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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » What happens next if not much happens?

Like the media, we are attracted to drama. What if Trump is impeached? What if No Deal Brexit leads to economic meltdown? What if both major parties split? What if the EU collapses?
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2) Labour will stay together because Corbyn is 69 and can't go on forever, and the antisemitism row can depart with him. Policy-wise, there is nothing in the 2017 manifesto to frighten the horses, and the centrists don't seem to have any policies of their own anyway.
3) Ukip's problem is that no-one in the party and certainly not Nigel Farage has any serious policy on Brexit except they are broadly in favour. Ukip's appeal (if any) has more to do with alt-rightism than Brexit, and the social media firms are getting better at blocking that: ask Plato.
In 2027 Corbyn would be 78.
I think I am right in saying that would make him the oldest party leader to fight an election since Gladstone in 1892.
Not to mention he would have suffered consecutive defeats before he got there.
I don't think even 2025 is realistic. I think both will be gone within two years.
No change is always the most likely option. It must be why even though government parties are usually well behind in mid term when ‘anything must be better than this’, as an election gets closer and ‘anything’ becomes ‘that lot’ their polls almost alway improve.
What I'm hoping for is simply to de-couple from the EU so that we can slowly pull away from the things we don't want to engage with, and still be friendly partners for projects we do want to engage with. That's not cherry-picking, that's just common sense.
If the EU is willing for us to engage post-Brexit, of course. They presumably have the economic clout not to need non-EU partners for their projects, and so we may find we are obliged to reinvent the wheel ourselves on some things, but that's not wholly bad. Keeping up a range of skill-sets within our own population isn't a bad thing.
Good afternoon, everyone.
But let’s all take a bet which way the Commission would want to harmonise things? Our better, safer plug to become standard? Thought not.
But I never expected him to be a low anti-Semitic piece of scum. He has quite spectacularly been worse than I feared.
I'm not so sure about Mrs May soldiering on. Of course you need colossal amounts of self-belief to become PM in the first place, but assuming she is not driven from office (how well did that work out long term last time the Tories tried it?), stepping down in late 2019 early 2020 would be smart. "Job done, time to hand over to a new generation".....(looks across HoC to an even older leader...)
Not even a mention, Nick?
Poor Lib Dems ......
If it's a choice between the flimsy US plug and the continental plug I'd choose the latter.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.9news.com.au/article/06a4513c-19af-455a-970b-95ca967444f4
UKIP may be up a little but May can counteract that by winning some Labour and LD centrists
On your latter point who gets to decide what is legitimate free speech and whether you have the right to challenge any religion and its beliefs and the of its leaders and adherents because you might cause upset - or is it just the Catholic and Anglican church which is fair game. It might be your views that get banned or blocked one day.
I suppose that is the issue with social media being controlled by a small number of big corporations - they get to decide what you can 'say' in line with their corporate guidelines.
I think this witty debate between John Cleese and Bill Maher - two supposed liberals who push the boundaries - sort of makes the point.
https://youtu.be/qCj6YNIpqmA
Major won in 1992 in a recession as the alternative was Kinnock but lost in 1997 despite a booming economy as the alternative was Blair
1. In the end, the Tories won’t replace May."
I disagree. There might not be any consensus as to a successor but there is a consensus that she shouldn't be allowed to fight another election. Whether Brexit-related or not, her time will come. If it comes as late as summer 2021 - by which time she'll be almost 65 - she'll have done six years as PM, which is not a bad run. Nick says several times that the Tories are exhausted. I don't think that's true but what is true is that there's no buccaneering domestic reform policy; Brexit is smothering everything. And May personally is running on empty. A new leader - if the right person - can bring about a revival that May cannot. As for timing, her political antennae are sufficiently poor that she'll do something at the wrong time to trigger the challenge if she opts not to stand down.
"2. In the end, Labour will remain largely intact."
I agree, as per yesterday's piece.
"3. Something like UKIP will resurface."
Actually, I think UKIP will resurface. It's brand is not terminally tarnished because almost no-one is paying it attention. It's never particularly been tarnished by scandal because people don't see it as a party for government or its leaders as candidates to be PM. It is, and will be, what it always has been: a vehicle to withdraw the UK from involvement in the EU.
The question is more around Farage. He is the only successful leader that UKIP has ever had. In the absence of his return or of them finding someone similarly skilled (both unlikely, IMO), UKIP will remain little more than a generic protest vehicle and struggle in almost any circumstance to get above 7-8%. The wildcard here is Tory defections, though while entirely possible, the kind of potential defectors we might be talking about are not necessarily minor-party leadership material.
I will admit I had never heard of Corbyn before he stood for the leadership. But one of the first things I did find out was that he was a friend and supporter of Paul Eisen. Now that set alarm bells clanging. Eisen is a card-carrying neo-Nazi some of whose rhetoric has even been too extreme for the likes of Robert Faurisson. Anyone who associates with him in any way is not somebody who can claim to be anti-racist with a straight face. Corbyn's excuses - that he didn't know him well, that he broke links after finding out he was a Holocaust denier, that he'd never given him money - all turned out to be untrue, even on very rapid investigation.
