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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Tory Brexit divide is in the cabinet – the LAB one is betw
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Tory Brexit divide is in the cabinet – the LAB one is between the leadership & party supporters
We’ve heard a lot in the past few days about the arguments inside the cabinet between the rival factions over the form of Brexit that individual ministers want.
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Very wise words glw
(Slightly jealous that in so few words you nailed what I was trying to say)
The point is that a majority of voters in a democratic referendum DID choose to leave the EU. And most voters chose to leave the EU in reality, not in name only which is what staying in the Single Market and Customs Union would mean.
The point is not whether the People's will is considered to be right or wrong . The point is that the will of the People should be implemented.
The point is Democracy.
https://twitter.com/ianpaisleymp/status/962343428561559552
Big_G_NorthWales said:
The mantra from McDonnell is the huge profits go to billionaires when in fact the dividends from these companies are invested by pension funds to provide the future pensions of the many.
Has McDonnell answered how he will deal with the collapse in the value of workers pensions.
Pension funds will get Government bonds equal in value to the equity they give up in exchange. It is then up to pension funds to decide whether they want to keep the low risk low return bonds or sell them and purchase higher risk higher return equities in the market to balance their portfolios. Pension funds won't collapse in value!
In general I think the private sector is better placed to run businesses. It is more innovative, and there is more competition and choice. But I am not an idealogue about it. I'm not private good, public bad, (or vice versa). I'm a pragmatist.
Natural monopolies and strategic public goods (like the military, police, health, education, water, electricity and gas) are better run in the public sector for the public good. I don't mind private health or private education (or private water or electricity) for those who can afford it, but I draw the line at private armies and I'm uncomfortable with private police and prisons. I'm a wary pragmatist.
Why?
I accept that this is the way in which protest expresses itself in a democracy, but I fail to see a 'right' that it should be so. Certainly 'by any means at your disposal' needs to be revised Mr Meeks.
They think the majority of voters were wrong to vote to leave the EU. Many of them were too dumb to realise that they were being lied to by Leave politicians or to realise that the Remain side was the very epitome of truth, integrity and wisdom.
Now that the referendum is lost however Remoaners are arguing that what the people actually voted for was to leave the EU in name only. The People are keen to continue to be completely under the control of the EU through the Single Market, they want the EU to continue to control our borders with freedom of movement, to impose EU laws on us and they are particularly keen that the EU should be able to forbid the UK to make its own trade deals with non EU countries. In short, the People were only voting for the UK to lose membership. They would be quite happy to continue to be a vassal state of the EU, and it is the wickedness of the Leave side which is preventing them from having their say in this matter through a second referendum.
I hope I have summed up the Remoaner argument accurately.
No one is expecting the Conservatives to wave a programme of nationalisation through Parliament for a newly elected Corbyn government. Are they?
We are a Parliamentary democracy, A Party manifesto should have been the mechanism to bring about Brexit.
However it is your second statement which is the nub of the matter, and which justifies my use of the word Remoaner. You are employing a very disingenuous argument. Are you seriously suggesting that when a majority of voters voted to leave the EU, they were voting to leave the EU in name only, and that they were quite content for the UK to be remain under the control of the EU without being a member? Are you suggesting that people were not voting at all for the UK to control its own borders and laws -even though Remain's own campaign literature stated that leaving the EU would mean leaving the Single Market and Customs Union. Why on earth would people vote to leave the EU and remain under its control.
Your position seems akin to a hotel writing to me and stating that when I checked out of the hotel I didnt actually specifically say that I wanted to stop paying for the room -so here is the bill.
Mr McDonnell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme taking services into public ownership would not ultimately increase the burden on taxpayers because government bonds could be swapped for shares in a revenue-producing company.
It depends whether the government bonds are tradeable gilts (worth the usual market rate) or water company bonds issued by the nationalised company (which I think is your assumption).
I think McDonnell means the former. But even if he means the latter, then the bonds will still have their market value backed by the government. There is no risk of default and they will have a coupon rate.
The military, police and the NHS all function differently because they are public services, and with good reason.
I voted remain having listened to the arguments on both sides. I accept Farage (I cannot stand the man) overstepped the line but lies, if you want to call them, came from both sides.
David Cameron. Osborne and others made it absolutely clear that there would be no second referendum, that leaving meant exciting the single market and customs union, and that he would serve A50 immediately.
I was following the debates closely as I was unsure of my vote but in the end I elected for the status quo
The vote has taken place and we must respect the result.
