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If you think Brexit is going very well then you’re in a small minority – politicalbetting.com
If you think Brexit is going very well then you’re in a small minority – politicalbetting.com
Who thinks Brexit has been going well this year?Con voters: 39% (-12)Leave voters: 35% (-10) British public: 18% (-7)Remain voters: 5% (-3)Lab voters: 3% (-2)Changes from Jun 21, 2021https://t.co/Vc1NkmmAS0 pic.twitter.com/m80O2Itxmg
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Start with rejoining the Single Market without a referendum, that'll mitigate a lot of the damage and it's what a lot of Brexit voters thought they were getting in the first place. That's less bad electorally because it centres more on jobs and less on identity.
A referendum on rejoining will be easier to win once all the alternatives have been tried in practice.
Labour may also be able to get away with something vaguer like the traditional "renegotiate". There's a danger that the voters will be sick of the whole the whole thing and won't want the box opened, but I guess the Tories will have opened it already because of NI.
Hur hur hur.....
There have been no threads on the ghastly Rayner and that she and Starmer can't stand each other or that the Labour Party is completely split and with noone you would be comfortable with being a minister. Or that the Party is skint and has trouble paying its bills...
The last Labour thread I recall was about how great Reeves was.. if she is the beacon of light, God help us.
Anyone expecting things to go any better for the Tories this week? At least they won’t be tying themselves in knots over the definition of “Woman”, but that’s probably not enough for the party of government!
Op-eds this morning making the connection between the COP26 “Green Crap” and rising energy bills, can the PM carry (Carrie?) his own party on this?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10053155/Three-Labour-MPs-defect-Conservatives-Sir-Keir-Starmers-leadership.html
Three Labour MPs, presumably from the remnants of the Red Wall, turning up at the Tory conference this week would be one hell of a coup for the PM.
It shows a lone figure in a deep hole he has dug himself into with his bulldog. A spade leans against the wall. His dog wears a cover with "1966" on it. His shirt says something silly like "Saxe Coburg". Faces peer down from above. He adopts a defiant stance and, brandishing his fist, saying "Very well, alone."
Apologies for my ranging imagination.
If there were going to be defections, it would be over something fundamental, but even then I’m sceptical.
There’s got to be a couple of Red-Wallers who would quite like their constituencies to benefit from being able to lobby Gove and Sunak directly, and who are either planning to retire or would welcome a safe Tory seat after the boundaries go through. Defectors always get well looked after by their new party.
I’m not sure, but the one other name that kept coming up was Rosie Duffield, who was personally shat on by Starmer last week over an issue that has led to her needing to employ security. Three feminists deserting Labour over their inability to stand up for women, would be one hell of a problem for SKS.
But it's not.
This may change, but right now, British voters aren't that "bovvered".
On top of which pet owners who travel have certainly had a rude awakening as to the consequences of Brexit, as I know from another forum, and there have been extra costs and hassle for overseas second home owners, people who make extended visits to family, and people who take their cars abroad, on top of which the promise that high roaming charges wouldn’t return is proving bogus. Anyone who made it abroad this year knows there aren’t shortages in Europe.
The collapse in trade, focussed in sectors like food, will have affected businesses, livelihoods and jobs, and the wider problems for Northern Ireland are well known. And the fishermen certainly aren’t happy.
Then you add in the consequences of the step change decline in our currency, with a consequential burst of inflation, which every traveller will have noticed. The story in the news about the Americans snapping up Morrison’s while the £ is cheap is yet another consequence. And the shops and restaurants with reduced opening hours due to lack of staff.
With stories in the news about threats to our Christmas toys and turkeys, we may still be at the beginning of a gathering storm.
https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/187453/belgium-is-looking-for-5000-lorry-drivers-to-keep-shop-shelves-filled/
Ok, so that was partly caused by a strike, but there are still shortages in Europe.
What’s happened is that Brexit and Covid have brought forward a looming crisis over our supply chains. But the EU isn’t far behind.
The last Lab>Con defection was Reg Prentice - in 1977!
“Plays attacking the government are the second most boring evening out”
“What’s the most boring?”
“Plays praising the government “
No doubt HYFUD with his encyclopaedic brain for the constituency data could have a stab at guessing who meets that description.
Rejoin is dead and buried. But reorganising our post-Brexit lives so things are less hellish will increasingly become a fashionable debate. We are currently aligned with both the single market and customs union. We are not planning to become dramatically unaligned anytime soon. We remain the lead engine being pushed along the same track by the EU train, with just stubborn pretence that we are not.
With trade an increasing disaster and unfixable supply problems, reinstating the pointlessly deleted trade and standards links will be increasingly seen as the simple fix. Not because the EU are forcing us to, but because Sovereign Britain is choosing to.
"Did you know that the stupid Europeans have Our Standards? We're going to permit them to continue using them, and that means we can now drop much of the trade barriers they threw up." etc
If the story is true I assume the rationale is "if you can't beat them, join them". Because it cannot be on ideology grounds because Starmer is a Tory. So thats all the hard left frothballs out. Surely...
If Brexit really has ended the misery & pain of our depressing Christmases, that is a truly excellent point in its favour.
H&SS fits, but unlikely to be Bridget Phillipsen. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/02/constituency-voted-leave-labour-oppose-brexit-sunderland
I think the last time right was in the lead was in May when we were at the peak of our comparative vaccine rollout success.
The economic recovery post-Covid will be crucial for the Government, particularly next to our European competitors.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Those who voted Leave will, in the main, never want to change their mind on it either. Partly because few people do (see para 1) and partly because it's the only great service to history that most have them have managed.
