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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » April 2019: month of chaos
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » April 2019: month of chaos
Nothing has changed: words that might well form Theresa May’s epitaph. Unfortunately for her, unless something does, that epitaph will be needed sooner rather than later. With less than five months until the Brexit deadline, both the parliamentary maths and the European diplomacy remain resolutely irresoluble. Nothing has changed.
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Just like there wasn’t going to be another election.
Nonsense. Will of the people, innit?
God, we are in a mess.
There's no way the country will accept a shortage of meds and food.
The Brexiteers who promised us sunlit uplands and said No Deal was Project Fear will be the new guilty men who can be safely ignored.
I'd expect a last alliance of Pro EU Tories and Labour MPs to form a government of national unity and sue for peace.
No amount of bleating about the will of the people will save them from what's coming.
https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1061195403998171136
I continue to expect a deal but there remains the distinct possibility of very considerable disruption indeed. This looks like a very dangerous corner.
I would like to blame my aircrew issue Walther PP which wasn't that accurate at 1.5m never mind 15m or the budget Pakistani ammunition kindly procured for us by the MoD. However, the fact is that I was comprehensively shitted up by what I had just seen and couldn't focus.
It's the prospect of a Corbyn government which terrifies me, even more than a No Deal exit, which I have thought the most likely outcome for some time now.
Even if Britain decided to remain the amount of resentment that has been created will continue to inject its own poison into the British and European body politic. If a chaotic No Deal is the outcome, that too will inject poison into the European body politic in ways we cannot now anticipate. It is a real mess and, whatever your views on the results of the 2016 vote, could and should have been avoidable.
Anyway, thanks for the article. I better go and order my Siemens kitchen before it gets trapped on a Kent motorway somewhere.......
It would need I'd reckon at least 100 Tory MPs to effectively vote against Mrs May in a Parliamentary confidence vote but given the circumstances it could happen.
The deal ain’t gonna happen.
The Tories only need to be in office in order to introduce the bill, not in power.
The EU is clearly better prepared for no deal than the UK and they may actually prefer this outcome now, partly because it seems almost impossible for May to get a deal acceptable to parliament but also because Macron, Merkel & co are facing a challenge from Eurosceptic parties at the EP elections. What better way of undermining Euroscepticism than pictures of gridlocked Kent and empty supermarket shelves in London?
I think many of us are done with simplistic assertions that everything won't alright on the night
Generally its those who predict some sort of muddled middle outcome who are right rather than the posturing extremes.
When they looked at his score, he was 1 point off the world record....
I think it is more likely that they think scenes of chaos in Britain will reinforce Continental Europe as the only place where business should be located i.e. whatever they may say in public, punishment for Britain (albeit largely self-inflicted) is necessary for the EU to look very much better. Better for Britain to suffer as the EU will largely be able to insulate itself from the consequences. They may be right. But there is a non-negligible prospect that they could be wrong. Some financial butterfly fluttering its wings somewhere and we could easily be back in a 2007-2008 situation.
The Irish also seem worried about the prospect of any competition from the UK - hence the demands for a level playing field. If Britain will be a third country then why should it play by the same rules? The whole point of being a third country is not to have the same playing field, though this means not having the same advantages either.
The fundamental problem is that ever since the referendum result the Government has made no real effort to work out on as wide and as consensual a basis as possible what sort of relationship with the EU Britain wants. That is why we are in the mess we're in and why a No Deal exit with all the possible damaging consequences for Britain and the EU that that implies seems ever more likely.
Lesson learnt: don't have vegetarians running the abattoir.....
I find your optimism to be fairly laughable. Virtually everything about the modern world is complex, including trade, and has evolved into a sort of stability. It'll be very easy for that stability to be broken, at great expense to us.
https://twitter.com/PropertySpot/status/1061046382235148288
' In September 2018, fresh fruit prices rose by 7.6% over one year. They were driven by higher prices for apples (+14.8%) and pears (+8.2%). Vegetable prices gained 18.8% over one year, particularly those for salads (+ 28.2%) and tomatoes (+ 34.6%). The price of new crop potatoes was 62.1% higher than a year ago. '
But those aren't British agricultural producer prices.