Now, as it happens, I believe that the people voted clearly for more managed (and less) immigration, so I think that staying in the Single Market would probably not be being faithful to the result of the referendum.
But I think there has been very little genuine discussion about the merits - or otherwise - of the Customs Union. And in particular there seems to be a view (prevalent among many on here) that the EU is particularly protectionist, and that the rest of the world, beyond the EU's borders, is pro-free trade.
It is extremely hard to back up the proposition that the EU is anti-free trade. Yes, there are members (like France) that are mercantalist is outlook. But the EU has many more free trade agreements than any of the other big trading blocs (the US, Japan and India). It has deals with - among others - Canada, Mercosur, Caribcom, Mexico, South Korea, South Africa, and many others. It is also on the verge of a deal with Japan. It also has lower external tariffs - outside agriculture and autos - than any of the US, Japan, and China. (Although higher than Norway.)
Given we will take many years (perhaps more than a decade) to replace the existing EU agreements, it doesn't seem like there is a compelling case for removing us from the EU's customs union in the short term (at least until the DfIT has actually made some progress). On the contrary, it seems a good way to scare investment outside the UK, potentially jeopardising Brexit altogether.
Pension funds will get Government bonds equal in value to the equity they give up in exchange. It is then up to pension funds to decide whether they want to keep the low risk low return bonds or sell them and purchase higher risk higher return equities in the market to balance their portfolios. Pension funds won't collapse in value!
I'm sorry, but your analysis is completely flawed. It's difficult to even know where to begin.
Fundamentally, the value of the equity is the value of the expected future cashflows that will be generated by the business (after tax and interest).
If the government gives the owners of the equity bonds of equal value then there simply will not be any surplus cash to generate a return for the government. Moreover you are assuming that the government will be able to run the utilities as efficiently as the private sector - in theory they might be able to, but governments face competing demands and, I suspect, might be likely to give higher pay rises to employees (union pressure) or to invest more in schools'n'hospitals than in water pipes. Either way, over time, the efficiency of the network will degrade.
Moreover, there are the secondary effects to consider: if investors and lenders believe that the government is willing to expropriate assets with compensation set by primary legislation (as McDonnell has suggested) then you can bet that the stock markets will collapse and government borrowing rates will go up
I hope you enjoyed your stay in our hotel. When you checked out of the hotel on 16 June and handed over the keys, you did not specifically state in your check out statement that you did not want to continue paying for the room. Indeed the wording of the check out in our book makes no reference to wishing to discontinue occupation of the room. We hereby enclose a bill for the room for the last 8 months....
Yours Sincerely,
The Ramona Hotel.
My point is that it was undemocratic and unfair to exclude those people with most to lose from voting in the referendum. Period.
I would have no problem with remaining in a customs arrangement for a transition period. Happy for that to be 5-7 years, subject to certain conditions - including not mirroring EU legislation which isn't related to product standards.
This isn't a question of the narrow scope of the EC investigation (whether the LibDems had carried out sufficient checks to determine that Michael Brown UK entity was entitled to donate) but what is the right thing to do.
Otherwise, under your argument, everything the Lib Dems have done or said since has been de-legitimised
Britain will be permanently out of ever closer union - Rejected!
Never part of a European superstate - Binned!
Britain will never join the euro - Dumped!
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-statement-following-european-council-meeting-19-february-2016
The people made the right choice. Who'd want to be stuck in the slow lane forever?
What other things are implicit? "Subject to the wishes of the Party"? "If it's Tuesday"?
The problem for McDonnell is a potential RISE in water shares in the expectation that shareholders will get bonds to the value of the inflated share price. Plenty of scope for games playing.
In answer to your second point, I said below :
In general I think the private sector is better placed to run businesses. It is more innovative, and there is more competition and choice. But I am not an idealogue about it. I'm not private good, public bad, (or vice versa). I'm a pragmatist.
Natural monopolies and strategic public goods (like the military, police, health, education, water, electricity, gas, roads and rail) are better run in the public sector for the public good.
Brexit can be opposed too. No one needs to sign up to some fascistic vision of the People’s Will.
You have placed an interpretation on the result that People were only voting to leave the EU in name only and that they wanted us to remain under EU control through the Single Market. That is a fantastic interpretation.
And yet you reject the Leave view that when people voted in 1975 to stay in the Common Market, thats all they were doing. They were not voting for ever closer union, they were not voting for freedom of movement or to lose sovereignty in a political union.
