Categories
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The first months of a Corbyn government
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The first months of a Corbyn government
It’s objectively clear that there is a genuine possibility of a Corbyn government within months, possibly even weeks. That might be after an election, or it might be simply that the Conservatives lose the will to govern: there is a limit to how long governments can function with every vote at risk of failure, and yielding to a minority Labour government which is also subject to hostile majorities at every turn may seem a lesser evil.
0
Comments
That would get approximately zero votes from Con, so you'd need everyone else to be solidly behind it which seems like a very big ask.
So really what he needs to do is: Move into Downing Street, get photographed being nice to the cat, show up in parliament wearing a clean shirt taking care not to nationalize anything on the way, then ask the Tories to join him in voting for a new general election.
Assuming as you have done no imminent General Election or one where Labour depends on other parties the time might have arrived when a new centrist grouping emerges.
It's a pity that at this time of national emergency Labour have the leadership they have. Not just Corbyn but Abbott McDonnell McClusky and some of the least impressive shadow cabinet members ever assembled.
With a Blair or a Brown or a Milliband or a Cooper or even a Thornberry Labour could be on course for a '97 type victory and it could have killed off this bonkers Tory Party and their anachronistic ideas of empire for at least a decade.
Remind me - who was it who needlessly lost that Tory majority, Theresa?
The Conservative Party will long rue not getting rid of her immediately after that election fiasco. It was a pretty solid indicator of how she would cock up Brexit too. Never give a project upon which your business depends to somebody serving their notice.
What happens after that is currently unknowable.
And what happens when the first franchises to come back into public ownership - which are Thameslink and Great Western, in practice - perform worse than those franchises in private hands (which they will)?
It's an are where a 'cheap' halfway house might be much more harmful than an expensive proper job.
After a few populist giveaways in a budget (payrise for me!) then a honeymoon GE to get a majority.
On topic, nothing about the financial markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3pacMThWVE
It has to be said though that a big problem in this country for at least 20 years is politicians simply have been unable or unwilling to take tough decisions or be honest with voters. That goes for social care, health care, pensions, power generation, housing capacity, transport, military prowess and trade deals, massive problems in all of which have been repeatedly ignored. And in light of May's experience that's not going to be changing any time soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3pacMThWVE
https://www.railmagazine.com/news/rail-features/exclusive
(There was a second piece the next issue, which sadly does not seem to be online).
It takes a very different - and welcome- view from the usual hysteria over foreign profits, and is much more grounded in reality wrt fragmentation. It's also hard to argue against many of the points made.
However - it also seems to take a view that renationalisaiton means all these problem will go away. As an example, the idea that different train operators are the reason services do not pause to allow connections is rather optimistic; it happened regularly under BR, and the network effects of delaying a train - especially on a busy line - can ripple into delays on different trains. Making that call can be a very difficult one: it is not up to the local stationmaster just trotting off to the signalbox at the end of the platform.
It should also be noted that the unfragmented network he outlines never existed under BR (it it is simply too large an organisation), so many 'wasteful' interfaces will exist. In addition, it is also a million miles away from the nationalise-one-TOC-at-a-time world.
I reckon this is nearer Labour's thinking - and that might be a good thing, because at least it means they're thinking.
Now, as to how to do it I could write a thread or two on that.
And it's quite funny that the difference between the teams was Cheteshwar Pujara, the man who always seems to get dropped first.
In other news, I am guessing everyone has seen this ... but, if the Gilets were to become a political party they’d help En Marche!!
https://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/sondage-les-gilets-jaunes-a-12-aux-europeennes-en-cas-de-candidature-3816677
Otherwise I agree with you about being unwilling to take tough decisions. I'm not sure, TBH, that Corbyn would, in the first few weeks be willing to do so, if only because the first priority will be to win a GE with a working majority.
Of course, he's likely to end up doing it by accident - look at Brown and May.
