politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Another day and Corbyn’s detachment on Brexit from the vast majority of LAB voters seems amazing
WATCH: #Brexit must stop immigrants being used to undercut wages, @jeremycorbyn tells Scottish Labour conference #ScotLab18
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Apparently there is some thought the UK will be exempt but the EU is intent on stopping our exemption and risking thousands of steel jobs, particularly in South Wales
Quick way to assist leave in spades
Public opinion is important to support Brexit against the media and establishments narrative
(Why are those Labour supporters who think we were right to leave painted blue?)
The point is that regardless of whether Labour voters or anyone else think that Britain was right or wrong to leave the EU, the UK DID vote that way, and most democrats -and I am sure most Labour voters are democrats -will accept that decision regardless of personal feelings.
Also one cannot have hindsight on leaving the EU because we have not yet left and experience the consequences of doing so.
I have little time for Corbyn, and we all know that he has been a lifelong Brexiteer, but at least he accepts the result of the referendum -and he knows perfectly well that certain EU rules and regulations would make it very difficult for him to nationalise the railways and water industry.
Most Labour MPs also represent constituencies who voted Leave.
I think the constant drip drip of remoaning enemies of democracy is tiresome.
Basically, Labour needs to do more than appeal to the people that already vote L:abour.
This is just my reading and I'd be interested in other analyses.
The limited steel exports we do have to the US are high end alloys, and it is not clear how broad Trump's definition of "steel" is.
Would you like to explain to the South Wales steelworkers and their families why their futures could be damaged by unelected Eurocrats in Brussels
Theresa May is very fortunate in who she is facing. Jeremy's public face of yeah-but-no-but-yeah approach to Brexit has left Labour looking idiotic on the biggest political story since WW2.
https://tinyurl.com/y8qks5xx
Two bits stood out to me. Firstly:
He says the government has done well to get the deficit under control, but thinks the pips are now starting to squeak. “If you look at the period up to 2013/14, spending came down without big political consequences or things falling apart. But, in a whole range of areas, that is no longer true. If you look at what’s happening in prisons it’s just disastrous. Local government until 2014 was coping fine. It really isn’t any more. Clearly, the health service is struggling in a way that, three or four years ago, it wasn’t. So it feels as if we’ve got to the crunch point. We’re really beginning to feel the cost.”
It's interesting to hear him talking about things other than the balance sheet. I certainly think he has a point about prisons and local government. I'm not so sure about health - but it doesn't help that the Left will always tell us it's in crisis when the Tories are in power.
Secondly:
He says both of the main political parties are living in a fantasy world. “On the one side you have a party saying you can have all the welfare state we’ve ever had and pay no more tax, which isn’t true. And on the other side, you’ve got them saying we can levy more tax and it’ll be somebody else who pays because it’ll come off companies and the rich, which also isn’t true. Labour’s election manifesto had an awful lot of overestimates about what you can get from companies and the very rich, and didn’t fully balance out. You can’t have European standards of welfare with American-style tax levels. You have to make a choice.”
There was a lot of scepticism on here about Labour's manifesto being costed. And Johnson confirms that the scepticism was well founded.
Hence fury with the EU if this actually happens
We are still thinking that "Leave" is one of two options instead of what is scheduled to happen at 11pm on March 29 2019 or near enough. "Leave" no longer needs assistance or deprecation, since it is happening. If the denial of differential tariffs you describe happens - and it might well do - then the people doing the explaining will be May's administration. I suspect the explanation will be something along the lines of "the EU is bad, but what can we do eh?" Which will be cold comfort.
This is (one of) the reasons I deprecate "failing and blaming" so much: it legitimises failure.
Meanwhile unelected EU commissioners, who we can’t fire, are plotting revenge against one of our biggest markets, who in other circumstances would have no problem with us.
http://commentcentral.co.uk/scheming-eu-corbyn-sells-out-labour-voters/
I know you love to fan the anti-EU fires BIG_G, but we're leaving anyway so what's the point in blaming the EU for this piece of Trump stuplidity?
Of course there is an answer with good will but the EU does not do good will at present
And he STILL owes me a gold sovereign, from his losing bet in 2015.
It’s a stick to attempt to beat us with, to try and stop us diverging, which is the EU’s obvious worry.
