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The Scottish leader ratings suggest that LAB might beat the Tories for second place – politicalbetti
The Scottish leader ratings suggest that LAB might beat the Tories for second place – politicalbetting.com
Ever since the SNP came to power in Scotland at the 2011 Holyrood elections I have paid more notice of leader ratings north of the border than voting intention numbers. Then at this stage the voting polls had SLAB in the lead but the then SNP leader Alex Salmond, totally dominated the leader ratings. On that basis I was posting on here saying that the SNP represented good value to win at odds longer than evens.
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A wise move.
Indyref2, a border poll in NI, and I'm working out what the third one in this awful trifecta will be.
https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1380067117215715330
England imposing its will on Ireland against their will. You can't see the problem with this?
https://twitter.com/TelePolitics/status/1380068160532021248
But only if the spirit of Margaret Thatcher turns them down first.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
But the EU can't do that because in their eyes the WTO rules (which need to by applied on all borders) are necessarily more important than the Good Friday that technically impacts only 1 part of a third party country (and one where the country has agreed is inside the EU's borders for convenience purposes).
The Tories and the SNP are mirroring each other and its not the greatest of looks for either party, but especially the Tories. Although Salmond is definitely reminding people about the bad stuff in the SNP, I still think the Tories without Ruth that will get a bigger kicking.
Sarwar and Willie Rennie are having a good campaign. Is it enough to beat the Nats? Not on the current polls, but, anecdotally, something is happening. A cheeky outside bet might be SLAB/SLib Dem and Greens
Sure, why not? It went so well last time...
I was impressed with him in the debate and to be honest I am relaxed if he does gain seats, as each seat gain helps to defeat independence
I still expect Sturgeon to achieve a majority SNP vote and while I thought Salmond would gain a seat, I am less certain after yesterday's poll showing Alba on 3% and his refusal to condemn Russia for Salisbury
Not that I think it likely the unionist parties will get much over 50-55 seats, tbh.
However in most constituency seats Labour is too far behind the SNP to win and with Sturgeon still having an even higher net favourability rating than Sturgeon that is unlikely to change. So the Tories and LDs are still likely to win more Holyrood constituencies than Labour. Currently 7 are held by the Conservatives, 4 by the LDs and only 3 by Labour. Ironically Labour's best chance for a gain may be Edinburgh Central where they are third behind the Conservatives and SNP but in 2016 lots of Conservative voters would have been Remainers in the referendum and may switch to Sarwar and Starmer's party now Corbyn has gone and Davidson is standing down.
On the list Labour is likely to do better, that is where they could overtake the Conservatives
Is Northern Ireland an excuse to keep us locked in the EU, accepting whatever the EU determines with QMV (enacted after Brown reneged upon a promise for a referendum)?
I am surprised that so many PB Tories want to give in to rioters, when even a sit down protest in Bristol gets their goat.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/snpswindlefinal.png
It would also almost certainly require the Tories to be over 40% in Wales
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
My preferred solution is still for us to get rid of Northern Ireland, which has been an embarassing and expensive curse for centuries.
I just cannot see any further than that, unless something extraordinary happens
They have seen that IRA violence got the Nationalists what they wanted ie an open border in Ireland and a border in the Irish Sea, so the old loyalist paramilitaries are reviving and will likely continue with violence unfortunately until the border in the Irish Sea with GB is removed.
A CSA would be the world's second largest holder of nuclear weapons, behind Russia and ahead of the rump USA.
@Alanbrooke and I both know something about Irish politics (him more than me to be fair!)
IIRC the only cabinet ministers who received armed bodyguards/protection is the Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, and the NI Secretary.
If only someone had noticed...
Remember the collapse in Scotland when they tumbled from 42% of the vote to 24% in 2015 only impacted the GB share of the vote by the less than 1%.
So even if they poll 30% in Scotland then it won't make much difference to the headline GB share of the vote.
In fact Labour are polling in the mid 30s GB wide, and mid 20s in Scotland, you can argue they are doing better in the rest of GB than Scotland.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc
.
That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
*Any given unionist points at RT* You want that man to have unlimited power?
Support for independence drops to -5% and stays there for 50 years.
RT would get rewarded with a safe seat at Westminster then after
[Conservative} Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/06/18/most-conservative-members-would-see-party-destroye
https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2021/03/22/news/leo-varadkar-being-guarded-round-the-clock-following-death-threats-2262594/
Coveney is now worried things might get out of hand. A bit late Im afraid .
https://news.yahoo.com/northern-ireland-riots-must-stop-074522319.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMJQGFuwzN5oiRRE7ujZqGmEECk7nWgqjF4E77nROKQFH33EIBT3n8lQ7SUKk7CEcORaf0tVSXnuOPrLy2FEQU_k6cTNfxrvQYVS_P7Jf8fwXN6WNwT0E0ENqCjDoa9ZSRohkKh9SsF2B9ohzIXMXV_FXMq_uo7t19a6XV4W8GO2
His warning someone might get killed, has a worried personal ring to it.
To have such an agreement you have to have an agreement on standards which you are declaring compliance with. Otherwise self-declaration is "I declare that my goods are non-compliant with your standards".
The problem is that despite our current and declared future alignment with EU standards, we won't agree to anything. Us. Not them.
We should just invoke Article 16, abolish all Irish Sea checks and leave it at that if the EU don't compromise. Article 16 applies so we would not be breaking international law. The EU wouldn't be getting what they want and the only way for them then to get "integrity" is either to reach a satisfactory compromise, or erect the border themselves, which is what the choice should have always been had May not been so weak and Boris not inherited May's mess.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Since the mid 80s (ever since the Anglo-Irish Agreement) the Taoiseach's Gardaí security detail has been supplemented by ex British military personnel. There was only ever one caveat, no ex parachute regiment.
But nobody likes to talk about it, but it is one of the reasons why British troops parading in Dublin for Ian Malone's funeral in 2003 went so unremarked and without incident.
Northern Ireland is a complex issue and cannot be written off with simplistic platitudes. Interesting how people who have banged on about how democracy should not be ignored on their one-off marginal "victory" on Brexit can be so slap dash about people in NI because they don't like their accents.
The Irish position in the negotiations has been a foreign policy failure. The hardline approavh didnt stop Brexit and only sets Ireland up as a patsy in the next round of haggling.
Any attempt to scap the Senedd will see the end of the conservatives in Wales
Also show me where any conservative candidate has affirmed their desire to end devolution
We have no reason to agree to future alignment. There's no need for that for declarations, nor is there a need for that for equivalence. So the EU could rely on either declarations or equivalence, not alignment. Until then we should walk away and invoke A16.
Brazil, infinite......
https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1379902486002143237
Classic Northern Irish Fudge.
People who born/grew up in Sheffield and attended Oxbridge are ghastly, ghastly people.
I really should do some work!
Wales would return to just being part of Westminster and Welsh voters would have voted for that
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We already have Brexit, so no forced choice is needed and Boris can now focus on banning a legal indyref2 and ignoring Sturgeon, who as the previous thread showed 73% of Tory voters despise
Northern Ireland is a huge drain on our economy and politics and gives us nothing in return. The Republicans actively want to sabotage the country, and the Unionists would have landed us with Corbyn in 2017 if we hadn't bribed them. So we're much better off without them.
We in the West need to get our own populations vaccinated as soon as possible, then do everything we can to help out the rest of the world - including vaccines, medical staff, equipment and supplies.
Keith Malone is a friend of mine.
can we ditch that too ?