Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The haters outnumber the lovers, don't they?
The problem you have is the lovers exceed 40% and that's not the case for any other party.
Yep, that is why the Tories should be favourites to win the next GE. However, as Theresa May showed in 2017, 40% of the vote does not guarantee a majority.
Yes, they should. But they aren't - NOM is. And that's why I post these ratings and graphs all the time - in mid term, with an 80 seat majority, ahead in the polls, with a leader that consistently beats the LotO on ratings, it is almost unthinkable for the Govt to lose so many seats as to lose their majority. Labour have performed worse in every English by election since Sir Keir took over than they ever had in that constituency before. Every indicator is good for the Tories and bad for Labour
So CON MAJ is a great bet at 11/8-6/4, should be well odds on
Yep, I find it bizarre that the Tories are not big favourites. As you say, they should be.
It's tantamount to a bet on whether the UK economy and household finances will be better in 2 years' time, or worse. Suggests punters are expecting worse to come, rather than this being the nadir.
I still think the Tories should be big favourites: like the SNP they have the electoral logic of a major cultural divide in their favour (united on one side, fractured on the other), and they have the track record of winning.
It's tantamount to a bet on whether the UK economy and household finances will be better in 2 years' time, or worse AND that Labour look to have answers as to what to do better.
No sign of that yet. Tick tock, as others might say.
Glenn Bluff @BluffGlenn Rail usage down due to pandemic. Donny could become a major commuter town to London, Sheffield and Leeds but we need to address ticket prices. To build back better we need cheaper tickets from Doncaster. London is 1hr 26 mins away so is doable but not at £13288 for season ticket
That's a Tory councillor in Doncaster. Does this suggest that levelling up = turn the country into London commuter belt?
Well that's what HS2 will do, turn Brum into a suburb of London/
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
I was going to say....
I think it is more that the various parties have realised that imposing solutions in NI will hit the stop of the locals simply not doing what they are told.
From what I heard it went like this -
EU - Make the locals stop threatening our people, and cooperate with the process. London - What makes you think we control them? EU - ????!!!!!!????!!!!
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The black swans are already hatching.
That's the Christmas turkeys which are going to be in plentiful supply.
Indeed, plenty of black swans for Christmas lunch.
A good friend of mine might have had a turkey which might have proven to be a swan obtained from a slightly dodgy source who subsequently got into some difficulties with the law last year. His mother said it was the best turkey she'd ever eaten!
That reminds me of the joke where Stevie Wonder says "Its the best book I've ever read!"
It is an ableist joke though, so I don't want to offend anyone by repeating it. Even though they.. no, I wont go there
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
So the UK holds all the cards.
The EU have been playing a game of chicken with NI for years. May and Robbins blinked which was a disaster and led to the backstop. Front and Johnson aren't which led to Article 16 and a new negotiation.
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
That's what Labour thought in 1992, but it didn't turn out that way. I don't think the electorate are going to be ready to trust Labour at the next election, regardless of how bad things get.
In this respect Cameron was much further ahead in rebuilding trust in himself, and his wider shadow cabinet, than Starmer is.
The best Starmer can do would be a Kinnock/Howard job of leaving the Opposition in a better state than he found it.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Do you and those liking this really believe this? It's just utterly laughable.
You can think Boris is an utter incompetant prat without having to fictiously create a prince across the water. It's plain as a pike staff the EU only cared about NI as a negotiating tactic, their behaviour since has been transparent.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Yet, their "adult in the room" is Ursula von der Leyen. You know, the one that understands the peace process so well, she put a fucking hard border across Ireland. For an hour. Until, er, some adults entered the room in Brussels....
Glenn Bluff @BluffGlenn Rail usage down due to pandemic. Donny could become a major commuter town to London, Sheffield and Leeds but we need to address ticket prices. To build back better we need cheaper tickets from Doncaster. London is 1hr 26 mins away so is doable but not at £13288 for season ticket
That's a Tory councillor in Doncaster. Does this suggest that levelling up = turn the country into London commuter belt?
If people with six-figure salaries are going to be going to London only one day a week, then it’s unsurprising that a councillor in Doncaster wants them choosing to live and spend their money in Doncaster.
Personally I’d choose Devon or Rutland, but then I’m not a councillor in Doncaster!
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The haters outnumber the lovers, don't they?
They're just louder because they haven't got their own way for once
Could be. Or it could be that BJ is a hugely divisive figure.
Only Blair was rated better at this stage of his premiership than Boris is currently, and only Jezza, Foot and IDS were rated worse than Sir Keir at this stage of his role as LotO
Yes. A bet on Boris looks good at this stage, but bear in mind it's a bet against Events happening in the next two years and the thing is, since 2016 Events have happened thick and fast. Think back to summer 2013 or 14 was it, when PB went quiet for half hours on end, and Plato would pop up and post *tumbleweed*, or the site would discuss vegetable growing for thread after thread. I am not betting that the age of Events is now behind us.
Yes, of course there is a bet against events happening in the next two years. That is why the price on the Tories is 11/8ish, because the market, in my opinion, seems to have overstated the chance of things blowing up in the Tories faces. They should have blown up by now with all thats gone on since the start of 2020
That said, I am only saying an 11/8 shot should be more like 1/2. It still has a pretty big chance of getting chinned, I just think its a good bet
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The black swans are already hatching.
That's the Christmas turkeys which are going to be in plentiful supply.
Indeed, plenty of black swans for Christmas lunch.
A good friend of mine might have had a turkey which might have proven to be a swan obtained from a slightly dodgy source who subsequently got into some difficulties with the law last year. His mother said it was the best turkey she'd ever eaten!
That reminds me of the joke where Stevie Wonder says "Its the best book I've ever read!"
It is an ableist joke though, so I don't want to offend anyone by repeating it. Even though they.. no, I wont go there
Kinda depends on the erroneous & simple minded notion that blind people can't read, no?
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
Economy not exactly doing great now (and hasn't been since pre financial crisis frankly). Tories still seem to win.
It might be that this latest version of longterm economic plan will unravel the Tory coalition but I'm not holding my breath.
Cheap borrowing was the key. If and when that changes the narrative changes.
@MikeSmithson 25 January 2008 Ken is 0.7-1 according to your thread header. That's odds-on favourite is it not?
26 February 2008: "In the betting Ken continues to be the odds on favourite but Boris’s prices has [sic] tightened. I think this race is going to be very close and Johnson remains the value bet."
22 March 2008: "The chart, using betting prices expressed as implied probabilities, shows the dramatic changes there have been in the London Mayoral race betting over the past week. Last Saturday the Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, was the marginal odds-on favourite with his Tory challenger, Boris Johnson, not far behind. Then the came the national general election polls showing a huge move to the Tories... This was followed on Monday with the first Mayoral poll of March giving Johnson a seeming unassailable 12% lead and the following day we had a further national poll from ICM suggesting that the Tory lead was getting larger."
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The black swans are already hatching.
That's the Christmas turkeys which are going to be in plentiful supply.
Indeed, plenty of black swans for Christmas lunch.
A good friend of mine might have had a turkey which might have proven to be a swan obtained from a slightly dodgy source who subsequently got into some difficulties with the law last year. His mother said it was the best turkey she'd ever eaten!
That reminds me of the joke where Stevie Wonder says "Its the best book I've ever read!"
It is an ableist joke though, so I don't want to offend anyone by repeating it. Even though they.. no, I wont go there
Kinda depends on the erroneous & simple minded idea that blind people can't read, no?