I don't see what lies Jeremy Corbyn told to his supporters about the EU. He spent 30 years voting against it. If anyone has projected their europhile views on to him, the fault lies with them, not him.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5770199/gavin-williamson-donald-trump-steel-tariff/
The potential consequences for Northern Island in respect of the UK are massively exaggerated IMO. The balance of opinion on the mainland strongly supports the North remaining as part of the UK if that is their democratic wish. However should that democratic wish shift, then I don't think that there is, or would be, much concern either way. (Incentally I suspect their is much more emotional attachment to Scotland - and/or there is a feeling that Scotland is more dependent on being part of the UK than NI so more of a feeling that they would have taken a bad decision).
What's more worrying is that it derails the free trade narrative that Fox keeps peddling (which is odd, given the UK's economy is service based, and extant FTAs don't generally address services in anything more than a rudimentary manner).
In terms of NI border, we should have assumed WTO and started digging ditches and building lorry parks 18 months ago. It may not be soluble, as it's clearly a political, rather than a logistical issue.
Say we took the preferential 'offer' that Trump may or may not make. That would put us on the US side of a tariff border with the EU. We export 6% of our steel to the US but 13% to France, 12% to Germany, 9% to Ireland, 8% to the Netherlands and no doubt another sizeable chunk to the rest of the EU.
Leaving the single market is going to have a far worse impact on our steel exports than anything Trump is cooking up.
My only consolation is how many more years than me some of the old-timers have been here, and that my post-count remains under 10,000. (Though it isn't counting all those vanished comments from the Disqus Era. Nor the whatever-it-was-that-we-had-for-all-those-years-before-Disqus.)
It won’t, when push comes to shove.
I don't know if you know this but a lot of UK defence planning is up in the air at the moment: the 2015 Spending Review expanded defence spending (yay) but the 2015 SDSR overcommitted (boo) so there was the 2017 National Security Capability Review (NSCR) which floated an absolute shitload of cuts/mergers (boo), so Gavin Williamson went postal (yay!) and the defence stuff is separated out into the 2018 Modernising Defence Programme (MDP) so might be preserved (yay) or might not (boo), nobody knows what's happening and stuff is still being sold off (so bye-bye HMS Ocean).
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/555607/2015_Strategic_Defence_and_Security_Review.pdf
https://rusi.org/publication/whitehall-reports/decision-time-national-security-capability-review-2017–2018
https://rusi.org/commentary/uk-modernising-defence-programme-‘get-programme’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/12/pm-warned-tory-revolt-horrific-defence-cuts/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defence_and_Security_Review_2015
As I said, I'm genuinely confused as to why this has turned into such a big deal. There will be no travel restrictions, which is people's biggest fear and the UK can unilaterally allow Irish citizens the right to resettle in the UK and vice versa, just as Ireland does now for anyone born in NI.
A customs border really isn't a big deal, definitely not as big a deal as is being made out at the moment. If a real border crossing was being suggested then I could understand the issues, but no one has suggested that Ireland will leave the CTA, have they?
Occasionally wiser heads than I suggest a sin tax on addictive products but I fear for OGH's bank balance if one's ever brought in...
That is the mother of all conspiracy theories. Merkel wanted us out so she gave Cameron a shit deal and said take it or leave it. It was the coup de grace after all those years of straight (or was it bendy?) bananas, mumbai rather than bombay mix, and banned prawn cocktail crisps. To make sure we exit with no deal they have defined some red lines and are, er, sticking to them. It's just not British!
The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas.
The peace process wasn't simply a matter of dealing with warring communities in Northern Ireland, but of creating a constitutional process for managing a territorial dispute based on the principle of consent. That's why it can't be compared to Switzerland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
However, for those of us who remember playing Chris Crawford's 'Balance of Power', minor issues can derail any political process.
If the EU are making it a red line (as they appear to be), then (given that technical solutions are unacceptable to Varadkar) May has to either roll over or tell them to fuck off.
A customs border isn't going impinge on people's ability to travel or settle on either side of the border. It is to ensure that certain goods have the right tariffs charged on them when they are imported. No more, no less. Additionally, there is already a personal customs border for fags and booze given the differing rates of duty applied in NI vs RoI. So I'll say it again, what difference is it really going to make?
In Theresa's position I'd tell Varadkar to go and fuck off, if he wants to hold up Brexit or force us into a WTO Brexit then he's really only damaging his own country.