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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » What sort of fool would have predicted the politics of 2020 in 2010? Me.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/27/family-reveal-anguish-of-man-phil-longcake-who-died-in-carlisle-chimney-tragedy
Which is not to say that the police are the wrong decision here - without knowing more if the facts of the case, it’s impossible to say. That there are two very different standards in operation is undeniable, though.
What big event will dominate the politics of the next decade ? Still Brexit ?
Ah yes, the playwright who made a star of Dominic Cummings in Brexit: the Uncivil War.
TBH, I hope they don't. Doesn't look good.
In other news, Steven Knight wot wrote pb's seasonal favourite, A Christmas Carol, got a CBE.
Furthermore, I expect that there will be no need for organised barracking, big majority and a Speaker who is liked rather than detested.
Oh, sorry, did you mean people whose connection was being opposed to it?
In any event, of far greater significance for all of us is next year’s US presidential contest.
1) Brexit will still be a big issue.
2) Negative growth for at least one quarter in 2019.
3) The May deal will not pass.
4) A deal will pass, with a proviso that there will be a referendum on it.
5) We won't leave in March but may do later.
6) There will be a general election this year.
Not too bad. I definitely didn't foresee Boris as PM - did anyone predict that?
Bit like Cooper being touted as Labour leader who introduced HIPS.. another fecking diasater.
What is also noticeable is the electorate is not quite as daft as it seems, voting differently according to context. Ukip or the Brexit Party can win the European elections and not trouble the returning officers for Westminster ballots.
Scotland is perhaps a hybrid. The SNP did not supplant Labour as a left-wing party but as the anti-Conservative party. Now it is hard to be sure whether to explain Scottish politics as revolving around independence or anti-Toryism; both, probably. In any case, even if Nicola Sturgeon has moved the party away from Salmond's business-friendly Scottish blue, it is only to focus on independence rather than socialism.
Also, our system is based on seats not percentages. Everyone knows this. If some parties are inept at understanding how this affects, or should affect, campaigning then it's their own damned fault if they do poorly.
The Euro Elections are handy for the big two, as they get a massive opinion poll showing them which way to lean at the GE. If UKIP and BXP not won the last two Euros, manifestos and campaigning from Labour and Tory would surely have been different. Same goes for the Lib Dems this year too.
PR is a great way to fragment politics and atomise parties, as well as moving power away from the electorate and towards a political class that barters authority amongst itself.
One event that I think you missed the significance of had already happened in 2010, which was the Credit Crunch. The big political story of the 2010 was globalisation and liberalism coming under attack, when it had been dominant ten years earlier after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Trump, trade wars, Brexit are all facets of the new nationalism.
For the next ten years I predict the China and US competition to continue, the UK to be still uncertain of its role in the world to be diminished, and possibly not to be the UK any more. The European Union still hanging on.
"Under FPTP good second places are worthless... " was the PB mantra. Now the Lib Dems are doing that, it's a great sign of progress of course, a beacon of light for the future...
The Conservative majority is far more modest, despite having a higher percentage of votes (if that's the stat that floats your boat) than Labour had in 1997 and 2001.
One of this site's major failings is seeing Tory disaster round every corner. Based on hope, not analysis.
It seems to have passed without comment here from the leader writers that THE betting event of the 2019 GE was laying LibDem seats. From 44 seats. Who could possibly have predicted that "Prime Minister Jo Swinson" and Revoke were going down like a cup of cold sick outside the M25? And who did a detailed regional post where they came close to getting the LibDem seats spot on (that person didn't believe they could be quite so crap as to not win Sheffield Hallam....although fair play to TSE for saying it wasn't proving quite the shoo-in)
Looking forward I would predict that, despite Brexit, the UK will once again outperform the EZ average over much of the next decade. Our economy is growing in the right places (finance, law, IT) as well as the wrong ones (gig economy, casual labour giving people unpredictable and miserable lives) and is well placed to keep doing so. I expect the Tories to win the next election too but probably not the one after that. The next Labour PM may just have been elected but might not be in the Commons yet.
I don't see us avoiding another Scottish referendum for the next decade, sadly. I am confident that it will have the same result as the last one and hopefully be less close. In the more immediate future I will be astonished if Nicola is still first Minister at the end of this coming year.
I think that Africa will be a source of global concern over the decade, both as the source of large numbers of refugees and as a cause of climate change as burgeoning population growth boosts consumption and the destruction of natural environments. We will spend a lot more of this decade talking about that continent than we did the last one.
I fear Trump will be re-elected and continue to damage America's long term interests by being an unreliable friend, not a team player and, all to often, just a bully. We should be very careful to keep our distance.
I think a China crisis is very likely, almost certainly caused by excessive debt but spilling over into politics. My guess is that they will have a tempestuous time.
100% of the power
based on winning
56% of the seats
based on
44% of the popular vote
representing
29% of the electorate.
As a deep ecologist, like others I see the main issue as loss of bio-diversity which is linked to habitat loss due to homo sapien numbers. This is not being discussed because water-melon environmentalists keep banging on about climate change because it suits their anti-western virtue-signalling bias. Bizarrely - they see any discussion around human overpopulation as racist.
Extinction Rebellion is the best environmentalist group I have found so far. At least it puts loss of bio-diversity front and centre (in their title) and recognises that democracy will never solve the planet`s problem: that it is being destroyed by one rapacious species.
Brexit doesn't help, with its aim of having as little as possible to do with other mid-sized democracies, and its rejection of shared interests.
https://twitter.com/TomTugendhat/status/1210239550695579650
Boris needs to remember he is not popular. 71% of the election did not vote for him. If he remembers that he will be more effective.
The same was true for Blair.
Joining just as the EU started to clamp down tightly to try and protect what it had from further exits. It would take a heart of Stone of Scone.....
Such a shame you chose to cast doubt on his achievement to make a political dig
As I tell my local LibDdem group, liberals start from a great position ideologically. We live in a liberal democracy and ideologically I`d estimate that 35% of the electorate are ideologically liberal (50% conservative, 15% collectivist). Yet the LibDems punch below their weight whist the collectivist party (Labour) collects votes from folk who are not ideologically collectivist due to family tradition, union ties etc.
The LibDems need to dust off their copies of J.S Mill and start there: individual flourishment, equality of status, economically prudent, law-abiding, centre ground on the left/right axis.
I woke up to a foot of snow this morning. I’m in Ukraine - not Dubai, for anyone who thought there might be any snow there apart from the indoor ski slope!
Angus Robertson would be an excellent leader, better than anyone currently in Holyrood other than Nicola.
It will last far longer than anyone expects, but will increasingly become a backwater.
As a somewhat convicted unionist, I wonder if our energies are better spent trying to make a success of independence rather than arguing about process. Brexit is an example to avoid I think. Not only is it a bad idea from my point of view, but Leavers/Tories are going about it in the most cackhanded, divisive and destructive way possible. Can't we do better than that?
In terms of C02 reductions we are some considerable way ahead of any other major European economy - the last time I checked the data.
In absolute terms France may be lower but that is because of their nuclear sector.
I think an important priority is to face down a movement of Greenies which does not really engage reason, but just focuses on taking up the most extreme position of anyone, and squawking like parakeets.
Some of the interviews broadcast during the Extinction Rebellion pillock parade were hugely enlightening - they really are (on the whole) gormless thickies.