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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Looking back over 2018: Alastair Meeks reviews his predictions
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Looking back over 2018: Alastair Meeks reviews his predictions
It’s that time of year when everyone makes predictions about what is coming up. Oddly, you get rather fewer articles looking back at the previous year’s predictions. Funny that.
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"1. Agree with Alistair. I’d be more specific and say we will do a deal and say we will have good access to single market and maintain freedom of movement in practice. A few Tory Brexiteers will fuss but most will be persuaded by the Gove line that we are out and have the power to change things further in future/when they stand as leader.
2. Suspect party leaders will stay but I also think May could be forced into giving an exit date.
3. I think no/very few Cabinet departures and no reshuffle. But the briefings against each other will intensify. I think we will see much greater clarity on who is planning to replace Theresa, deals will be done. Total guess but I think both Gove and Leadsom will offer their support to someone if they can be Chancellor. High profile leavers will be in demand to give the Remainer leader hopefuls some street cred with the membership.
4. I think Tories may pull ahead of Labour slightly after Brexit deal is announced/clear but otherwise both parties will drift downwards in polls back to the 30s.
5. UK Economy will under perform as growth drifts downwards. No recession.
6. Republicans will lose House in mid terms, just hold onto Senate (possibly needing Pence for tiebreaks). Dems will begin impeachment process but probably jump the gun. The evidence from Mueller will be both damning and deniable and ultimately the Republican Senators won’t back impeachment in significant numbers.
7. My black swan event/longshot - some kind of major NHS catastrophe a la Grenfell which captures the public consciousness.."
For now, the view seems to be that Theresa May's deal is not viable and cannot pass, yet no deal might be even worse, with even former chief Leaver Michael Gove warning of shortages. The Cabinet is split half a dozen ways as to the best outcome.
Nothing can happen, yet something will happen.
I would say that leave's win has more to do with the general apathy of remainers during the referendum campaign, and the eighth-hearted approach taken to 'campaigning' by the Labour leader. Leavers wanted the win more, and were more willing to work for it.
And here's a prediction: once Brexit has happened, they'll turn onto something else: either the EU would be acting unfaithfully, or the UK government is, or they don't like the price of bread or that swarthy-looking man they saw on the TV the other day. They'll complain about something, because they're winnets, and the political ones realise it's their only way to get the attention they crave from the media.
The problem is that the headbangers are so incompetent that they've failed to sink May - and that's why they're currently quieter than usual. They'll be back.
They should be ignored.
So true
... And I can only hope your expected Jeremiads for next year aren’t quite as accurate.
'Everyone will continue whinging pointlessly about Brexit.'
Which is as close to a cold reading as saying 'England will suffer at least one spectacular batting collapse.'
Anyway, that was Christmas. So now - how do we deliver Brexit?
"So now - how do we deliver Brexit?""
Keep the leavers who campaigned for this mess locked in their padded cells, and let the adults do the work.
Anyway, time to get up; have a good morning.
The answer is that lots of analyses have been produced from various different angles, and from each angle, it is a bad deal, even if some angles (Remain or Leave, for instance) are contradictory on what would constitute a good deal.
The DUP is worried about weakening the union by putting a border down the Irish Sea. Everyone worries about a hard border with the Republic. The SNP thinks it will make Scotland poorer. The Bank of England says it will make the whole UK poorer, and so does the Treasury. It fails Labour's six tests. It leaves Britain as a rule taker but not maker, so the ERG complains we will be a vassal state after total surrender to Brussels. The deal says nothing about immigration, or protecting Britons abroad, and costs £39 billion or more.
I hope everyone had a nice Xmas
But the key point is, it's out. Once we are out, it would require a huge amount of time and effort, including a referendum, to go back in, and re-entry would certainly be on appalling, indeed unacceptable terms including signing up to Schengen and the Euro. There just isn't the appetite for it, whatever the likes of Soubry or Benn or Cable may fantasise about. (And incidentally whatever the shortcomings of this deal it's a great deal better than full federalism.)
So why are the Leavers jibbing? Well, I got into trouble once for comparing Rees-Mogg's brain to that of a stuffed rabbit. And with hindsight I was indeed completely wrong to make that comparison. Stuffed rabbits are way smarter than he is,
It isn't however a Brexit settlement, nor does it solve the central contradiction of Brexit where people voted Leave "to take control" but we end up with far less say over own affairs than before, as well as a lot of disruption. The Withdrawal Agreement already puts significant constraints on our future settlement. The UK will be making a lot more compromises in negotiations over the next decade.