Given the current Parliamentary arithmetic, the DUP only need to abstain for the Conservatives to have a majority - so unless the DUP decide to prop up Corbyn or there are a number of Conservative defections (Hi Sarah Woolaston and Heidi Allen!) then Mr Meeks is correct that some form of Con government will likely run until 2022.
You have to wonder how long Paine can survive as captain. He was picked in a fairly desperate emergency as a temporary measure. His batting has been indifferent, his glove work poor, his management questionable and his tactics ineffectual.
The reason he is there is because neither vice-captain is assured of a place in the side, Smith is banned, Finch isn't seen as a long-term solution and Handscomb and Head are both very inexperienced.
But you do have to wonder how long it will be before the selectors seriously consider giving Khawaja the armband.
I've never been quite sure which of those two roles Corbyn was suited to, but it's never seemed to me that he was any sort of Leader.
The country needs a change of government. There are clearly competent people on the opposition bench ready to go. Like many Labour voters, I have very serious concerns about Macdonell, Corbyn and their advisors. I rely on the backbenchers like Cooper and ministers like Starmer keeping them from descending into a backward ideological crusade.
A Labour govt with a small working majority could be interesting.
The Tories will have no one to blame but themselves for sticking with May for so long and making Corbyn so appealing to so many.
I'd be sorely tempted to vote against it, to make sure the meaningful vote takes place. Aping the extreme case, it could save May's premiership.
Jezza seems to have lost some of his novelty value. The fact Labour isn't miles ahead is down to him. A hung parliament? Rule by referendum overseen by the CS?
Ended up writing an essay on how a Neolithic man, who had been brought up in the mountains but moved to the coast, would explain the seashore to his former neighbours.
The lecturer quite liked it.
I see a couple more junior members of the payroll resigning overnight to vote against, it's looking like a 200 majority against - assuming Labour don't play Ed-Milliband-on-Syria games and abstain at the last minute to try and force an election.
AKA 'l'estat, c'est moi!'
Quite, Mr. Sandpit.
Socialists view tax the same way a nymphomaniac views a nude beach. They just can't help themselves, and **** everything.
And even if (and that's a big conditional) Brexit blows over, their reputation for fiscal management will have disappeared as well, as too many senior Conservatives are putting their ideology ahead of the good running of the country.
We were surrounded by rather large, elderly men who had absolutely no interest in her. A few of these gents had nylon grey work socks placed strategically to avoid sunburn. I was grateful for that, but worried about athletes foot.
I am not sure what this confession does for your analogy, but often the realities are quite different.
I am wondering if that would include security briefings on key appointments. There is one that would be especially - interesting. As in - disastrous.
Just in case you were unaware of this, since the Battle of Hastings in 1066 all land in the country *does* technically belong to the Crown.
That is why the title deeds of a property refer to 'freehold.' You hold it free of any third party directly from the King or in this case, queen.
And it can be taken away - most commonly in the Middle Ages by Bill of Attainder.
Police are looking into it.
However, it is part of the basis of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which has been used more than once.
I'm not saying Corbyn's whole platform consists of excellent neo-liberal policies like this, and sadly it doesn't, but in fairness I think it's mostly a lot more "meh", "doh" and occasionally "ffs" than "aaaargh".
I could have used a satyriasic but, excepting those who've read my fantastic book, Sir Edric's Kingdom, most people are unfamiliar with the term (it's essentially a male nymphomaniac).
Mr. Jessop, socialism's given the world the USSR and Venezuela, to name but two.
The incumbent May Government is pretty damned mediocre, at best, and in some areas absolutely bloody dreadful. That doesn't mean socialism is a good thing. It doesn't mean it's better even than the status quo.
It’s impoversihed every country where it’s been tried.
That's definitely an 'aaaargh' moment from my point of view.
The trouble with Brexit is that we have a Gov who don’t believe in it, have no preparations for it, have no plans for what to do with it and simply see it not for the opportunities it presents and more as a damage limitation exercise.