That's happening in France:
https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/3640413
None of your comrades willing to provide a smilar show of faith in your markmanship? Though I daresay that wouldn't have steadied your hand any.
In Goves case I think it was mendacity.
I had to smile at: "It’s entirely possible that the country could see its worst disruption since the Winter of Discontent or the Three Day Week..."
It's a minor quibble the three-day week was massively more disruptive than the winter of discontent. The impact of the latter has grown in Tory mythology but look at the evidence of GDP growth:
The three-day week (under a Tory government, I might add) screwed the economy for years.
The likes of Gove being found guilty of treason will be fun.
To think he calls himself a Thatcherite whilst he delivers Michael Foot's 1983 manifesto and implements the wishes of Russia, truly sickening.
Gove ensured that with Leadsom the challenger, May would become leader - as a result of his intervention.
Gove owns where we are.
(We have no idea where we would be if Boris were leading the country and the Brexit negotiations. But we can safely say one thing: it would be a different place....)
In Gove’s defence it was something Boris had said before the referendum.
As an aside, voting to leave and then ending up remaining or having a terrible deal does fit in with my annoyingly accurate (so far) theory of, outside chance though it is, the far right could rise in the UK.
Of course in an ideal world we could have spent the last 2 years spending the Brexit bonus on upgrading the roads in East Sussex.
Unfortunately they will also have the same problems...
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/implementing-brexit-customs-september-2017
What seems not to have been noticed is that May has said that if the deal was voted down it would be up to Parliament to decide what to do next. This appears to mean that if Parliament did vote for a second referendum with three choice (Deal, Remain or Nol Deal), the government would legislate for one. In those circumstances, I think the EU would roll their eyes and agree to an extension of Article 50.
Tick, tock...
Hence there is a good chance that the no deal we're heading for is far worse than a 'bad' deal.
(A long-term planned 'no deal' might be a very different matter...)
Britain Elects
@britainelects
48m48 minutes ago
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Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 40% (+1)
CON: 39% (-1)
LDEM: 8% (+1)
UKIP: 3% (-3)
GRN: 2%
via @Survation, 20 Oct - 02 Nov
Chgs. w/ 10 Oct
Spare a thought, though, for poor Theresa, she will be reviled as the worst PM in living memory and have to live out her friendless retirement unable to appear safely in public, damned by all sides. Blairs unpopularity will be nothing compared to the fate that will be hers.
The UK would not introduce a hard border in Ireland but have checks away from the border as happens currently.
Article 50 would take place by default without the need for a vote in parliament.
Neither France nor England would tolerate queues at the Dover/Calais crossing or elsewhere.
Lynching of politicians who allowed it.
It would probably finish off his political career but he would potentially achieve a major and ultimately positive place in the history books.
Yes because it would obviously have gone so much better if our leaver Brexit Secretary had been in charge from the start. We would have been home and dry once he had grasped how Dover works.
Also we rely on the wind blowing for renewable power.
Pray for wind post Brexit.
Meds are light weight and can be flown into the country.
Corbyn and his cult-like 'followers' are a massive drag on Labour's electability.
One option is for Mrs May to facilitate it by introducing legislation that instructs the government to inform the EU that no deal has proven possible and that the UK will therefore leave the EU on 29 March without a withdrawal agreement.
This would give parliament the opportunity to amend it with, for example, asking the EU to extend A50 for six months while a second referendum takes place.
I don't think the PM would feel able to propose a second referendum herself but if parliament so decides, well .... Her other option of calling a general election is just too risky. How would the Tory party decide what to put in the manifesto regarding Brexit? It would tear it apart. And facilitate a Corbyn government.
She has very little choice but to open it up to parliament to decide.