It seems there is one rule for remainers and another for leavers.
In truth I wish the EU would come to their senses and make a generous offer that could ease the way to a new relationship.
You are giving your own interpretation of something that manifestly isn’t clear, or the government would already have finalised its stance. Other posters on this thread have shown they had different priorities when they voted Leave from those you have now. As it happens, there’s polling evidence that shows the public weren’t as dogmatic as you are.
There was only one question on the ballot paper. Anything beyond that question is a matter for discussion.
Or perhaps not...?
But surely that precedent is from a long, long time ago - before legislation like the Human Rights Act etc.
We've seen with this Govt that welfare measures approved by Parliament have been declared illegal by the Courts - so is it not possible that McDonnell may run into similar trouble?
Even something as innocuous (and popular) as the £23,000 welfare cap only survived by a 3-2 Supreme Court vote.
fpt here's wikipedia on the 1947 rail nationaisation
"The level of compensation paid has proved to be a matter of historical controversy.[citation needed] Some commentators, including The Economist and the London Stock Exchange stated that because the Government based the levels of compensation for former railway shareholders on the valuation of their shares in 1946 (when the whole railway infrastructure was in a run-down and dilapidated state because of war damage and minimal maintenance) the railways were acquired comparatively cheaply.[2]
However, others[who?] point out that three of the Big Four were effectively bankrupt before the onset of war in 1939 and were only saved from the ignominy of actually declaring bankruptcy by the guaranteed income provided by the wartime government and the temporary surge in rail traffic caused by the restrictions on other forms of transport during and immediately after the war. The exchange of potentially worthless private stock for government gilts based on a valuation during an artificially created boom could thus be considered a very good deal."
In 1939, before WWII:
*) The GWR were in rude financial health.
*) The Southern were okay, and had relatively little freight traffic, which was taking a hammering.
*) The LMS was okay, but was suffering from a drastic reduction in freight traffic.
*) The LNER was a financial basketcase, with massive debts from the GC London Extension, and the collapse of industry in the Northeast.
I reckon the GWR and Southern could have survived in the medium and long-term. The LMS was touch and go, and the LNER had massive significant issues. In fact, I believe the LNER had offered to sell the infrastructure to the government in return for the rights to operate. Sound familiar?
*If* the government had paid the railways the money they were owed for the usage of the war years, the LMS might have been able to pull through and reorganise, especially if the Common Carrier arrangements had been abolished.
But it's hard to see what could have been done about the LNER.
For the record, I don't think that likely.
I wonder how many paper candidates that would include?
You’re going to have to give them 8 of income each year. You can’t give them 3 of income and say “trust us it’s worth more”
£200,000 to get an entrepreneur's visa (invested in a private company), five years to citizenship
Malta: spend €350,000 on a property and then own it for five years.
The vast majority of Brown’s wealth was stolen from pensioners. He had no legitimate money to make donations.
In addition to the €650,000 fee to the government, applicants must now invest €150,000 in government bonds, buy property for at least €350,000 or rent a place for at least €16,000 a year — all of which must be held for at least five years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/business/dealbook/malta-offers-citizenship-and-all-its-perks-for-a-price.html
The difference is the risk premium. Equities are seen as more risky than gilts so investors expect a higher return.
In your example with actual rates, investors will be giving up a more risky equity investment of 100 at say 3.5% div yield for a less risky gilt yield of 2.0%. If they prefer riskier equity investment for the higher return they can sell their gilts for a 100 in a very large liquid market and buy into an equity fund and get their 3.5%. You know all this.
PS Don't let me put you off your sea bass.
"We aren’t going to take back control of these industries in order to put them into the hands of a remote bureaucracy, but to put them into the hands of all of you – so that they can never again be taken away."
Take back control
The tory brexiteers asked for this when they signed off on the leave campaign rhetoric.
As strategic f*ckups go, Suez was minor in comparison.
Hilarious.
"When you take them over - OK, well, you don’t need a number because what you do is you swap shares for government bonds and that is covered by the cost of those profitable industries we take over," McDonnell said.
The veteran left-winger also suggested that the market value of firms could be ignored, insisting "it will be parliament who sets the price on any of those nationalisations."
http://www.cityam.com/276044/john-mcdonnell-slammed-refusing-cost-labours
The view that this will simply be a switch between more or less risky asset classes assumes both that McD deals at market value, and that market value has not been trashed by his refusal to rule out "parliament setting the price".