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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Given current polls the Tories shouldn’t be spooked by Corbyn
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Given current polls the Tories shouldn’t be spooked by Corbyn but they are
The Speccies Isabel Hardman has an excellent piece under the heading “Why the Tories feel so spooked by Jeremy Corbyn”. She argues that some of the messages from the LAB leader have the potential to resonate. She goes on:
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Seems they didn't want to give voters a chance to instruct them not to leave
Strong contender for understatement of the week.....
https://twitter.com/JournoStephen/status/1047890307050868737
Tweeting TM is 'emotional'
No Tusk she is not. She is angry. Also would you have said that about a male leader. Sexist comments do not add to the debate
Also trying to set ERG against her by saying Canada +++ has always been onthe table and omitting to say it requires an Irish sea border and treats a part of the UK separately from the whole
I do not understand why those loyal to the EU do not critise his nonsense
At some point Labour will start talking to the public again. It remains to be seen whether that will be as popular as it was in the 2017 general election. The raw materials are certainly there should they choose to use them.
http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/Cc9xDv5yxXagREbnVpvy/full
‘Why was it the UK that voted to leave, rather than any other member state?’. We show that the UK has long been one of the most Eurosceptic countries in the EU, which we argue can be partly explained by Britons’ comparatively weak sense of European identity. We also show that existing explanations of the UK’s vote to leave cannot account for Britons’ long-standing Euroscepticism: the UK scores lower than many other member states on measures of inequality/austerity, the ‘losers of globalisation’ and authoritarian values, and some of these measures are not even correlated with Euroscepticism across member states. In addition, we show that the positive association between national identity and Euroscepticism is stronger in the UK than in most other EU countries. Overall, we conclude that Britons’ weak sense of European identity was a key contributor to the Brexit vote.
Oh, and it wasn't the press, either!
The main movement over the campaign was smaller parties to Labour protesting over austerity particularly and the Tories lost any gains made after the dementia tax while Remainers switched to Labour to try and stop a hard Brexit.
This week May moved the Tories away from ever more austerity, she is moving towards agreeing a Withdrawal Agreement and Transition Period with the EU and the dementia tax has been dumped, firmly planting herself on the centre ground.
Yes she has lost some voters to UKIP after Chequers but polling shows she has also picked up some Remainers who voted Labour or LD in 2017 and Labour has also lost some support to the LDs.
Hence the Tories are at least level with Labour in the polls and if there were a general election tomorrow the Tories would almost certainly still be largest party
Anger is an emotion.
Saying someone is either emotional or angry is not sexist.
Lots of talk about May's deal - don't assume that the deal she presents to the Commons will be an actual deal agreed with the EU. For a year and a half the UK have asked the EU for the moon on a stick and been told no. She had our MPs debating the whys and wherefores of variants of a Chequers plan which was fundamentally flawed from the outset, so why assume that the "deal" she has us debate is actually viable?
Brexit remains the only game in town. Its absolutely the case as described in the thread that "the reason Labour has decided to talk so much about the way capitalism has left certain voters behind is that recent polling carried out by the party found it had strong resonance with groups of voters who feel pessimistic about the future of the country…"
How they vote will still depend on the outcome from Brexit, what happens, which parties and leaders are seen to have taken which position.
Away from matters Brexit and some informed comment on a key aspect of May's speech:
https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2018/10/removing-housing-borrowing-cap-step-right-direction?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_term=
It's also worth noting the CIPFA concern over Councils borrowing to fund commercial investment property portfolios. For those who jumped quickly after 2008, it was a sound move - rates were very low and the pool of investment property considerable and almost all other potential investors were out of the market so there were very good deals to be made and some strong rental yields to be obtained.
Whether that's the case now (and some of the sums I have heard District and Borough Councils offering for retail centres are very worrying) is debatable.
Back to borrowing for housing and of course this is a step forward but this is far from being the only obstacle preventing large scale house building.
