remain. And consider how much your constant hectoring of Leavers might just have had a part...
Preacher say it kill you but he don't know when...
Actually, you could just as well say "cultures that let women vote will inevitably be replaced..." - and it would be even more conservative!
Fuck off, Scott, I'm voting Leave.
If I have 5 kids (which I actually do) and they all have five kids, within 50 years I have replaced myself with 12.5 voters
If you have one kid and he in turn has one kid then within 50 years you have replaced yourself with 1/4 of a voter.
A ratio of 50:1
I'm unlikely to post a piece next Saturday but hope to get another in before the vote.
(you probably ought to autorepost this every hour all day or people won't see this and will start conspriacy theories that you have gone off in a huff.
maybe if they just promised less and did a few essential things well we'd have a better functioning state.
But, why is it the job of the Labour Party to be at the beck and call of employers?
I am not surprised that employers want a large pool of labour, because that is how wages and conditions are kept low.
If employers asked the Labour party to go lie down in the middle of the M25, you wouldn't do it, would you?
Correction to my earlier quote: it was the doctor, not the preacher, who "don't know when".
They'll be teenagers soon enough and then they'll be hiding from you !
London, NI and Scotland Remain, and the rest of us Leave.
What's Leave looking like down your way?
Instead look at the real world and the extreme cultures you've described are antiquated, they've been replaced in the west by those who practice differently. I could name lots of nations where abortion was illegal but is no longer illegal, can you name any that has gone the other way around.
Because Gibraltar (largely Remain) would have determined the result.
(And of course if the result <20K there could be a legal challenge re extending voter registration and abuse of Government funds to target specific areas of population to register)
Not least your piece this morning and your somewhat brave forecast, imho, that the referendum turnout will be 62%-64% when most seem to be going for an appreciably higher figure.
This has reinforced my view that Ladbrokes' offering of 11/8 that turnout will be within the range of 60% - 70% probably represents the best political bet going right now.
As ever, DYOR.
But he's voted Leave anyway (by post). It was mildly amusing the other day when the chairman of the firm (who is a serious Establishment figure) decided not to discuss the referendum as he suspected that he would would be the only pro-remain voice at the table!
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/israels-internal-demographics-disaster-13501
It's a view I have considerable sympathy with. But wouldn't it simply be easier to have EFTA/EEA as the explicit destination?
'What's Leave looking like down your way? '
From the number of Leave posters seen in East Sussex last week the EU is not the flavor of the month down there.
Oct 74 Lab 11.457mn, Con 10.463mn
1983 Con 13.012mn (+24.4%), Lab 8.457mn (-19.2%)
1992 Con 14.093mn (+8.3%), Lab 11.560mn (+36.7%)
1997 Lab 13.518mn (+16.9%, +59.8% since 83), Con 9.600mn (-31.9%)
2010 Con 10.704mn (+11.5%, +28.1% since 01), Lab (-36.3%)
We get very dramatic swings in less than a generation all the time. The idea anyone only ever votes the way their grandad did is absurd.
But no rational government is actually against employers per se. If we take the largest employer, the NHS, they are utterly dependent on immigration. In theory we could be training masses more doctors and nurses and technical staff. In practice we don't - indeed,the current government has CUT nursing training. That, at some level, is undoubtedly because they can get qualified labour more inexpensively from immigration. We could reverse that, if we diverted a bigger chunk of NHS spending to salaries and spent 5-10 years massively increasing training. But in that case either we'd have big cuts in NHS services or a sharply rising NHS budget.
In inudstry, the situation is slightly different. The problem is that the availability of cheap labour has made automation less attractive, so investment is at pathetic levels - summarised by the Economist headline "Let's try to catch up with Upper Volta".
The point is not what you or I think should be done, but what will actually happen. Do you see any plausible government actually changing this any time soon? I don't, which is why the whole "enable us to curb migration" argument is built on deception.
Edit: Chile, 1989
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/this-country-banned-abortion-and-now-abortion-promoters-cant-believe-their
Wouldn't be without them though.
Our latest thinking: Reviewing our methodology and testing different turnout questions ahead of our next poll: https://t.co/2FcN8IU8Lm
50/50 call still...
Tried to have a good nights sleep but kept waking up in a cold sweat after having nightmares from watching Amber Rudd before bed.
Good lord that's one scary lady!
Shouty yes, scary, nah.
Other than TSE, is anyone here campaigning for Remain?
Secondly, Mr Dancer referenced Lord Lisvane earlier. Here's the apposite quote:
" I think that action at this stage will depend on the margin of the referendum vote. If the result is narrow and the turnout is low then the possibilities become a lot more complicated. Remember that the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum was 55.3 per cent No, 44.7 per cent Yes, on an extremely high turnout of 84.59 per cent. If the result on June 23 was, say, 51 to 49 in favour of Leave on a turnout of 55 per cent then that would move quite a lot of goalposts – especially if Scotland had voted to stay and England to leave. The Prime Minister could say that such a result is not sufficiently decisive and so we will negotiate heads of agreement on withdrawal, and then have a second referendum to decide whether to trigger the exit process on that basis."
He raises an interesting point. The politics of a close Brexit are fascinating.
It's something I predicted a few weeks ago could happen if Leave win. I suspect the Conservative Party would rather kill off Cameron than let him do that, though.
https://twitter.com/theJeremyVine/status/741368404863504384
:tumbleweed:
I also suspect that a Brexit will lead to a EEA/EFTA arrangement which will be very similar to the present arrangement. The only difference is that it will be more appealing emotionally to some, and it will lead to an extended period of economic uncertainty with more cuts and less jobs for a time. No change to immigration though. It's a false promise that will only reconfirm Labour Leavers contempt for politicians.
A 'tariff' on imports is not paid for by the provider but by the consumer (via higher-costs). Outwith import-substitution we have to pay-up or go without. [And I am firmly B.O.O.!]