Edit - ah, I think I understand what you're trying to get at. You are saying that property can only be taken away from someone who's committed a crime, therefore it doesn't apply to the rest. What I am saying, however, is that your original claim that land in this country is not the property of the state is wrong. It is true that normally it is only forfeited under unusual conditions, but if anyone chose to change that approach the fact that in strict law land belongs to the crown gives them the opportunity to do so. It's not hard to see it being exploited in that way over e.g. Land banks, or council house repossession (mooted a few weeks back).
But it's pointless warning about the dangers of socialism when the Conservatives are up to their necks in another failed ideology: Brexit.
(That does not mean leaving the EU is right or wrong; it means the way too many Conservatives treat it as the most important issue facing the country, worth risking massive disruption and pain for, is absolutely stupid and damaging to the Conservative brand.)
What you will get with a Corbyn investment is Capitalism 101. Borrow. Invest in projects which deliver a return on that investment. Receive more income. Repeat the cycle to drive further growth. Slashing investment and services to the bone - what the Tories do - is reverse capitalism.
I think it's likelier to be cancelled (itself a farce) than actually pass.
The second referendum odds are unchanged at 2.25 for it happening and 1.57 on it not.
No useful or conventional definition of it has anything to do with borrowing or investing.
https://www.facebook.com/JeremyCorbynMP/videos/308880119676193/
And TBF, if they really did BINO, they'd have a *lot* of extra tax revenue to play with compared to the current May-Barnier Brexit baseline that nobody's admitting to.
Tuition fees, maybe not. But it would be early because it would be a key demand of his voters. I That's why I went for 'eighteen months.'
Consequently, unless things get really complicated and both major parties split over Brexit, the Parliamentary mathematics surrounding the fall of the Conservative Government point inexorably toward an immediate General Election. This is also why the prospect of No Deal seems so high: May has run out of road, the chances of her successor being a more committed Brexiteer are excellent, and the Pro-EU wing of the Tory Party would most likely be all but wiped out if they marched off in disgust. Regardless of the exact course of events there would be a General Election soon after, most of the Conservative vote are Leavers and could presumably be relied upon to back the Brexiteer platform, and anyway the space in British politics for a mushy, soft centrist, Europhile alternative is already occupied by the Liberal Democrats. All they would achieve would be to end up collecting their first dole payments from a socialist Government.
Remember, however awful or anticlimactic a No Deal Brexit might turn out to be, the prize for all of this for the Conservative Party (and for so many of us in the country who are sick to death of arguments about Europe dominating all else) is that it would finally put the issue to bed. There'd be precious little appetite in the country, after everything that's happened, for trying to get back into the club again, and the other members probably wouldn't want us anyway.
This is, ultimately, why very passionate Remainers are so utterly desperate to stop us leaving at any cost: because once we've gone, we've gone. It is reasonable to conclude that re-joining, as a political position, would be very much like republicanism: theoretically appealing to a quarter or even a third of the electorate when asked about it by opinion pollsters, but in practice a niche obsession for a small handful and a total irrelevance for the overwhelming majority.
I explain about schools upthread.
As I say, the cumulative effect of the three would be to bankrupt the private school sector, and that was obviously the intention. But the bizarre way he thought that using penal taxes that as a result would raise no money to fund improvements in the state sector should have alerted anyone to the fact that his policy offering was a nonsense.
When consumption wasn't enough for the quarterly stock exchange reporting cycle (having been perfectly fine on the old longer cycles of not having everything floated) a way was found to give people more money- credit. After the crash credit has been tighter and we had a decade of wage stagnation and soaring living costs. Which is how we have so many people working and just about managing.
How to break the cycle? Invest. The Tories have burned through a trillion quid without investing as austerity slowly braked economic performance. Let the government borrow at near zero interest rates, slam the money into economy driving infrastructure projects, offer business incentive to invest* and we breathe life back into an economy that actually works for most people
Pathetic if true. Firstly, why would they believe anything she says? Secondly, how does her leaving after the Deal is rammed through change any of the things they hate about it? Thirdly, how does throwing around petty threats about Christmas do anything to foster good will?