On Brexit, I reckon:
Stage 1 - Try to get an agreed Deal through Parliament.
I see the chance of this as slim, but not completely nonexistent. I can't, personally, see any specific Deal acceptable to a majority of the HoC. However, things I can't foresee have happened before, so I won't discount this; it just seems unlikely.
Stage 2 - Government and Parliament have a choice: No Deal Brexit or punt the decision to the public again.
If the public were to vote their preference, it's a way to cut the Gordian knot. There are two ways to this: another referendum, or another general election.
2a - Another referendum. Involving a huge climb-down by the Government, but such things have happened. If this were to happen, it seems likely that the choice would be "Deal or Remain" (If Parliament were willing to have No Deal, they'd just run with No Deal and not bother with this step). It's not implausible that it be "Deal or No Deal". If it's Deal-or-Remain, I expect "Deal" to win.
2b - Another General Election. Seems preferred by some, but either the Conservatives would run with Theresa May leading in another snap election campaign [Literally everyone winces] just after failing to get her Party to push her own Deal through [winces more] or have an incredibly quick leadership contest - and in a campaign where loads of things other than Brexit will get discussed and the winner will assume their position on all these things is endorsed. I see this as unlikely, and God only knows what the outcome would be. And if it doesn't result in Theresa May both remaining there and winning a strong majority, we don't get her Deal, anyway, and the clock's run out. A50 extensions are possible, but not if it's "back to square one, sorry, we seem to have wasted all that time," I think.
2c - The Government decides they don't like any of those options and takes No Deal anyway. In this situation, I expect the PM to fall and the Conservatives to carry the can for any and all issues and problems relating to No Deal Brexit (up to and including random negative events that have nothing to do with Brexit but get blamed on them anyway).
So - a Deal getting through would be - what? 5-20% possible? If not, then it's either a referendum, General Election, or No Deal. A referendum (10-25% possible) would probably result in a Deal (call it a 75% chance, to 25% Remain if those are the options, and 50-50 if it's Deal or No Deal, and call those 75-25 in respective probabilities). A GE (10-25% chance) would result in the Deal in a freak result (maybe 5%), A50 reset to start (maybe 10%), No Deal (85%). No Deal gives, well, No Deal at 100%.
All of which doesn't calculate very well but gives indications. Looks like:
No Deal ~70-90%
Deal ~ 5-25%
Remain ~ 2-4%
A50 extension/go back to start ~1-2%
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/03/tesla-model-3-4th-best-selling-car-in-usa/
And it does not look good for the German manufacturers.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2017/05/30/uk-voters-including-leavers-care-more-about-reducing-non-eu-than-eu-migration/
"Despite Vote Leave’s insistence that Brexit was mainly about sovereignty and secondarily about concerns over the unfair access to Britain enjoyed by EU migrants, our results suggest otherwise. These are the post-hoc rationalisations of a rider whose anti-immigration elephant is firmly in control."
The other where the experience was short, largely positive and inclusive with a far higher percentage of common goals without consistent bickering and argument.
Apart from that they were identical, with one person one vote.
I think that the continual dishonesty from Cameron's government that they failed to reach the immigration target because of the EU (when you can see that they would have failed to reach the target with zero net migration from the EU) was one thing that led to Leave winning the referendum. I was always amazed that they were able to repeat that claim.
It's also a small example of the culture of dishonesty that is already the norm in our politics that makes us vulnerable to a Trump-like figure willing to take lying to ever more brazen extremes.
https://twitter.com/PolhomeEditor/status/1047380734359625728
If not file in the bin.
FPT:
F1: surprised to see Bottas' odds so relatively long for pole. Backed him each way, third the odds top 2, at 5.5 (5.75 with boost). I don't expect him to get pole, again, but he's got a strong chance of being 2nd, I think:
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2018/10/japan-pre-qualifying-2018.html
Also, noticed just now (think it wasn't up before), Hamilton is 2.5 to top FP3. That may be worth a look, as he's been top by a mile in the previous two sessions.
