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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The whole Corbyn GNU story is based on a false premise – that
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The whole Corbyn GNU story is based on a false premise – that MP numbers are there for a confidence vote to be passed
The US President who took over after Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was famed for his sayings that wonderfully summed up political situations one of which was that the first rule of politics was that its “practitioners need to be able to count”.
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I expect however that by October things will be different / desperate enough that a suitable candidate will be identified and made temporary PM.
My bet as I stated earlier would be Margaret Beckett..
If it was me as an MP contemplating such a thing then I'd have to resign and seek re-election. There's no time for that though, and as such abstaining has to be the limit.
How do you explain, the 5 CHUK's position tonight that they will not support a VoNC in September. What could they possibly be thinking. Do they not fear a No Deal Brexit ? Doesn't seem like it.
Hermon for PM I say.
Mike Smithson for Prime Minister !!
If they wish to actually vote against the party for which they were elected then they need to seek re-election. I think they know that, but Soubry may not.
Aberdeen heading out of Europe for another year.... Guess we'll just have to concentrate on the domestic treble.
https://www.dominicgrieve.org.uk/news/dominic-grieves-election-message-constituents
The latest Lib Dem MP and ex-Tory is talking a lot of sense. Let's get over the line first, as Brexiters say, then worry about who's going to be caretaker PM.
Personally, I would support Clarke and even Grieve for their unflinching dedication to the ideals of Europe but I am in a minority here.
The truth is that there are many MPs who want to stop Brexit but are more concerned with stopping Corbyn being PM.
This means that Brexit is unlikely to be stopped.
Who to blame? Corbyn for being Corbyn? Or those pretending that stopping Brexit is their priority?
The latter will say the former.
I don’t see why a VONC wouldn’t pass.
All Opposition MPs - even Frank Field? - could be expected to vote for it, plus Guto, Lee and perhaps others.
Oddly I'd describe him as dis-honourable throughout. A coward, a charlatan, and a rogue. Only Soubry is worse, but as she's a lady I have no censure against her.
If Grieve does the proper thing and gets elected on what he's saying then I have a lot of time for him.
From Wikipedia it looks like he was deselected in 1975, appealed to the NEC and was rejected in 1977 so resigned from the party. Why did Labour deserve his loyalty?
"If Brexit invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to Corbyn in the House of Commons.”
Very good article
I only ever see the LBJ "first rule of politics" on UK news and politics website; a bit of googling seems to confirms it as a UK-specific misquote, so I'd love to know where it came from. I get the impression one UK journalist or academic used it then another picked it up (it sometimes gets credited "according to Philip Cowley" of Queen Mary UL apparently based on a 2015 tweet, but I wonder if it might go back further) and since it's so useful in a hung parliament* it's snowballed since then, but it doesn't seem to have infected the political discourse of any other English-speaking country.
If we're all going to misquote it, could we at least mangle it into something rather closer to the original? Drop the "rule of politics" bit altogether, and stick with "learn to count" or "have you learned to count", perhaps?
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* I learned today that "hung parliament" is of surprisingly recent vintage as a term, first being used in the press by Simon Hoggart in the Guardian in June 1974.
*innocent face*
And that of course is why Swinson will not work with him on the rather ambiguous terms he's proposed.
Corbyn is far more trustworthy than Johnson, which is not saying much but beggars can't be choosers in this situation.
Lucas response today was the correct one.
Now of course all this discussion is going on because of the risk of No Deal. And a Corbyn caretaker government isn't the only game in town. I sincerely believe that if, for example, we end up having an autumn General Election, parliament will find a way to force Boris to delay Brexit.
She could have been more astute in the way she rejected it, perhaps. All she had to do was either say, 'second referendum first, or no votes,' or if she wanted to really stir things up, 'I don't trust him for all these reasons, so I approve in principle of the idea but I'm not putting him in power.'
She is gloriously untroubled by having to do anything that might appeal to an actual electorate. Meanwhile 35 of the Lib Dems' top 40 target seats are in Tory-held constituencies where Corbyn is anathema.
That said, he has not made so many dishonest actions as Johnson, although that's partly because he hasn't ever actually done anything very important.
Excellent day for Jo but it wasn't difficult to sidestep the Corbyn trap into which all the Conservatives hoped she would fall.
The response is to ratchet the pressure on Corbyn by offering someone else from the Labour side (Harman) she would consider and by adding Clarke it provides an irritation to Boris (never a bad thing).
The numbers have never been there for a GoNU - the Johnson and Corbyn loyalists are too numerous in the Commons for an alternative to have more than 100-150 MPs at the very most.
It's easy to say the price to stop No Deal is putting Corbyn into Downing Street but the Conservatives would use it against the LDs in any subsequent campaign so we'd get to a No Deal plus a decade or more of Conservative majority misrule.
No, if there's a route to avoiding No Deal it has to be without putting the Marxist Corbyn into Downing Street and it has ideally to humiliate Johnson - I suppose the best thing would be for Johnson himself to seek an extension proclaiming it "in the national interest". I doubt even he would be that stupid.
The only route I see is for the Commons to show its preference by voting for a further extension which Johnson will inevitably defy and if he calls a GE he will have to deal with the 30-40 Conservative rebels who are opposed to leaving without a Deal.
They are right not to trust him.
She is now trying to wriggle out of her misjudged reflex rejection of Jezza with talk of a meeting. By the end of the weekend she'll be on board.
What I don’t think there is at the moment are votes for an alternative government. Good luck persuading Corbyn and the Labour front bench to back an alternative figure to such a degree that the monarch can say with certainty they command the confidence of the House.
I had been under the impression until today that they considered nothing more important than preventing a No Deal Brexit.
Considering the Commons couldn’t even agree on what sort of Brexit they wanted a few months back, I think it’s a bit pie in the sky at the moment that they’ll suddenly unite around a Ken Clarke or Harriet Harman government.