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
I was going to say....
I think it is more that the various parties have realised that imposing solutions in NI will hit the stop of the locals simply not doing what they are told.
From what I heard it went like this -
EU - Make the locals stop threatening our people, and cooperate with the process. London - What makes you think we control them? EU - ????!!!!!!????!!!!
Very fair comment. It is possible that some sort agreed situation might be found if the Stormont Executive was included in the discussions, but I would have thought that unless it is the chances of anything satisfactory emerging are negligible. Even with the Exec included they're probably not much better, to be fair!
Glenn Bluff @BluffGlenn Rail usage down due to pandemic. Donny could become a major commuter town to London, Sheffield and Leeds but we need to address ticket prices. To build back better we need cheaper tickets from Doncaster. London is 1hr 26 mins away so is doable but not at £13288 for season ticket
That's a Tory councillor in Doncaster. Does this suggest that levelling up = turn the country into London commuter belt?
If people with six-figure salaries are going to be going to London only one day a week, then it’s unsurprising that a councillor in Doncaster wants them choosing to live and spend their money in Doncaster.
Personally I’d choose Devon or Rutland, but then I’m not a councillor in Doncaster!
So why quote the season ticket price?
A friend of mine complained to me about the cost of a season ticket from Swindon to London. I said to him that I thought it was good to protect a town like Swindon that isn't just another commuter town for London.
And also, who should pay for the railways? They are expensive.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
This is the same Lord Frost who negotiated the protocol in the first place?
You guys just never learn, for over a year we've been reading blue tick twitter wankers say that the EU would never budge on the NI protocol, and yet here we are the EU has blinked first. You did this with ECJ jurisdiction in the main deal and dynamic alignment which the same blue tick wankers insisted the EU would never budge on. Yet here we are with a deal that doesn't contain dynamic alignment and doesn't have even a hint of ECJ jurisdiction.
The dynamics of the UK/EU relationship are nothing like you lot seem to want to believe with the UK unable to negotiate at all. The UK is independently a very powerful nation, now that the last vestiges of remainers have been removed from the negotiation team the agenda is very clear vs the EU having to balance 27 different agendas and now 26 of them telling Ireland to get stuffed rather than put the TCA in danger of being junked in 2024 by a newly elected Tory government with the power to water it down even further.
@MikeSmithson 25 January 2008 Ken is 0.7-1 according to your thread header. That's odds-on favourite is it not?
26 February 2008: "In the betting Ken continues to be the odds on favourite but Boris’s prices has [sic] tightened. I think this race is going to be very close and Johnson remains the value bet."
22 March 2008: "The chart, using betting prices expressed as implied probabilities, shows the dramatic changes there have been in the London Mayoral race betting over the past week. Last Saturday the Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, was the marginal odds-on favourite with his Tory challenger, Boris Johnson, not far behind. Then the came the national general election polls showing a huge move to the Tories... This was followed on Monday with the first Mayoral poll of March giving Johnson a seeming unassailable 12% lead and the following day we had a further national poll from ICM suggesting that the Tory lead was getting larger."
Precisely. So it was March 2007 when the polls changed. That was after half a year of campaigning from memory.
Boris beat Livingstone, but he beat a Livingstone who was very strong odds-on favourite at the beginning. He didn't face the discredited Nazi-quoting Livingstone we know today.
It was not quite the scale of the shock of Obama beating Clinton and becoming President that year . . . but it was still an upset from the start of the campaign.
Glenn Bluff @BluffGlenn Rail usage down due to pandemic. Donny could become a major commuter town to London, Sheffield and Leeds but we need to address ticket prices. To build back better we need cheaper tickets from Doncaster. London is 1hr 26 mins away so is doable but not at £13288 for season ticket
That's a Tory councillor in Doncaster. Does this suggest that levelling up = turn the country into London commuter belt?
If people with six-figure salaries are going to be going to London only one day a week, then it’s unsurprising that a councillor in Doncaster wants them choosing to live and spend their money in Doncaster.
Personally I’d choose Devon or Rutland, but then I’m not a councillor in Doncaster!
There is also an interesting dilemma/contradiction at work here.
If yo want people to move somewhere to live and work, it is not just a matter of having one job locally. They will want to believe that there are multiple jobs - not depend on a single company for work.
So the problem is getting a whole bunch of companies to move to an area at the same time. But getting them to move there without staff locally available is very difficult. Some attempts have been done at this before, over the year.
If you have a location that is commutable from London, then you will have lots of people moving to a cheaper location to live. Probably. Which then provides a nucleus of a skill group, so that companies might well think of offering them jobs locally, on the basis of lower pay, but no commute.
The partial WFH era doesn't make this go away - but reduces the dilemma, I think.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Whether or not that's true is hard to say - one thing we've all learned in the last few years is that the EU is less "nice" than its proponents here thought, and much stronger than its detractors assumed.
But the thing that really disturbs me is that the government seem very happy to enter into all EU bilateral relations now as if they were a proxy war, and a zero sum game. Putin has showed us the path to follow here: it means occasional short term tactical victories at the price of long term strategic decline. With this kind of bad faith strategy every victory is Pyrrhic, and ultimately reversible. And the difference between us and Russia is that they can pull it off in the short term, just about, because people are scared of them.
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
The Tories won their majority by taking seats off their erstwhile coalition partners, rather than from Labour.
Indeed. The total collapse of the LD's, particularly in the SW, and of Labour in Scotland, inverted the efficiency of votes. It is often forgotten there was a Con to Lab swing in E+W in 2015. Even as the Tories won their first majority in 23 years.
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The haters outnumber the lovers, don't they?
They're just louder because they haven't got their own way for once
Haha. Boris haters are mostly Labour supporters, who haven't won an election in 16 years. We are more than accustomed to not getting our own way, believe me!
Boris hatred seems to be most prevalent among younger demographics. The idea that they have had their way on anything much over recent years is for the fairies.
By contrast, he is most popular among older demographics who have pretty much done best out of the last decade.
Boris haters is just a colourful term for people with their head screwed on.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
... Johnson didn't even understand that a border either on the island of Ireland or between Great Britain and the island of Ireland would be problematic. Mrs May did, which is why her backstop was superior to Johnson's oven ready shambles.
@MikeSmithson 25 January 2008 Ken is 0.7-1 according to your thread header. That's odds-on favourite is it not?
26 February 2008: "In the betting Ken continues to be the odds on favourite but Boris’s prices has [sic] tightened. I think this race is going to be very close and Johnson remains the value bet."
22 March 2008: "The chart, using betting prices expressed as implied probabilities, shows the dramatic changes there have been in the London Mayoral race betting over the past week. Last Saturday the Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, was the marginal odds-on favourite with his Tory challenger, Boris Johnson, not far behind. Then the came the national general election polls showing a huge move to the Tories... This was followed on Monday with the first Mayoral poll of March giving Johnson a seeming unassailable 12% lead and the following day we had a further national poll from ICM suggesting that the Tory lead was getting larger."
Precisely. So it was March 2007 when the polls changed. That was after half a year of campaigning from memory.
Boris beat Livingstone, but he beat a Livingstone who was very strong odds-on favourite at the beginning. He didn't face the discredited Nazi-quoting Livingstone we know today.
It was not quite the scale of the shock of Obama beating Clinton and becoming President that year . . . but it was still an upset from the start of the campaign.