The question for Leavers, as Alastair implies, is whether they are prepared to accept aspects of the "Vassal State" as a price worth paying for the fact of leaving the EU. Whether the symbols of sovereignty are more important than real influence. Like Alastair, I think, I assumed most Leavers would accept Brexit regardless. But there seems to be a big enough group of Leavers who don't think that's a price worth paying and would rather remain instead. That in turn cancels out the group of Remainers who think Brexit a bad idea but go along with it as a consensus decision. If Leavers don't accept the decision, Remainers have even less reason do so
I don't see anything wrong with Schengen and the Euro. But I don't think the EU would insist on them. As for the rebate, that was a national embarrassment.
In the end the referendum will achieve its objective. We'll be in and the damaging debate will be over.
Talking of predictions, it does look like we are still on for a change to colder weather in mid-January with a Sudden Stratospheric Warming about to happen.
Contrary to the belief of Brexit fantasists the EU is not in the business of imperial domination.
In my dotage, and in the Christmas period, I amused myself by looking over some of the accessible literature on global warming.
I'm no expert, but I have published and refereed papers in the scientific literature on another subject..
The Greenland ice-cap seems popular, and an interesting paper from 2011 looked at ice-cores from the last 10,000 years. I'm not a 'denier' nor an 'activist' but …
The introduction was "Greenland recently incurred record high temperatures and ice loss by melting, adding to concerns that anthropogenic warming is impacting the Greenland ice sheet and in turn accelerating global sea‐level rise. Yet, it remains imprecisely known for Greenland how much warming is caused by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases versus natural variability. To address this need, we reconstruct Greenland surface snow temperature variability over the past 4000 years at the GISP2 site (near the Summit of the Greenland ice sheet;"
The conclusion was "The record indicates that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4000 years, including century‐long intervals nearly 1°C warmer than the present decade (2001–2010). Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years, a period that seems to include part of the Holocene Thermal Maximum."
The next paragraph begins … "Notwithstanding this conclusion, climate models project that if anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions continue, the Greenland temperature would exceed the natural variability of the past 4000 years sometime before the year 2100."
You noticed the "Notwithstanding"...
My own amateur conclusion … Note that key phrase … "Yet, it remains imprecisely known for Greenland how much warming is caused by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases versus natural variability."
Models are getting better, but those pesky confounding factors remain a problem. Carbon dioxide may well be influencing global warming, but the extent is hotly debated in scientific circles. It's those known unknown and unknown unknowns. Major changes in temperature have occurred in the past - but we weren't there to be blamed then. In the end, you pays your money and takes your choice.
You haven't answered my point about Schengen, of which both Poland and Sweden are members. Ireland isn't but because of the CTA Ireland was treated as a special case (which is the best answer to those Unionists moaning about backstops).
Well, it's a view. It's just not one I share.
(I deliberately don't mention Juncker as he won't be around beyond next year.)
The other thing to remember is that in all likelihood the EU we would be looking to rejoin will also have changed a great deal. If as seems likely the anti-EU parties do well in European elections next year, paradoxically that might drive the bureaucracy to aim for more integration to head off the possibility of a break-up.
What drives these extremes? Output of the sun, volcanic activity and the volume of life tying up carbon are all likely causes and no doubt there are others. What about anthropomorphic activity? Well, given the amount of stored carbon we have released in the last 200 years it would be astonishing if this did not have an effect. More recently we have been releasing more dangerous chemicals too.
It seems to me that we have a large enough impact on the world to be capable of extending extremes. It seems entirely credible that there may be tipping points too. It makes sense to look after our world, it’s the only one we have. We should continue with policies that reduce our impact. But we should stop pretending it’s all down to us.
It is presented as “this is happening. There is no debate, and this is happening because of X”. To even imply that very few things in life are that clear cut. The subtleties are removed to avoid confusion. And we get ever increasing catastrophising by activists.
Anyone who challenged this is a trump supporter in the pay of big oil.
Puritanical tosh.
But that doesn't mean the terms offered will not be ones the EU consider normal and the electorate here consider totally unacceptable. As we have seen all too vividly in recent weeks, the EU simply doesn't understand that some people don't buy into their worldview and are consequently not willing to bend to accommodate them.
....
For Germany...
The other problem is or are the impacts of fairly minor changes on our crowded world. Millions live in or near coastal cities so small sea level rises will have a huge impact on large numbers of humanity in both the richest and poorest parts of the world. The former can, if they wish, throw money at the problem in terms of flood defences, the latter cannot.