Hence the stuckness. It will last about 20 years, I reckon. But it will stop helping the Conservatives well before that.
"Making it work" is, in many ways, a smart slogan. The tricky bit will be putting enough flesh on it to reassure "our Brexit is in peril" types and "making it work = dilution" types.
Lets assume it is Tory Brexiteers who say very badly and Tory Remainers who say badly or very badly which would give about 12-13% of Tory voters or 5% of the electorate. Given that not all the vulnerable will switch and they won't all switch to the efficient switching party, it is enough for a reduced majority but still a Tory majority.
The numbers actually need to get a fair bit worse to put the government in the danger zone. They might well get worse if the government don't plan to get ahead of events rather than react them as they seem more comfortable doing.
Also, no votes - yet - for damage limitation.
Make Brexit work is the right tactic for all opposition parties with the exception of the SNP who have a realistic path to independence and membership.
It is not a good look for a poster to come across as a Daily Mail screaming headline writer .... No toys, no trees, no pigs in blankets.
It's a real conundrum this. It's fairly clear to all but the political diehards that Brexit isn't working but that doesn't mean the corollary of seeking to rejoin will work on many levels either.
Right now the country is up the proverbial without a paddle.
If she left she’d be a loss.
There was a very interesting forum thread on Brexit yesterday in WineGB (the trade association for vine growers and wine makers). The industry has its fair share of Brexiteers - think gentleman farmers, former hedge fund types etc - and Home Counties remainers. On one side were the latter, bemoaning the lack of labour force, backlogs in agricultural equipment, parts being held up at the border and so on. The Brexiteer line was a mixture of “the issue is not Brexit per se, but the bungled way it’s been implemented” (in other words this isn’t the Brexit I voted for) and “if the remoaner parliament hadn’t tried to block it in 2019 we wouldn’t be in this mess” (that old trope, Brexit is remainers’ fault). Nobody was claiming it’s going well, nor did anyone try to imply it’s all a master plan to increase wages (though my in-laws seem suddenly to have discovered this angle. It was always about Britain being overrun by Muslims before).
On defectors, I think Rosie Duffield would go to the LDs if anywhere (but she won’t move). She’s a committed pro-European.
I cannot believe for a single minute this is anything other than mischief making,
Slight correction to this. There has been a small shift <10% from Leave to Remain and vice versa. The biggest correlation is with what people think about Brexit now. Which just emphasises my point. People's voting intentions are driven by their views on Brexit.
It’s Labour’s misfortune to have found itself in two of these situations, on Brexit and in Scotland. Until that changes, or the electoral system changes, the maths remains incredibly challenging.
Andy Burnham endorses Michael Gove as levelling up minister
I think that this poll’s predictive power and value is marginal
Sorry I wasn't clear in my earlier comment.
Politically, it's a tough sell.
Three Lab to Con switchers total and none since 1977. Four Lab to Con switchers total, the first in 1995.
It's not merely implausible its comically unlikely. And even the report is seriously weak.
Fun to speculate though, and our minds will be blown if it happened.
How come we’re too stupid to do the same?
In a year from now when the new rush of HGV drivers have made it through the system all of the visible issues with Brexit go away and the working poor will have had 8-12% wage increases due to the labour shortage.
And "dictatorship"? Has anybody - and I mean ANYBODY - said we won't have an opportunity within 3 years or so to throw the Government out in a general election if they lose the support of the country? Hyperbolic toss. We are not America.
If you are so worried, get going on an alternative set of proposals that a disillusioned country might actually row behind.
I expected much more disruption than we've had so far.
If there's any substance to the story (which I doubt), we should be looking for this parliament's version of figures like John Mann and John Woodcock (aka spouse of Isabel Hardman of the Spectator). Right-wing Labour, pro-Brexit, anti-woke is the only risk of defections that I can see. I can't think of any.
https://twitter.com/borisjohnson/status/1444574943094661123
Thanks to the vaccine roll out, we’re the most open economy in Europe, and set to have the fastest growth in the G7.
I’m thrilled that Pfizer will manufacture vaccines in the UK, bringing hundreds of jobs and helping to deliver vaccines to millions of people around the world.
They’ve already tried it with SKS demanding a recall of parliament during the conference
Just heard Andrew Bowie on R5 being "interviewed". He seems to have learned his non-answering technique from the clown. It was like trying to nail down a jelly.
I said at the time I expected disruption. I was a Remainer on this site until a few weeks before the Referendum where I became convinced that Brexit was the right thing to do despite the expected disruption.
Claiming that Brexit is the wrong thing to do because it has some disruption is like claiming getting fit is the wrong thing to do because exercise is tough.
Burnham is being sensible in wanting to engage, it’s in his interest to make sure that the projects aren’t concentrated in the Red Wall seats and the remaining few Lab-held marginals.
Which would kill any chance of your 60%.
So if it had any purpose besides mischief, I'd say it was to say to Keir 'nice conference, but you do need to start making inroads, or you lose more than the left'.
Feels like a Cummings style wheeze though.
But they can do that unofficially by making Euro membership a precondition of accession and a test of our seriousness.
Democracy eh?
Much better than PR like in Germany where the people vote, then the politicians haggle to determine what they said.
Instead we have shouting from the sidelines how terrible Brexit is but almost a fear to say that which they want most
It's not how I imagined embodying the nation but I'll take it.
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
And judging by PR systems, which I back, if they got 40% of the vote theyd probably be in power anyway. The problem you identify is of so much power whilst in government and still retaining popularity even if crap, not FPTP vs PR or another voting system. Most arguments around voting systems are proxies.