Yes that is far - If Ken was originally odds on fav, then Boris didn't just beat some discredited joker. He unseated he incumbent in his stronghold
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
... Johnson didn't even understand that a border either on the island of Ireland or between Great Britain and the island of Ireland would be problematic. Mrs May did, which is why her backstop was superior to Johnson's oven ready shambles.
LOL still claiming this bullshit? 😂
May's backstop had no unilateral exit. It had no Article 16. "A backstop with an exit is not a backstop" is all we kept hearing.
Boris's deal was far superior in its own right, but even if it had been no different to May's but included Article 16 that would still have been an enormous improvement.
@MikeSmithson 25 January 2008 Ken is 0.7-1 according to your thread header. That's odds-on favourite is it not?
26 February 2008: "In the betting Ken continues to be the odds on favourite but Boris’s prices has [sic] tightened. I think this race is going to be very close and Johnson remains the value bet."
22 March 2008: "The chart, using betting prices expressed as implied probabilities, shows the dramatic changes there have been in the London Mayoral race betting over the past week. Last Saturday the Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, was the marginal odds-on favourite with his Tory challenger, Boris Johnson, not far behind. Then the came the national general election polls showing a huge move to the Tories... This was followed on Monday with the first Mayoral poll of March giving Johnson a seeming unassailable 12% lead and the following day we had a further national poll from ICM suggesting that the Tory lead was getting larger."
Precisely. So it was March 2007 when the polls changed. That was after half a year of campaigning from memory.
Boris beat Livingstone, but he beat a Livingstone who was very strong odds-on favourite at the beginning. He didn't face the discredited Nazi-quoting Livingstone we know today.
It was not quite the scale of the shock of Obama beating Clinton and becoming President that year . . . but it was still an upset from the start of the campaign.
Yeah, absolutely. What really intrigues me is that Mike seems to think that Corbyn and Livingstone being "now totally discredited figures" has nothing to do with Johnson beating the latter on his own turf not once but twice, and inflicting the worst defeat since 1935 on the former. Does it make much sense the other way round?: "It is also true to say that that the two major Conservative figures Blair has defeated, Major and Hague, are now totally discredited figures. Duncan Smith might be different."
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Yet, their "adult in the room" is Ursula von der Leyen. You know, the one that understands the peace process so well, she put a fucking hard border across Ireland. For an hour. Until, er, some adults entered the room in Brussels....
I’m happy to criticize the EU for that blunder but it was rectified quickly . The issue with the UK government is they have never made any efforts to implement what they agreed to and what was waved around as the deal of the century . Either no 10 never understood what they signed upto or signed upto it knowing they were never going to honour the agreement . So they’re either stupid or acted in bad faith .
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Whether or not that's true is hard to say - one thing we've all learned in the last few years is that the EU is less "nice" than its proponents here thought, and much stronger than its detractors assumed.
But the thing that really disturbs me is that the government seem very happy to enter into all EU bilateral relations now as if they were a proxy war, and a zero sum game. Putin has showed us the path to follow here: it means occasional short term tactical victories at the price of long term strategic decline. With this kind of bad faith strategy every victory is Pyrrhic, and ultimately reversible. And the difference between us and Russia is that they can pull it off in the short term, just about, because people are scared of them.
We're doing what the EU has done since the leave vote. Take the maximalist position and wait for them to move first. Lord Frost has executed that game plan time and again since he took over and it's absolutely worked. We sit completely outside the EU, all of its structures, outside of ECJ jurisdiction, we have a completely tariff free trade deal and a fully independent foreign policy. All of those things were said to be impossible before Lord Frost took over, the deal negotiated by Theresa May was a long term sell out of British interests to avoid a bit of short term disruption at the border.
She actually invoked the Article IIRC - until there was a bit of "No, we didn't press That Button. No sir. Everyone as you were".
She actually invoked the Article without informing the Irish Government first.
Such was the EU's "concern" for the peace process. It was a powerplay, nothing more than that. A powerplay that worked versus Robbins and May but has been found wanting under Boris and Frost.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
... Johnson didn't even understand that a border either on the island of Ireland or between Great Britain and the island of Ireland would be problematic. Mrs May did, which is why her backstop was superior to Johnson's oven ready shambles.
LOL still claiming this bullshit? 😂
May's backstop had no unilateral exit. It had no Article 16. "A backstop with an exit is not a backstop" is all we kept hearing.
Boris's deal was far superior in its own right, but even if it had been no different to May's but included Article 16 that would still have been an enormous improvement.
If we’d signed up to the backstop we’d still be there, in the EU in all but name, taking their rules with no say in them. Macron would be trying to put a screw-the-British clause into every piece of EU legislation.
Imagine how screwed the Tories would be now, if Starmer had got Labour to abstain?
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
... Johnson didn't even understand that a border either on the island of Ireland or between Great Britain and the island of Ireland would be problematic. Mrs May did, which is why her backstop was superior to Johnson's oven ready shambles.
Why have you responded to my post with something utterly irrelevant. I don't care what you think about either Boris or May, and regardless of what the truth is, none of that magically makes the clowns in Brussels who triggered Article 16 the pricipled defenders of Irish peace the OP tried to paint them as.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Yet, their "adult in the room" is Ursula von der Leyen. You know, the one that understands the peace process so well, she put a fucking hard border across Ireland. For an hour. Until, er, some adults entered the room in Brussels....
I’m happy to criticize the EU for that blunder but it was rectified quickly . The issue with the UK government is they have never made any efforts to implement what they agreed to and what was waved around as the deal of the century . Either no 10 never understood what they signed upto or signed upto it knowing they were never going to honour the agreement . So they’re either stupid or acted in bad faith .
What reason do we have to implement it?
We don't want it implementing, they do. Either they implement it themselves, or a new negotiation happens that we're happy with.
They acted with realpolitik and that is what countries in the real world do.
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The haters outnumber the lovers, don't they?
They're just louder because they haven't got their own way for once
Haha. Boris haters are mostly Labour supporters, who haven't won an election in 16 years. We are more than accustomed to not getting our own way, believe me!
Boris hatred seems to be most prevalent among younger demographics. The idea that they have had their way on anything much over recent years is for the fairies.
By contrast, he is most popular among older demographics who have pretty much done best out of the last decade.
Boris haters is just a colourful term for people with their head screwed on.
I don't hate Johnson. I do believe him to be an idle, duplicitous f*****. And there is evence to back up all of those charges.
Glenn Bluff @BluffGlenn Rail usage down due to pandemic. Donny could become a major commuter town to London, Sheffield and Leeds but we need to address ticket prices. To build back better we need cheaper tickets from Doncaster. London is 1hr 26 mins away so is doable but not at £13288 for season ticket
That's a Tory councillor in Doncaster. Does this suggest that levelling up = turn the country into London commuter belt?
It may be only 90 minutes but I can't see that the passenger capacity would cut it for more than a few more people. The early trains are already busy even at those prices. I can't see it would work unless the trip was only for the odd meeting (which from my impression of the people using the service is the current usage, or at least was Before Covid).
Besides, you aren't going to want to live in the centre of Doncaster, so you need to add the time getting to the station.
What _would_ be useful rail wise is a direct link to "Robin Hood" airport. There's a line already there, and the place is underutilised.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
I was going to say....
I think it is more that the various parties have realised that imposing solutions in NI will hit the stop of the locals simply not doing what they are told.