As we've seen this year, hotter summers bring their own problems to many areas of the world in terms of wildfires, water supply issues and ultimately questions as to how we live and whether a lifestyle suited to temperate climates will work if the climate is different. Again, some will have the money and the technology to adapt, others won't.
Therein lies the crucial difference with the 2016 referendum when we were asked if we wanted to leave without any clear definition of what that actually entailed. Everything that has followed has flowed predictably from that.
The process of the last referendum was ill conceived so we ended up with a narrow, seemingly binding, commitment to do something which meant lots of different things to those who voted for it. There should always have been a ratification vote on the deal built into the process, something I believe Mogg suggested a few years ago.
*) Too high a calorific intake
*) The 'wrong' sorts of calories / foods
*) Not enough exercise / sedentary lives.
ISTM that the problem is not just the first, but the second and third as well. I wonder whether encouraging people to do more exercise would be just as useful as regulated calorie restrictions?
(Although as an aside, a pizza I love from Morrisons contains over half of my recommended daily intake of calories. That seems rather insane. Although tasty.)
Education yes, caps no.
“Our long national nightmare is over.”
So said Gerald Ford, post Watergate, and I can imagine Theresa May at the lectern in Downing St saying much the same on the morning of 30th March 2019. By serendipitous twist of fate, almost as if the gods are smiling down and rooting for us, it will be a Saturday.
The nightmare in this case will be our protracted and bitter debate about membership of the European Union. It will be history. We will have left under the Withdrawal Treaty and ahead of us will lie many years of talks to arrive at a mutually acceptable Future Relationship.
The negotiation will take an eternity. It will span more than one generation and several general elections. But precisely because of this it will not arouse the passions that Remain vs Leave once did. The UK will be Out and the vast majority of people will accept that. The infernal ongoings with Brussels will not, as some predict, continue to dominate our politics. Rather, the EU issue will cede centre-stage to other matters. It will still be there, it will always be there, like static on an old radio, but we will be listening to the music.
That is what I had in mind when referring to tipping points.
I'm not particularly pushing for indefinite delay, but do point out the referendum was utterly stupid to reject one outcome without considering the realistic alternatives and then be bound by that decision to reject. No business would ever do anything as crass.
Perhaps after Suez we felt we had no other place in the world but to be part of Europe but as so many have said, we aren't European at heart.
Perhaps there are those in Brussels who already see the European Federation as a logical and inevitable outcome - convincing the people of the wisdom of that will take a long time, I suspect.
As so often in history, the European continent will have issues at its peripheries - the UK at one end, Russia on the other, the proximity of Turkey and the Middle East and of course the mess that is Africa to the south. The challenge for European integration will be to mitigate all these potential risks and hazards.
For us, it would be good if we wished the EU project well and aspired to be a friendly neighbour while resuming our global engagement.
As an aside, leaving the EU doesn't solve the problem of our identity or place in the world - I've no desire to live in Singapore-on-Thames pouring coffee for the billionaires lured here by our low-tax low-regulation economy.
The challenge is to create a post-EU economy and society that works for all of us. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have any answers but nor does anyone else at this time.
You can't regulate a lifestyle into people.
Just to note both Japan and China (and I believe Russia too) are looking at extracting methane hydrates as an energy source - the technology isn't there yet but is only a few years away.
No man is an island.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee.
When I joined the fire service over 20 years ago, there were some big old units who struggled to climb stairs, let alone a ladder. Now we have a yearly fitness test, which while not too difficult- it's literally a brisk walk up a steepening hill for 12 minutes- it is pass or fail, and if you fail, there's a 6 week fitness program to follow, followed by a more stringent job related test that results in disciplinary action if failed. I'm not saying we should test the population once a year, but maybe there could be a proper carrot and stick approach to the fitness of the general population. I don't have an answer to how that could work or be applied, but as a nation we need a radical rethink. It will benefit the economy in the long run.
It's the last untapped area for natural resources though the Chinese are there already and of course it's the last source of cheap labour. We are already seeing sub-Saharan immigration into the UK from places like Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana as well as from the former Portuguese colonies. We are already seeing the migrations from Eritrea and other failed states north via Libya to Europe.
How Europe (both the EU, the UK and others) responds to this population challenge is going to be crucial. The temptation will be to create Fortress Europe - walls, barriers and a new purpose for a post-Cold War NATO with the focus not to the east but to the south. Will we see new colonialism with Europe establishing footholds on the African continent to challenge the migrations?