I didn't talk too much about this because frankly I was more worried about some of his more mental policies and I thought - rightly as it turned out, and in this I flatter myself I was shrewder than Timothy, Hill and May - that that was where he was vulnerable and in any case that was the only way he could be beaten. But it's certainly no surprise to me that he's in this mess and I'm not going to say I don't think he's a racist, because his fellow-travellers clearly are and to quote the Book of Proverbs, a man is known by the company he keeps.
It is of course just possible that he's so thick he doesn't get what he's doing. But if he is sufficiently dim not to know that giving money to Holocaust deniers is wrong, he shouldn't be in Parliament anyway.
https://twitter.com/garethpenrose/status/1028320181511237632?s=19
I bow to nobody in my knowledge of fifteenth century warfare.
Despite predictions of gloom from the Treasury and Bank, the public remains optimistic
The economy is now about 15% smaller than it would have been had its pre-recession growth rate continued, something that took the Bank, the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (the body that now does Hammond’s economic forecasts) by surprise. So the Treasury’s confident assertion that the economy could be 10% smaller by 2030 in the event of a no-deal Brexit needs to be treated with caution.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/26/britons-seem-relatively-relaxed-in-the-face-of-brexit-apocalypse?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Some good A-level textbooks out there as well - Colin Pendrell and Jessica Lutkin have both written very readable introductions, although as they are A level textbooks they are not cheap.
https://twitter.com/tonightly/status/1032546516911570944
In any case the Chequers Deal will minimise the impact of Brexit on the economy while respecting the core principles of the Brexit vote
Dan Jones The Hollow Crown
Trevor Royle The Wars Of The Roses: England's First Civil War is good on the military stuff, as are Hugh Bicheno's Blood Royal and Battle Royal.
Christine Carpenter and Michael Hicks both have very detailed books on them, but Hicks in particular can be heavy going. They're best left until later.
Alison Weir's Lancaster and York is very readable but only goes up to 1471.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/21/left-brexit-opportunity-financial-crash
It can never be perfect, but it’s always going to be easier for us to follow US politics than German, or Spanish, or Belgian.
Look today at the sad passing of John McCain. Headline news for a Senator from a foreign land. Wouldn’t be happening if he were French or German. (To be clear I’m not belittling John McCain here! Just using today as an example)
We might as well just send robots to parliament if that is the idea of 'doing your f*****g job'.
Of course once you set a precedent of deposing leaders mid term yourself - you cant complain really when it is done to you!
sadly, he was standing for leader of the Labour party.
But their economics team is an absolute joke and always has been. Hutton, Elliot, Mason, Chakraborty and that guy with the American civil War style tache all have in common that they know nothing about the subject and their forecasts are laughably based on their political views. They're not worth reading unless you really want a good laugh.
There will be a fair few issues to address - but it won't be Biblical end of days type stuff! Although Waitrose running a bit low on some goods might seem like an end of days scenario to the residents of north London!
Seems reasonable comment - not sure where you got 'impose a radical socialist program' from...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/21/capitalism-fat-cats-brexit-leaving-eu
"By leaving we can have the sort of radical socialist programme that would be illegal under EU law"
Which is completely meaningless of course, every bit as much meaningless as the claimed 10% by 2030.
Happy to return the favour if there are particular bits of Physics you want to know about: particle physics a speciality as long as you don’t want to know about the Higgs boson.
If a prominent French or German politician (other than their President or Chancellor) died, e.g. Schauble or Schultz there wouldn't be much attention here. I didn't feel Cameron had been humiliated (and frankly wouldn't have given a shit if he had), just that he'd played a weak hand very badly.
Point the second: if the heads of state of an international organisation don't give two hoots about their interlocutor's domestic political situation they are poor politicians. It's only your continued assertion that Cameron (and by extension the UK) is wholly to blame for Brexit. The world just isn't that black and white. There are plenty of stresses and strains on the EU, and the UK is not at the root of all, or even most.
"The LibDems occasionally change from one obscure leader to another."
A bit unfair, maybe, but I'm not sure that replacing Vince with A.N. Other is going to address their core issue of What Are They For After Brexit?
What is the sustainable rate of growth at any particular period of time depends on so many factors, as will our growth to 2030.
It's about the pre-eminence of the US, not about our connection with the Anglosphere.
"a quantum field theory in which the strong interaction is described in terms of an interaction between quarks mediated by gluons, both quarks and gluons being assigned a quantum number called ‘colour’."
So that is now perfectly clear.
Unexpectedly, I was able to watch the race as it happened. Interesting result.
Edited extra bit: think I finished a tiny bit ahead.
https://xkcd.com/1489/
It is very hard to overstate the gravity of the crisis facing the Pope and members of the senior hierarchy of the United States today. They have been implicated in an alleged conspiracy to protect a sex criminal.
The charges made by Viganò are so extensive, and so serious, that legal proceedings arising from them are likely to be on a gigantic scale – and will take years rather than months to address.
Long before they are concluded, there is a strong possibility that the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentinian who took the name of Pope Francis, will have come to a spectacular and disastrous end.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/pope-francis-covered-up-for-sex-abuser-mccarrick-and-must-resign-says-senior-archbishop/
https://twitter.com/SeemaChandwani/status/1033661465876746241
Gaming experts say sportsbooks might have closed as many as 50,000 betting accounts in recent years, and just as many punters have had their betting limits restricted to mere pittance.
http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/24425026/gambling-bookmakers-growing-us-legal-betting-market-allowed-ban-bettors
That suggests a sex drive even Edward IV would blush at.