From what I heard it went like this -
EU - Make the locals stop threatening our people, and cooperate with the process. London - What makes you think we control them? EU - ????!!!!!!????!!!!
Very fair comment. It is possible that some sort agreed situation might be found if the Stormont Executive was included in the discussions, but I would have thought that unless it is the chances of anything satisfactory emerging are negligible. Even with the Exec included they're probably not much better, to be fair!
I think the main issue was that, in London "political machine", the policy from the Good Friday agreement onwards has been "Sort out what the Republicans want. The Nationalist will follow. The Unionists can sign up. The Loyalists can go swivel."
The last point is a key to this. NI politics has change since the agreement - the "Former" Men oF Violence are in power - especially at local level. The moderates are in the dustbin - though there are some nice signs of life for Alliance.
And the "Former" Men Of Violence aren't entirely house trained. I'm not sure that the EU has dealt with people like this before - you are talking about people who have done time for torture and murder, among other things. And are not especially regretful about that.
I've often thought that Britain and France are two countries with a mutual inferiority complex. A truly peculiar, maybe unique relationship.
In my experience (went to university there, own a house there) French people spend far less time thinking about England than English people imagine. They view the USA as their cultural usurper. They are just not that into you.
The obsession with France is weird isn't it. It's definitely a one-sided affair. You don't see it in Scotland, either. Seems to be mainly a thing with posh English blokes. Maybe some cultural memory of all those aristos going to the guillotine?
And yet this is the country where an MP has proposed making French the only official language of the EU in order to get rid of the Anglo-Saxons and their world view. And which got into an almighty strop over the US-Australia-U.K. deal and made a point of saying how little it thought of Britain by not removing its ambassador
Perhaps it is not quite as one-sided as all that.
The English (or the ones on here anyway) getting aerated over what *one* French MP has proposed is decent evidence of OLB's observation. If it's two way traffic the French certainly have tons of dumbfuckery issued by individual British MPs upon which to fixate.
I remember being in meetings with the French regulator decades ago where they talked about the Anglo-Saxons with a degree of distaste and about how they did not want Anglo-Saxon financial regulation. At one financial seminar one academic tried to claim that Compliance - as a function - had been first invented by some French King in the Middle Ages.
My point is that the obsession with competing with the Anglo-Saxon world is perhaps a bit more widespread and long-standing in France than people are assuming - and in surprising places. The French may not be obsessed with the English on a day to day level but then I don't really think the English are that obsessed with the French either - even if some PB posters are.
Quite. To me it's a bit like believing exceptionalism is exceptional - that there has to be something really unique about such talk.
"The 'Archive of Tomorrow’ project will preserve 10,000 sites relating to health — both official and unofficial — and use this collection to make web archives more accessible for researchers and members of the public. Even if a contested website or webpage has been deleted, it’s possible it can still be archived through this project, so it can be included in research on the proliferation of misinformation.
Joseph Marshall adds:
'Libraries and archives have always striven to collect the stories of our times, and this is more important than ever when information is literally a matter of life and death. We will ensure a wide representation of diverse and otherwise un-collected sources. And we will tackle some thorny questions including how we can ethically capture and describe misinformation and fake news for posterity. It's our hope that a project like this will help us make sense of events of the past'"
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Yet, their "adult in the room" is Ursula von der Leyen. You know, the one that understands the peace process so well, she put a fucking hard border across Ireland. For an hour. Until, er, some adults entered the room in Brussels....
I’m happy to criticize the EU for that blunder but it was rectified quickly . The issue with the UK government is they have never made any efforts to implement what they agreed to and what was waved around as the deal of the century . Either no 10 never understood what they signed upto or signed upto it knowing they were never going to honour the agreement . So they’re either stupid or acted in bad faith .
What reason do we have to implement it?
We don't want it implementing, they do. Either they implement it themselves, or a new negotiation happens that we're happy with.
They acted with realpolitik and that is what countries in the real world do.
Indeed, they completely misunderstood the dynamics of NI and were sold on this solution by Varadker who very clearly saw it as a way to a unified Ireland. The government has got no incentive to implement the deal until the EU holds up their end of the bargain with a trusted trader scheme that covers 99% of trade. They chose not to do that to try and force NI into the EU circle of trade and out of the UK circle of trade. The consequences of that were always going to be obvious with unionists taking exception to it.
Those who are demanding some masterplan from Boris are starting from the wrong place. Their perception is that we are in some form of existential crisis, well we must be because we Brexited.
The reality is rather more complicated. What we have is record employment, a country that is generating jobs faster than we can fill them and a need to think about how the available labour is better utilised. We have enjoyed a sudden burst of growth triggered by the end of lockdown and some distribution problems as a result. We also have long term problems which Boris did, in fairness, talk about yesterday: the shortage of skills, the dependence on cheap labour, the lack of aspiration in some areas and the waste of talent as a result. He could also have talked about our lack of investment (although Rishi is trying to improve that), saving and excess consumption.
I don't think this needs a masterplan or even a vision. It needs us to keep buggering on for quite a while addressing problems as they arise and trying to gradually improve things. That is what we will get from Boris (along with the odd daft idea or white elephant) and it should in fact do us fine.
Great post, as i have said before for someone who left school in the early 80s when unemployment was 3 million, to have one of the major current issues as too many jobs is quite hard to comprehend.
So here's a question for you:
My not-at-all academic daughter needs to look at universities. She's not sure she wants to go but we have to look anyway in case. If she does go she will study Fine Art. 1 year Foundation Course and the 3 years degree. Will consign her to a 9% income tax obligation on future incomes over £25k (or whatever) for 30 years as per Student Loan rules (she will never pay it off). Plus other costs of living away. plus she will also lose four years earnings in studying for this degree which is pretty much non-income enhancing I would suggest. The reasons for going to university would be non-financial.
The alternative to university is a job probably on minimum wage. Probably in hospitality.
What should she do?
'Not at all academic' may mean not particularly high in cognitive aptitude, or may mean not interested in academia. They are different.
If the first, Fine Arts is great if you are brilliant at it, because there are people in arts, music etc who don't pass exams much but are differently gifted. With the very gifted you don't have to enquire, you know already if they are that class of people. Lucky ones.
If not interested in academia, then avoid. Debt for something you neither enjoy or want is not great.
But in the end your daughter should do exactly as she likes, weighing up all the facts. That's what modern daughters do anyway. And quite right too.
I agree. I'm just trying to give her all the facts. Trouble is she doesn't know her own mind and is struggling to give adequate weight to the enduring effects of Student Loan repayments.
One of the attractions of university can be the sense that it puts off a real decision for three years, which can be very attractive for those unsure what to do.
She's more likely to have an idea of what she wants to do in three years time if she spends that time working than at university.
That's probably true, and you can always go back later if you do decide to go the Uni route.
Putting it off pretty much describes my approach, but then I'm passive. Really I'd have like to have been a historian, but I don't quite have the drive or aptitutde to make a go of it as I'd have to put a lot more effort into life in general.
So everyone now agrees that Boris and Frosty's Brexit deal is unworkable, obviously in many aspects but in relation to Northern Ireland in particular. What a bugger's muddle. I suppose 'back to the drawing board' is better than sticking with the current dangerous impasse, but it reduces 'Got Brexit Done' to a hollow mockery. Will this ever end?
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Yet, their "adult in the room" is Ursula von der Leyen. You know, the one that understands the peace process so well, she put a fucking hard border across Ireland. For an hour. Until, er, some adults entered the room in Brussels....
