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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Further thoughts on Chris Williamson succeeding Jeremy Corbyn
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Further thoughts on Chris Williamson succeeding Jeremy Corbyn
Earlier on this week I wrote a piece on Chris Williamson’s odds to succeed Jeremy Corbyn tumbling from 100/1 to 33/1 in a week, I also explained the reasons why I wouldn’t be jumping aboard that betting bandwagon.
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The Dublin Convention will truly destroy the EU, not Brexit.
I have long argued that the Convention is insane -- it places almost the entire burden of dealing with migration largely on Italy, Greece and Spain (instead of it being a shared responsibility of all the member states).
I now read that the President of the Rich, the Mighty Jupiter, has pondered the matter.
"French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in a news conference following Thursday's meeting in Luxembourg, said the EU's main point-of-entry countries for migrants, like Spain, Italy and Greece, have a responsibility and cannot avoid it."
This is the Great Reforming Hope of the EU.
The EU truly cannot save itself.
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1038442712482160640
I don't like him as a person but his quitting would be a major blow (as he has a considerable personal mandate of his own from the membership)
He has significant union links which can help with the transfer of support from Momentum Labour to Real Labour.
Under those circumstances, Williamson becoming the replacement Deputy to the rump of what is left of the Labour Party seems highly possible.
Africa is going to be more populous than Asia by the end of the century. The issue of migration is not going away.
I expect that our reaction as a continent will be patchy, contentious and at times contradictory, but it does require international co operation, whether the EU continues in its current form or not.
My point is that even the so-called “reformers” in the EU don’t seem to understand how unfair the Dublin Convention really is -- as viewed from Italy or Malta or Greece.
Although the comparison is often made between the EU and the USSR by rather insalubrious people like Farage, I do think the analogy has some validity.
The EU seems incapable of reform.
If you look at the current favourites they are generally just the senior members of the Shadow Cabinet and none of these are 100% Corbynista - other than McDonnell.
The Corbynistas are going to want someone who is 100% pure - they'll fear someone like Thornberry or Starmer etc will tack back towards the Centre - at least to some degree.
We also know from the last contest that being a leading Shadow Cabinet member is not a requirement to win.
Bottom line - if McDonnell doesn't run, Williamson will have a decent chance.
The same might apply to Lady Nugee - that amount of privilege will harm her chances. But harder for her to get away from the title unless she divorces him.
And if he is challenged by someone like Williamson then he would be favourite to lose.
There is a multi-dimensional dispute, with the Countries of arrival not happy with the Dublin Convention, the destination countries (predominately in Northern Europe including UK) and with the Visegrad countries opposing a dispersal programme.
The real problem is the large number of political and economic refugees in the world, with a convention covering the former, but not the latter. There are a large number of people unsafe in their own homes, and unwanted anywhere else. The EU, UN and other international bodies are nessecary to resolve the issue, but do require assistance from nation states.
Migrants.
Mr. JS, if it comes off, I'd be rather pleased. Anyway, we shall see.
Any idea of a timetable on exit polls, results, etc?
https://twitter.com/J_amesp/status/1037063987068841984
Which isn't a bad idea, generally, although in this case I suspect their real motives.
https://twitter.com/marceldirsus/status/1038340734074724353
This is the reality of that.
Good evening, everyone.
http://www.britishirishchamber.com/2018/09/07/sir-mark-ivan-rogers-kcmg-speech-at-british-irish-chamber-of-commerce-annual-gala-dinner/
Advocates of “no deal” know this really. They know that a genuine “no deal” would bring several key sectors of the economy to a halt. So they argue that European self-interest will be the deus ex machina which delivers a whole set of legal mini deals ensuring that it’s all alright on the night.
This is, I fear, simply delusional.
I am all for knowing in any negotiation what, in negotiators’ jargon, one’s Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement – one’s BATNA – is. It is particularly important in a negotiation like this one, where the default if there is no deal is not the status quo.
But it is simply not the case that the best alternative here is a set of negotiated mini deals!
Let’s think it through.. The reality, in any breakdown scenario, is that any UK PM who felt obliged to say that the Withdrawal negotiations had reached a dead end, would refuse to pay the exit bills.
And the inevitable response to that from all 27 in the Council the following day would be to say there would be no resumption of normal trading relations with the UK unless and until it had agreed to honour its full debts.
In the meantime, the 27 would no doubt enact, at 27, the emergency provisions, which enabled whatever continuity in whichever sectors it deemed in its interests. That would not mean the complete cessation of all business. Of course not. It just means an entirely unilateral and deliberately asymmetric selection by the EU of where there will be continuity and where there will not.
That is not taking back control. That is giving it up.
The EU would calculate that the UK would be back at the table with its chequebook out within the week.
And if that’s not on the table as a part of the negotiations?
It’ll be we abolished boom and bust all over again.
Just think your No vote may have ultimately signed us up to a United States of Europe
That would be so funny.
That there’s be no disruption.
He’s like my boxer shorts, full of bollocks.
If push came to shove with medicines running out, we’d surely use military planes. I’d also suggest that the international pressure on the EU to stop being dicks would be immense well before that point.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/09/07/labours-nightmare-has-no-end-sight/
If South Africa followed a Zimbabwe like path in coming years, would the refugees be economic or political?
