Mr. Cyan, why would Germany do that? The single currency makes their exchange rate artificially weak, helping exports.
If France leaves the euro, other countries such as Italy and Spain may well follow, and Schengen would probably lose important members too. Germany would try to keep some kind of deutschmark zone, but I don't picture the EU as we know it surviving.
I don't think it would have any impact on Schengen, but it would almost certainly result in the Eurozone becoming merely a Deutschmark zone of Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and a few others.
To what extent would the dynamics of the campaign be changed if disastrous Local election results on May 4th forced Corbyn to step down?
I cant see him stepping down, it just does not seem to be in his personality, but hay we have all been surprised my so much in the last 12 mouths that hay who knows.
more likely I think is we get an avalanche of Lab MPs saying if reelected they will not vote for Corbyn and instead will vote for ......
But I think they will wait till nominations have closed so they do not get some Momentum 'last ditchers' standing as Continuity labour or whatever
Ah, so (some) Labour MP's new position will be as follows:
"We think our leader would make a shite Prime Minister, so if elected we will vote for person X/person Y/person Z/we don't have a clue (delete as applicable) to be our Prime Minister. This person will then form a Government (perhaps, depending on whether our faction of the Labour Party can build a majority,) whilst the leader of our Party sits on the back benches with his supporters, destabilising our Government and plotting revenge.
"Vote Labour."
Meanwhile, Corbyn's supporters will continue to insist that he will make an excellent Prime Minister, with the support of the demented pseudo-Trotskyite majority of the party membership, if not most of his own Parliamentarians.
Yeah, that's a really inspiring pitch.
Well, now that you put it like that, the 24 point leads make perfect sense
I like the comment that the pollsters will be very happy the polls are so conclusive - even if they are wrong, the right winner will almost certainly be what the polls suggest, so no one will mind all that much at the polls being wrong.
Yeah like 1997 when they all (except ICM) overstated Labour but nobody noticed...
Rodger has written a two volume History of the British Navy which is probably as definitive as Jonathan Sumption's series on the Hundred Years War. He also wrote The Wooden World, a condensed version, which is a very good introduction.
Watch this for a sense of just how bad Corbyn is. He's on a stage, now, in lefty North London, literally preaching to the converted. He's banging on about his days fighting the National Front.
This, surely, is the one place, speaking on the one subject, where he should be really good: rousing, confident, compelling. He's been doing this for 30 years.
He's just terrible. Meandering and dull, waffly and wooden.
Maybe I am missing something here. Are the National Front expected to pick up a lot of votes in north London this time around?
Corbyn's trouble isn't some deep hatred of him personally from the public... it's just that most people decided ages ago that he's ineffectual and couldn't run a bath, let alone a country. But that doesn't become more or less the case because he's been within a two mile radius of your house on the campaign trail.
It's an interesting one. Keeping a leader who's personally unpopular away from a by-election is a tried and tested tactic as you can try and run a hyper-local campaign and hope people ignore the national picture, keeping him out of the local press who'll provide the most in depth coverage. You can get away with it because by-elections don't lead news bulletins. Whether or not you can do that in a general election when your leader will make the top bulletin and first few pages of the newspaper every day is unknown, but I doubt it. It's never really been tried before as a party leader's never been this much of an obvious liability.
There is something more than mere bemusement at his incompetence, as pollsters have noted there's a real anger at Corbyn and Labour for being as patronising to think he's what they could plausibly want. There's not a personal hatred towards Corbyn perhaps, but there's a real hatred and ridicule among many of Labour's traditional supporters towards his politics and being told what they believe by people like Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott and their supporters.
If he was competent as well as radical, then you'd suggest a Tony Blairesque masochism strategy - get on the street, win people over, really engage, challenge assumptions and win credit even from those who disagree for taking things on. But as he just whiffles on regardless and hates being challenged from outside his comfort zone it's not an option.
There's no good answer to the Corbyn conundrum. Suspect people just want to avoid embarrassment.
Why is UKIP 1/200 in several Scottish constituencies at Paddy Power?
They've been having some technical glitches with PaddyPower/Betfair on constituency markets, including at one point offering Tories at 100-1 in a variety of safe Conservative seats... bets they will not be honouring.
A few snippets from the Survation polls on Scotland:
Age Results
18-34: SNP 46 Tory 12 - 10/10 likelihood to vote 54% 35-54: SNP 37 Tory 24 - 10/10 likelihood to vote 68% 55 up: SNP 31 Tory 30 - 10/10 likelihood to vote 87%
10/10 Likelihood to Vote by 2015 Vote (suggested 71% turnout)
91.2% Liberal Democrat 87.4% Conservative 83.3% SNP 81.2% Labour
The Tories lead the SNP in South Scotland by 42-39 and the Highlands and Islands at 44-30. They are also ahead of Labour in Glasgow according to the subsample. The SNP lead in the majority of regions.
However, the under 35 and usually 'can't be bothered' vote seems to be sitting in the SNP's column.
Turnout is one of the great unknowables for Scotland. It was obviously enormous for the independence vote, but below the UK average for the EU referendum, IIRC. If some of the enthusiasm of the younger SNP voters has worn off a bit, this could provide a little help to their opponents. However, I expect that the weighting in the poll has already taken account of that...
Edit: I wouldn't read anything into those regional subsets. They are minuscule.
The much herald mass defections of SNP to Con is 6% of the SNP 2015 vote.
It's all about the differential turnout not switchers.
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Rodger has written a two volume History of the British Navy which is probably as definitive as Jonathan Sumption's series on the Hundred Years War. He also wrote The Wooden World, a condensed version, which is a very good introduction.
There is something more than mere bemusement at his incompetence, as pollsters have noted there's a real anger at Corbyn and Labour for being as patronising to think he's what they could plausibly want. There's not a personal hatred towards Corbyn perhaps, but there's a real hatred and ridicule among many of Labour's traditional supporters towards his politics and being told what they believe by people like Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott and their supporters.
If he was competent as well as radical, then you'd suggest a Tony Blairesque masochism strategy - get on the street, win people over, really engage, challenge assumptions and win credit even from those who disagree for taking things on. But as he just whiffles on regardless and hates being challenged from outside his comfort zone it's not an option.
There's no good answer to the Corbyn conundrum. Suspect people just want to avoid embarrassment.
It's all about the differential turnout not switchers.