I’m happy to criticize the EU for that blunder but it was rectified quickly . The issue with the UK government is they have never made any efforts to implement what they agreed to and what was waved around as the deal of the century . Either no 10 never understood what they signed upto or signed upto it knowing they were never going to honour the agreement . So they’re either stupid or acted in bad faith .
What reason do we have to implement it?
We don't want it implementing, they do. Either they implement it themselves, or a new negotiation happens that we're happy with.
They acted with realpolitik and that is what countries in the real world do.
Indeed, they completely misunderstood the dynamics of NI and were sold on this solution by Varadker who very clearly saw it as a way to a unified Ireland. The government has got no incentive to implement the deal until the EU holds up their end of the bargain with a trusted trader scheme that covers 99% of trade. They chose not to do that to try and force NI into the EU circle of trade and out of the UK circle of trade. The consequences of that were always going to be obvious with unionists taking exception to it.
On the other hand implementing a scheme a year late is job done, now logistics are realigned to go France / Dublin rather than via Wales.
The suspicion is the UK government will only accept an agreement that renders the protocol so ineffective that the EU could never agree to it. Unionists want effectively no consequences of Brexit and will only stop moaning if they get everything they want .
So everyone now agrees that Boris and Frosty's Brexit deal is unworkable, obviously in many aspects but in relation to Northern Ireland in particular. What a bugger's muddle. I suppose 'back to the drawing board' is better than sticking with the current dangerous impasse, but it reduces 'Got Brexit Done' into a hollow mockery. Will this ever end?
The EU buckle and are to put new proposal's forward and you say it is mockery
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The haters outnumber the lovers, don't they?
They're just louder because they haven't got their own way for once
Haha. Boris haters are mostly Labour supporters, who haven't won an election in 16 years. We are more than accustomed to not getting our own way, believe me!
Boris hatred seems to be most prevalent among younger demographics. The idea that they have had their way on anything much over recent years is for the fairies.
By contrast, he is most popular among older demographics who have pretty much done best out of the last decade.
Boris haters is just a colourful term for people with their head screwed on.
I don't hate Johnson. I do believe him to be an idle, duplicitous f*****. And there is evence to back up all of those charges.
Same here. The right phrase would be "the fact that Boris Johnson is PM haters".
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
Yeah, they demonstrated their deep understanding of, and commitment to, Northern Ireland when they tried to exercise Article 16 on a stroppy whim. Titans.
... Johnson didn't even understand that a border either on the island of Ireland or between Great Britain and the island of Ireland would be problematic. Mrs May did, which is why her backstop was superior to Johnson's oven ready shambles.
Why have you responded to my post with something utterly irrelevant. I don't care what you think about either Boris or May, and regardless of what the truth is, none of that magically makes the clowns in Brussels who triggered Article 16 the pricipled defenders of Irish peace the OP tried to paint them as.
Something that was quickly rescinded and the Spanish Foreign Minister claimed was an "accident" and a "mishap". Don't forget Johnson threatened to invoke Article 16 in January.
Brussels has knocked back French demands to hit the UK with tariffs and cut off British access to EU energy supplies in the row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
Other EU capitals told Paris to dial down the rhetoric until a full investigation into the dispute was carried out, it has emerged.
A senior EU diplomat said: “Once again France is instrumentalising the EU for national interests.”
Yougov this morning though still sees the Conservatives with a clear lead on 39% to 31% for Labour. Boris would win a comfortable majority again on those numbers.
The Cons. seem stuck on circa 40% with little suggestion of decline. I do not believe Labour on 31%. If there was an election today 40 plays 35 looks likely to me.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Yet, their "adult in the room" is Ursula von der Leyen. You know, the one that understands the peace process so well, she put a fucking hard border across Ireland. For an hour. Until, er, some adults entered the room in Brussels....
I’m happy to criticize the EU for that blunder but it was rectified quickly .
That does certainly count as mitigation, but I don't think people can be blamed for noting that the action very much shows the rhetoric from the EU on that whole area was, at a pinch point, just so much words. Many many people must have discussed the action at high level and none saw an issue with it apparently, until it blew up in their faces.
It doesn't make sins on the UK side disappear or even, as an argument, equal, but it does show that a lot of the high minded justifications for things were, in fact, a lot more transactional than pretended.
And in truth that is the case with everyone, more or less, so it'd be nice if they all spared us the bullshit.
Lord Frost really is very good at his job, isn't he?
No. The EU are just more conscious of how easily NI could unravel than either Frost or Johnson are. That is something the EU are keen to avoid.
So what you're saying is that we hold all the cards?
I said all along if we were more willing than them to let it unravel, they'd back down.
The EU is dealing with a government that doesn’t care if NI implodes as long as they can deflect the blame onto the EU . The EU genuinely cares for the peace process and realizes that it’s dealing with a clown in no 10 so needs to be the adult in the room.
Yet, their "adult in the room" is Ursula von der Leyen. You know, the one that understands the peace process so well, she put a fucking hard border across Ireland. For an hour. Until, er, some adults entered the room in Brussels....
I’m happy to criticize the EU for that blunder but it was rectified quickly . The issue with the UK government is they have never made any efforts to implement what they agreed to and what was waved around as the deal of the century . Either no 10 never understood what they signed upto or signed upto it knowing they were never going to honour the agreement . So they’re either stupid or acted in bad faith .
What reason do we have to implement it?
We don't want it implementing, they do. Either they implement it themselves, or a new negotiation happens that we're happy with.
They acted with realpolitik and that is what countries in the real world do.
Indeed, they completely misunderstood the dynamics of NI and were sold on this solution by Varadker who very clearly saw it as a way to a unified Ireland. The government has got no incentive to implement the deal until the EU holds up their end of the bargain with a trusted trader scheme that covers 99% of trade. They chose not to do that to try and force NI into the EU circle of trade and out of the UK circle of trade. The consequences of that were always going to be obvious with unionists taking exception to it.
On the other hand implementing a scheme a year late is job done, now logistics are realigned to go France / Dublin rather than via Wales.
Nothing is forever, people in NI will want their Sainsbury's to have the same products as what they get in GB and once it becomes easy to do that Sainsbury's will switch their supply chains over.
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The haters outnumber the lovers, don't they?
They're just louder because they haven't got their own way for once
Haha. Boris haters are mostly Labour supporters, who haven't won an election in 16 years. We are more than accustomed to not getting our own way, believe me!
Boris hatred seems to be most prevalent among younger demographics. The idea that they have had their way on anything much over recent years is for the fairies.
By contrast, he is most popular among older demographics who have pretty much done best out of the last decade.
Boris haters is just a colourful term for people with their head screwed on.
Hate in politics should be reserved for people like Hitler or Saddam Hussein.
The suspicion is the UK government will only accept an agreement that renders the protocol so ineffective that the EU could never agree to it. Unionists want effectively no consequences of Brexit and will only stop moaning if they get everything they want .
Why can you not accept the EU has buckled under pressure and yes, Frost is right to seek his objectives
Why are EU supporters blind to the adverse actions of UVDL and others or do they look on the EU as some omnipotent presence
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
The Tories won their majority by taking seats off their erstwhile coalition partners, rather than from Labour.
Indeed. The total collapse of the LD's, particularly in the SW, and of Labour in Scotland, inverted the efficiency of votes. It is often forgotten there was a Con to Lab swing in E+W in 2015. Even as the Tories won their first majority in 23 years.