Actually it started weeks ago.
Johnson, enabled by Tory election mastermind and new sidekick Lynton Crosby, has mapped out a timeline to power which will torpedo the PM's Chequers plan for Brexit.
Having scanned the Trump playbook for inspiration (see letterbox attack on Muslim women), Johnson cleared the decks on his personal life after his marriage break-up story appeared in The Sun on Friday.
I am told that Johnson's MP backers are now compiling the requisite 48 names required to send to the backbench 1922 Committee to trigger a no confidence vote in Mrs May. One source even says this will happen on Monday.
Look out for Johnson's Monday column in the Telegraph (invoice £5,000 a time) in which many of his colleagues expect him to fire the gun."
The damage would be enough to push the UK into a recession but also push the world into recession to dislocate the fifth largest economy from the global trading system.
That will get us the transition period but we will basically be in the single market and customs union rules wise for the most part
They're not. The comparison is fatuous. They're (mostly) economic migrants bypassing the usual rules of entry, aided and abetted by charities acting as useful idiots for people traffickers.
There were, and maybe still are, some genuine refugees. And some scum (ISIS etc) too.
The the South Tyrol had been Austrian/Archbishopric of Innsbruck/ Holy Roman Empire and 100% part of the broader “Germanic Realm” from just after the fall of the Roman Empire to 1918. In fact German remains the overwhelming majority language ( ever noticed how so many Italian skiers haven’t very non Italian names for example?).
Their “problem” was they were in the wrong side of the Apline watershed, which here lies at the Brenner pass (the present Austrian/Italian border and the lowest trans Alpine pass so a huge door between northern and southern Europe). The Italians in a fit of geographical tidiness claimed it up to the Brenner pass and having fought with the Allies in 1914-18 (or 1915-18 in their case) claimed it as what they had been promised under the table to enter the war on the Allied side.
Culturally it was like giving Kent to France and was the source of various argy bargy largely settled when the Italian state gave them huge devolution in the 70’s (I think, from memory). Rather like Ireland the effective removing of a border helped too.
And there we were. Till now.........
I can't see it.
I think Watson is being fed a line to make him look a bit foolish.
Common mistake, though.
Complete cock up.
If you go there it really is bizarre in that apart from cars saying “polizia” and the odd Italian flag outside the (usually tatty and unpainted) town hall, you are for all intents and purposes as if you were in Austria, full of immaculate chalets bedecked with flowers, and everyone speaking German ( though most are bilingual too I think).
As I said it’s Italian like Kent is French(!)
[/blindgossip]
That's the lowest for a long time iirc.
There are many Sudanese and Eritreans with similar mixed motives, one of the many issues with the UN treaties on Refugees.
Personally, I think the whole convention needs revision, and favour an Australian style offshore internment and assessment system.
Meanwhile, I see that Tony Blair has intervened, I don’t know why - his words are unlikely to help Corbynsceptics. Indeed, after his meeting with Salvini, and his post PM career in general, his words about Corbyn ring hollow. I found Gordon Brown’s speech much more worthwhile to listen to. Now that was a great speech.
https://twitter.com/MarianneVelvart/status/1028111852633509888?s=19
Actually the old Austrian border used to come down to the northern end of Lake Garda but that was the one small bit that was Italian in language. South Tyrol is roughly the northern half of the province of Trentino Alto Adige. The Trentino bit (nearer lake Garda) being Italian and the “Alto Adige” bit being German. Alto Adige was, I presume, a way of the Italians not actually giving it its local name of Sud Tirol which, let’s face it, is pretty German.
Bit like the French annexing Kent and calling it Pas de Calais Nord.
My worry sometimes is people don't even listen to their own words let alone other peoples.
There’s not much in public life that I thought Brown got right, but credit where it was due. It was a great speech the other day, and he was dead right. So good for him.
Well there's a surprise, another impartial source triggered
It is, however, not usually a good sign when a neighbouring state starts waving passports at people in part of your country. It can be got round and accepted (NI being a good example where the fact all ( well virtually all) people living there have been offered a passport by a neighbouring state doesn’t seem to bother anyone here), but I doubt it would go down well if say Russia offered everyone in eastern Estonia passports.
As I say the 100 year anniversary seems a bit too coincidental.
It’ll probably all fizzle out even if it’s an “issue” at all. Probably plays well to a certain constituency in Austria I guess, but I don’t think Italy need fret too much!
It has the Swedish Democrats in second on 19.1% ahead of the Moderates on 17.7% but the Social Democrats are still first on 24.9%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Swedish_general_election,_2018
Blue-Collar Pensioners (retired not struggling financially) and Affluent Eurosceptics (wealthy social conservatives). Burchill is in the third category, hasn't been working-class for decades and is famously careless in her relationships. @TheScreamingEagles is more qualified to be working-class.
This left a lot of people stateless. I knew one such briefly, he was Russian from Estonia and at the time had citizenship of neither country. He'd managed to get refugee status in the UK but until he could eventually qualify for UK citizenship he could not leave the country as he had no passport.