The Dutch employers organisation VNO-NCW is blaming Brexit for Unilever’s decision:
The website DutchNews.nl quotes the organisation:
[We are sorry that] such an important decision has become swept up in the turbulent political developments in the UK.
It is also an indication of what Brexit means, a hard fight for corporate locations.
I have heard it said on here that we will be missing out on employment opportunities across the whole of the EU after Brexit. It would surprise me greatly if the number of Brits working in Europe was even 1/10th of Europeans working here. I think Brits retire to Europe, but don’t go and work there to learn the language in any great numbers, as the value of speaking any language other than English Is not great. Whereas it is much more valuable for Europenaa to learn English to a good standard, and it is worth them taking low skilled work to do so.
By reacting to the demand for this low skilled work we are then restricting skilled migration from outside EU, by those who could contribute even more, and meet specific skills gap in our economy to make the whole economy function better.
This is why the politics of numbers matters, and why we need leaders not those in thrall to focus groups. The 100k net immigration number is just as bonkers as Blair’s 50% higher education number.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/oct/05/nobel-peace-prize-2018-live-updates
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45754299
I note we have had 'Tusk being a pratt' and 'Musk being a tw@t' on this thread ...
One old shibboleth that we can put into perspective - of those 800k folk, only a quarter were retirees. That said, retirees do choose Spain, Portugal, Malta, Cyprus and (surprising me) Bulgaria.
And what is to stop a corrupt individual in China selling the back-door access to a bunch of financial hackers? One server in the right place could be worth a fortune.
Another win for that bus, eh?
It didn`t quite work, because the Tories were able to use taxpayers`money to bribe the DUP into supporting their wicked plots. And so we are as we now are - a total shambles, and sinking fast.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/284319/united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts-corporation-tax/
I was being slightly ironic, though of course that irony would doubtless have been lost on some of our regular Brexit doomsayers.
The headline would have been Despite Brexit.
I think that's where the left gets it wrong. They focus on tax paid by individuals and firms, and not on tax received by the state.
I have been cutting my lawn and have just caught up with your comment re Tusk's tweet
He tweeted about Canada +++ but he was critised for describing the PM response to Salzburg as emotional
Helen Whately, conservative vice chair for women, stated ' this language just plays to outdated stereotypes about women'
The US is a federal system - the Senate is weighted to protect the interests of the smaller states.
Remainers cheerfully pounced on the intended move as a casualty of Brexit, it would be churlish to deny Leavers their fun, even if both are wrong.
I'm sure that you will win a prize for your statistical analysis demonstrating that we are on the optimum point of the Laffer Curve.
Would you care to share your working with us mere mortals?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/10/05/unilever-scraps-plan-end-dual-structure-huge-investor-backlash/
All purpose answer to the other PB-ers who disagree with me. Unless, of course we’re going to cut the things the State provides. Not just education and health either. There are big EU subsidies to (for example) Welsh and Cornish farmers and it assumed that London is going to replace them in some way.
I know some people like to think he has a brain the size of a planet, but this behaviour is insane. It is utterly self-defeating, both financially and in terms of his reputation and that of the companies that are so closely tied to him.
https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9207
I think the next James Bond should be Omar Djalili.
It didn't go well...
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article154962419.html
“Most tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, so if you support tax cuts because they create economic growth…you need to make hard decisions about broadening the tax base or cutting spending,”
Hillary had the same problem in being described as robotic, which is also slightly misogynistic, as if serious women were robots, and real women are flighty emotional things.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1048143463055802370
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1048143465039745024
Presumably you mean GCHQ not CCHQ...
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/devolution/2018/10/richard-leonard-stamps-his-authority-scottish-labour-high-stakes
Edit: I am a huge Tom Hardy fan, that said.
America wasn't designed as a pure democracy.
That said, he was probably the one decent thing in Venom, which was pretty bad, not quite Catwoman bad, but still pretty bad.
Almost seemed like an edition of the Species franchise.