It's not torturing the data too much to say that the government majority fell at the 2015 election. The coalition (C + LD) went from 363 to 338. The genius of the Conservative ground game was to ensure that the pain was felt by the Lib Dems.
Governments that have to take money off their supporters (e.g. Lib Dems and students) lose.
Brussels has knocked back French demands to hit the UK with tariffs and cut off British access to EU energy supplies in the row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
Other EU capitals told Paris to dial down the rhetoric until a full investigation into the dispute was carried out, it has emerged.
A senior EU diplomat said: “Once again France is instrumentalising the EU for national interests.”
So everyone now agrees that Boris and Frosty's Brexit deal is unworkable, obviously in many aspects but in relation to Northern Ireland in particular. What a bugger's muddle. I suppose 'back to the drawing board' is better than sticking with the current dangerous impasse, but it reduces 'Got Brexit Done' into a hollow mockery. Will this ever end?
The EU buckle and are to put new proposal's forward and you say it is mockery
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
So you agree that Boris and Frosty's deal was utterly inadequate and needs shredding?
Brussels has knocked back French demands to hit the UK with tariffs and cut off British access to EU energy supplies in the row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
Other EU capitals told Paris to dial down the rhetoric until a full investigation into the dispute was carried out, it has emerged.
A senior EU diplomat said: “Once again France is instrumentalising the EU for national interests.”
The betting markets haven't shown themselves to be good guides recently and I'm not sure they've got this one right either.
However, I think I would state the following fairly confidently
1. It is extremely unlikely that Boris Johnson will increase his majority
2. It is exceptionally unlikely that Labour will win an outright majority
There are therefore two plausible scenarios:
3. Hung parliament
or
4. A reduced tory majority
I still think 4. is the most likely outcome and I'm thinking along the lines of 1992
“1992” is the most likely outcome on the scale, probably 60% chance.
I’d put a Hung Parliament at 30%, increased majority at 8% and Lab Majority at 2%.
I’d also suggest October 2023 for Election Day, so two years from now. They won’t go long if they can avoid it, but also don’t want to go before the new boundaries are in place.
The suspicion is the UK government will only accept an agreement that renders the protocol so ineffective that the EU could never agree to it. Unionists want effectively no consequences of Brexit and will only stop moaning if they get everything they want .
You've actually got this one right.
And keeping Unionists happy is every bit as important as keeping Republicans happy. So that's what is needed if you care for peace.
Hate in politics should be reserved for people like Hitler or Saddam Hussein.
It has no place in a democracy.
What about people who try and suspend democracy by illegally proroguing Parliament?
I disapproved of the proroguing but it was not illegal when it was done. It was ruled to be illegal and the government immediately listened to the ruling of the court. That is fully consistent with the rule of law. Besides, it wasn't like trying to overrule a democratic vote because the plebs voted the wrong way.
I agree on the former. Can't comment on the latter. References needed.
Hung Parliament is nothing like 40%.
Probably not even 25%.
I'd say 20% increased Tory majority. 20% comfortable Tory majority 35% a small Tory majority 20% Hung Parliament 5% Labour majority
Though that might be being generous to Labour.
There is tremendous variability in opinion as to what the right probabilities are. I am nowhere close to PT's view, except about a Labour majority, which relies upon unknown eventualities. But a 75% probability that the Tories won't lose 40 seats? No. Labour win 30. LD win 10. SNP win 3. That is easily likely.
The gap between that and Labour gaining 125 in immense. One is likely, the other virtually impossible.
It is level pegging between Tory 326+ seats and NOM.
So everyone now agrees that Boris and Frosty's Brexit deal is unworkable, obviously in many aspects but in relation to Northern Ireland in particular. What a bugger's muddle. I suppose 'back to the drawing board' is better than sticking with the current dangerous impasse, but it reduces 'Got Brexit Done' into a hollow mockery. Will this ever end?
The EU buckle and are to put new proposal's forward and you say it is mockery
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
So you agree that Boris and Frosty's deal was utterly inadequate and needs shredding?
Quite the opposite. Lord Frost negotiating Article 16 which could then be threatened to be invoked by Lord Frost was a negotiating masterclass.
So everyone now agrees that Boris and Frosty's Brexit deal is unworkable, obviously in many aspects but in relation to Northern Ireland in particular. What a bugger's muddle. I suppose 'back to the drawing board' is better than sticking with the current dangerous impasse, but it reduces 'Got Brexit Done' into a hollow mockery. Will this ever end?
The EU buckle and are to put new proposal's forward and you say it is mockery
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
Again, we do not know that the EU have buckled. We haven't seen their proposal have we? If as Philip demands they allow unfettered trade of goods and people between the EU and GB without checks then yes they have buckled. If however they are revisiting the "places to put the border" discussion then they haven't buckled.
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
Frost said the last deal was sensible.
Obviously the man has no clue what a good deal looks like.
You are hardly an independent voice on these matters, and it must be hard for you seeing Frost run rings round UVDL and now the EU putting France in her place
The EU is finally realising the UK is an independent country and they have to deal with us on that basis
However, as you said sometime ago it is your life's work to reverse Brexit so I hope you live for a very long time
Miliband was beating Cameron on Both Net Satisfaction & Gross Positives, whilst Labour led on VI mid term. The Tories went from coalition partners to outright majority at the following GE.
And PB said NOM was buying money at odds on
Dark Blue Cam GP lead Light Blue Cam Net Sat lead Red Con VI lead
Mid term means jack- shit if Johnson loses control of the economy over the next two years, which seems highly plausible to me.
If, maybes, black swans, & "this time it will be different" is all the haters have
The haters outnumber the lovers, don't they?
They're just louder because they haven't got their own way for once
Haha. Boris haters are mostly Labour supporters, who haven't won an election in 16 years. We are more than accustomed to not getting our own way, believe me!
Boris hatred seems to be most prevalent among younger demographics. The idea that they have had their way on anything much over recent years is for the fairies.
By contrast, he is most popular among older demographics who have pretty much done best out of the last decade.
Boris haters is just a colourful term for people with their head screwed on.
It's a range. Identifying those for whom it hall all gone a bit too far is a bit like pornography - hard to define, but you know it when you see it.
Brussels has knocked back French demands to hit the UK with tariffs and cut off British access to EU energy supplies in the row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
Other EU capitals told Paris to dial down the rhetoric until a full investigation into the dispute was carried out, it has emerged.
A senior EU diplomat said: “Once again France is instrumentalising the EU for national interests.”
The EU doesn't understand that that's the whole point of the EU, at least according to the French.
Given that the French are coming to the realisation that it isn't, how much more likely does Frexit become? They've already got the sovereignists among their senior political ranks like Barnier calling for repatriation of sovereignty and judicial independence from the ECJ. If the EU no longer bends to France's will on foreign policy and instead follows the German lead it won't be long until France wants out. It has always had a redline of being in charge of its own destiny, being tied to Germany's agenda will be a long term gain for the Frexit argument.
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
Frost said the last deal was sensible.
Obviously the man has no clue what a good deal looks like.
It was sensible.
It included Article 16 that Frost could use himself to get a better deal.
The man is a negotiating god. People should in future study the respective negotiations for Robbins and Frost for a masterclass in how you don't, then how you do, achieve your objectives.
I think it’s foolish to attempt to predict the next election this far out.
The one prediction I’m prepared to make is, more likely than not, labour will be ahead in the polls by May’22, due to the cost of living crisis coming down the tracks. Beyond that, who knows.
Another Thursday with no Conservative defence in local by-elections. Instead it is the Lib Dems on the defensive - in Rushcliffe, Somerset, Somerset West and Taunton, and the famous Waverley. Labour is defending two in Nottingham and there is an Ind defence in Flintshire.
It's a law firm in central Newcastle. Exactly how many Eco things relating to the firm is there to actually deal with.
One reason why these committees end up spending hours on little things is because they have no say over anything big.
Yes, the amount of times you see something like 'We must do something about X' which really just amounts to 'We should talk about how we don't like X, not that we can do anything' is incalculable and immensely tedious. Save it for an after work hobby.
Hopefully some agreement can be reached on NI but the EU won’t propose changes that fundamentally change the protocol.
The UK government has never made a proper effort to implement what they signed up to and there’s very little goodwill left as the EU don’t trust them to honour any agreement that is made .
I find it amusing that pro-EU supporters are very keen to admonish the UK and criticise them for not honouring agreements and that the “EU follow a legalistic and correct approach” and yet turn a blind eye to the live situation of French fisherman potentially causing huge fall-out between the UK v France:EU.
French fishers were told they needed to prove they had fished in Jersey waters for a certain historic period in order to get their licences renewed. A totally fair and balanced approach which surely a legalistic entity would support.
Unfortunately it turns out that a large number of French boats cannot prove this and so no licences - cue France spitting out their dummy.
Now perhaps it would be interesting if people asked why these French fishers cannot prove it? Could it be that they deliberately didn’t keep records and log their activities to cover their over-fishing in other waters….?
The thing is that the French and EU are all very keen on the letter of the law being applied rigidly when it suits but when not it’s toys out of pram time.
I’m assuming the French would hand out licences to North African fishermen in their Mediterranean waters on the simple say-so of the fishermen that they have been fishing there for years…..
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
Frost said the last deal was sensible.
Obviously the man has no clue what a good deal looks like.
Anywhere other than in Boris-world, Frosty would have been given his P45 long ago. Northern Ireland was a critical consideration and the EU, rightly but mistakenly, would have thought that a British negotiator had his finger firmly and unwaveringly on that particular pulse. They were naïve on that score. That the EU now feels it necessary to step in and clean up Frosty's mess is as big a source of embarrassment as it is alarm.
So everyone now agrees that Boris and Frosty's Brexit deal is unworkable, obviously in many aspects but in relation to Northern Ireland in particular. What a bugger's muddle. I suppose 'back to the drawing board' is better than sticking with the current dangerous impasse, but it reduces 'Got Brexit Done' into a hollow mockery. Will this ever end?
The EU buckle and are to put new proposal's forward and you say it is mockery
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
So you agree that Boris and Frosty's deal was utterly inadequate and needs shredding?
I really have no issue with changing any deal that does not work out as intended and the fact the EU are coming to the table indicates their agreement to it was also suspect
Time to move on and wish both sides success in addressing the issues
I've often thought that Britain and France are two countries with a mutual inferiority complex. A truly peculiar, maybe unique relationship.
In my experience (went to university there, own a house there) French people spend far less time thinking about England than English people imagine. They view the USA as their cultural usurper. They are just not that into you.
The obsession with France is weird isn't it. It's definitely a one-sided affair. You don't see it in Scotland, either. Seems to be mainly a thing with posh English blokes. Maybe some cultural memory of all those aristos going to the guillotine?
And yet this is the country where an MP has proposed making French the only official language of the EU in order to get rid of the Anglo-Saxons and their world view. And which got into an almighty strop over the US-Australia-U.K. deal and made a point of saying how little it thought of Britain by not removing its ambassador
Perhaps it is not quite as one-sided as all that.
The English (or the ones on here anyway) getting aerated over what *one* French MP has proposed is decent evidence of OLB's observation. If it's two way traffic the French certainly have tons of dumbfuckery issued by individual British MPs upon which to fixate.
I remember being in meetings with the French regulator decades ago where they talked about the Anglo-Saxons with a degree of distaste and about how they did not want Anglo-Saxon financial regulation. At one financial seminar one academic tried to claim that Compliance - as a function - had been first invented by some French King in the Middle Ages.
My point is that the obsession with competing with the Anglo-Saxon world is perhaps a bit more widespread and long-standing in France than people are assuming - and in surprising places. The French may not be obsessed with the English on a day to day level but then I don't really think the English are that obsessed with the French either - even if some PB posters are.
Quite. To me it's a bit like believing exceptionalism is exceptional - that there has to be something really unique about such talk.
I find the use of the term "Anglo-Saxon" by the French (including government) sources pretty distasteful. It is clearly meant as an ethnic pejorative, otherwise why not just use the term "English speaking"? And thus it is very disrespectful to the large non-English ethnicities in all of the countries. The USA is only a small minority ethnically English. Australia has as much Irish roots as it does English. Even the UK must have 25%+ of its population be Celtic, Jewish, African, Asian or other in its demographics.
The suspicion is the UK government will only accept an agreement that renders the protocol so ineffective that the EU could never agree to it. Unionists want effectively no consequences of Brexit and will only stop moaning if they get everything they want .
You've actually got this one right.
And keeping Unionists happy is every bit as important as keeping Republicans happy. So that's what is needed if you care for peace.
This is what the EU has spectacularly failed to take into account. Both sides need to be kept on board and the UK was never going to agree to staying in the Customs Union or be in a customs union with the EU. Any solution had to have all three of these points satisfied or live with the fallout of no deal Brexit on the whole EU. By including A16 Frost played an absolute blinder just as he did over governance and shifting from dynamic regulatory alignment to the TCA minimum regulatory standards with arbitrator set tariffs for regulatory dilution.
Comments
No sign of that yet. Tick tock, as others might say.
I think it is more that the various parties have realised that imposing solutions in NI will hit the stop of the locals simply not doing what they are told.
From what I heard it went like this -
EU - Make the locals stop threatening our people, and cooperate with the process.
London - What makes you think we control them?
EU - ????!!!!!!????!!!!
It is an ableist joke though, so I don't want to offend anyone by repeating it. Even though they.. no, I wont go there
The EU have been playing a game of chicken with NI for years. May and Robbins blinked which was a disaster and led to the backstop. Front and Johnson aren't which led to Article 16 and a new negotiation.
In this respect Cameron was much further ahead in rebuilding trust in himself, and his wider shadow cabinet, than Starmer is.
The best Starmer can do would be a Kinnock/Howard job of leaving the Opposition in a better state than he found it.
You can think Boris is an utter incompetant prat without having to fictiously create a prince across the water. It's plain as a pike staff the EU only cared about NI as a negotiating tactic, their behaviour since has been transparent.
Personally I’d choose Devon or Rutland, but then I’m not a councillor in Doncaster!
22 March 2008: "The chart, using betting prices expressed as implied probabilities, shows the dramatic changes there have been in the London Mayoral race betting over the past week. Last Saturday the Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, was the marginal odds-on favourite with his Tory challenger, Boris Johnson, not far behind. Then the came the national general election polls showing a huge move to the Tories... This was followed on Monday with the first Mayoral poll of March giving Johnson a seeming unassailable 12% lead and the following day we had a further national poll from ICM suggesting that the Tory lead was getting larger."
Even with the Exec included they're probably not much better, to be fair!
A friend of mine complained to me about the cost of a season ticket from Swindon to London. I said to him that I thought it was good to protect a town like Swindon that isn't just another commuter town for London.
And also, who should pay for the railways? They are expensive.
The dynamics of the UK/EU relationship are nothing like you lot seem to want to believe with the UK unable to negotiate at all. The UK is independently a very powerful nation, now that the last vestiges of remainers have been removed from the negotiation team the agenda is very clear vs the EU having to balance 27 different agendas and now 26 of them telling Ireland to get stuffed rather than put the TCA in danger of being junked in 2024 by a newly elected Tory government with the power to water it down even further.
Boris beat Livingstone, but he beat a Livingstone who was very strong odds-on favourite at the beginning. He didn't face the discredited Nazi-quoting Livingstone we know today.
It was not quite the scale of the shock of Obama beating Clinton and becoming President that year . . . but it was still an upset from the start of the campaign.
If yo want people to move somewhere to live and work, it is not just a matter of having one job locally. They will want to believe that there are multiple jobs - not depend on a single company for work.
So the problem is getting a whole bunch of companies to move to an area at the same time. But getting them to move there without staff locally available is very difficult. Some attempts have been done at this before, over the year.
If you have a location that is commutable from London, then you will have lots of people moving to a cheaper location to live. Probably. Which then provides a nucleus of a skill group, so that companies might well think of offering them jobs locally, on the basis of lower pay, but no commute.
The partial WFH era doesn't make this go away - but reduces the dilemma, I think.
But the thing that really disturbs me is that the government seem very happy to enter into all EU bilateral relations now as if they were a proxy war, and a zero sum game. Putin has showed us the path to follow here: it means occasional short term tactical victories at the price of long term strategic decline. With this kind of bad faith strategy every victory is Pyrrhic, and ultimately reversible. And the difference between us and Russia is that they can pull it off in the short term, just about, because people are scared of them.
It is often forgotten there was a Con to Lab swing in E+W in 2015. Even as the Tories won their first majority in 23 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/17/eu-threatens-to-halt-covid-vaccine-exports-to-uk-unless-it-gets-fair-share?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
An airport with no planes.
A shipyard with no ships.
May's backstop had no unilateral exit. It had no Article 16. "A backstop with an exit is not a backstop" is all we kept hearing.
Boris's deal was far superior in its own right, but even if it had been no different to May's but included Article 16 that would still have been an enormous improvement.
Such was the EU's "concern" for the peace process. It was a powerplay, nothing more than that. A powerplay that worked versus Robbins and May but has been found wanting under Boris and Frost.
Imagine how screwed the Tories would be now, if Starmer had got Labour to abstain?
We don't want it implementing, they do. Either they implement it themselves, or a new negotiation happens that we're happy with.
They acted with realpolitik and that is what countries in the real world do.
I think there's a 20% chance of it happening.
Besides, you aren't going to want to live in the centre of Doncaster, so you need to add the time getting to the station.
What _would_ be useful rail wise is a direct link to "Robin Hood" airport. There's a line already there, and the place is underutilised.
The last point is a key to this. NI politics has change since the agreement - the "Former" Men oF Violence are in power - especially at local level. The moderates are in the dustbin - though there are some nice signs of life for Alliance.
And the "Former" Men Of Violence aren't entirely house trained. I'm not sure that the EU has dealt with people like this before - you are talking about people who have done time for torture and murder, among other things. And are not especially regretful about that.
https://twitter.com/JohnNeophytou/status/1446042295170703360?t=4wkWga6Q2wQ4LqzS5s40og&s=19
Morning all - historical recording of the Covid information/misinformation flux, as much discussed passim on PB.
https://www.nls.uk/news/media/health-websites-project/
"The 'Archive of Tomorrow’ project will preserve 10,000 sites relating to health — both official and unofficial — and use this collection to make web archives more accessible for researchers and members of the public. Even if a contested website or webpage has been deleted, it’s possible it can still be archived through this project, so it can be included in research on the proliferation of misinformation.
Joseph Marshall adds:
'Libraries and archives have always striven to collect the stories of our times, and this is more important than ever when information is literally a matter of life and death. We will ensure a wide representation of diverse and otherwise un-collected sources. And we will tackle some thorny questions including how we can ethically capture and describe misinformation and fake news for posterity. It's our hope that a project like this will help us make sense of events of the past'"
Putting it off pretty much describes my approach, but then I'm passive. Really I'd have like to have been a historian, but I don't quite have the drive or aptitutde to make a go of it as I'd have to put a lot more effort into life in general.
It is the determination by Frost to obtain a sensible deal
Other EU capitals told Paris to dial down the rhetoric until a full investigation into the dispute was carried out, it has emerged.
A senior EU diplomat said: “Once again France is instrumentalising the EU for national interests.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/brussels-tells-paris-back-down-095812046.html
It doesn't make sins on the UK side disappear or even, as an argument, equal, but it does show that a lot of the high minded justifications for things were, in fact, a lot more transactional than pretended.
And in truth that is the case with everyone, more or less, so it'd be nice if they all spared us the bullshit.
They’ve restarted collections now
However, I think I would state the following fairly confidently
1. It is extremely unlikely that Boris Johnson will increase his majority
2. It is exceptionally unlikely that Labour will win an outright majority
There are therefore two plausible scenarios:
3. Hung parliament
or
4. A reduced tory majority
I still think 4. is the most likely outcome and I'm thinking along the lines of 1992
Obviously the man has no clue what a good deal looks like.
It has no place in a democracy.
Why are EU supporters blind to the adverse actions of UVDL and others or do they look on the EU as some omnipotent presence
Governments that have to take money off their supporters (e.g. Lib Dems and students) lose.
I’d put a Hung Parliament at 30%, increased majority at 8% and Lab Majority at 2%.
I’d also suggest October 2023 for Election Day, so two years from now. They won’t go long if they can avoid it, but also don’t want to go before the new boundaries are in place.
Same with people who move heaven and earth to frustrate the largest democratic mandate in British history.
And keeping Unionists happy is every bit as important as keeping Republicans happy. So that's what is needed if you care for peace.
The gap between that and Labour gaining 125 in immense. One is likely, the other virtually impossible.
It is level pegging between Tory 326+ seats and NOM.
The EU is finally realising the UK is an independent country and they have to deal with us on that basis
However, as you said sometime ago it is your life's work to reverse Brexit so I hope you live for a very long time
It included Article 16 that Frost could use himself to get a better deal.
The man is a negotiating god. People should in future study the respective negotiations for Robbins and Frost for a masterclass in how you don't, then how you do, achieve your objectives.
The one prediction I’m prepared to make is, more likely than not, labour will be ahead in the polls by May’22, due to the cost of living crisis coming down the tracks. Beyond that, who knows.
French fishers were told they needed to prove they had fished in Jersey waters for a certain historic period in order to get their licences renewed. A totally fair and balanced approach which surely a legalistic entity would support.
Unfortunately it turns out that a large number of French boats cannot prove this and so no licences - cue France spitting out their dummy.
Now perhaps it would be interesting if people asked why these French fishers cannot prove it? Could it be that they deliberately didn’t keep records and log their activities to cover their over-fishing in other waters….?
The thing is that the French and EU are all very keen on the letter of the law being applied rigidly when it suits but when not it’s toys out of pram time.
I’m assuming the French would hand out licences to North African fishermen in their Mediterranean waters on the simple say-so of the fishermen that they have been fishing there for years…..
Time to move on and wish both sides success in addressing the issues