politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A post Brexit vote recession could cost the Tories the next

alex. said:

Fishing said:

CarlottaVance said:

"Vast membership fees"?

UK net annual contribution to EU = £7.1 billion
UK annual government expenditure = £772 billion

The two figures are not directly comparable, however, because one is spent outside the UK (and therefore is effectively all gone forever) while the other is spend mostly in the UK. The government gets a good part of its expenditure back in the form of, say, tax receipts on government salaries or on the profits that companies make from government procurement, while it gets basically nothing back on the net money we dish out to the EU, which is a straightforward loss.

Depends whether you think that the UK membership of the EU reduces business costs for companies that trade directly or indirectly with it and therefore increases the tax take through their profits.

... or if you think it increases them through excesive regulation and increased trade barriers with the rest of the world. My point was that focusing on one item and making a misleading comparison gives a wildly distorted pitcure of a very complicated issue, and one that can probably never be resolved finally.

Morning guys

OT but has anyone heard how JosiasJessop is doing. It is a month or so since he last posted and I know he was having health problems. Just wanted to check that he was okay.

Richard_Tyndall said:

Morning guys

OT but has anyone heard how JosiasJessop is doing. It is a month or so since he last posted and I know he was having health problems. Just wanted to check that he was okay.

I haven't seen any posts from him.

Likewise, I hope he's starting to feel better.

VapidBilge said:

SouthamObserver said:

VapidBilge said:

SouthamObserver said:

VapidBilge said:

SouthamObserver said:

If leaving the EU reduces the tax take as a consequence of reduced growth, then the money saved by not contributing to the Brussels wallet will not be additional income for the government but a small plug to mitigate a widening deficit. The only way that doesn't happen is if withdrawal has no effect on GDP.

This government's economic and fiscal plans - until recently very widely supported on here - are predicated on EU membership and high levels of immigration.

How exactly does that square with net immigration being less than 100,000 a year?

All these economic forecasts coming out (some even from HM Treasury) show that Cameron is a bare-faced liar but, more interestingly, is introducing immigration into the debate in a non-toxic way.

Vote Remain for higher housing costs, lower wages and more terrorism so that landlords, businessmen and politicians can benefit is hardly an attractive proposition.

Tory economic and fiscal policy has been very clear. It's all there in black and white. It greatly puzzles me that people who a few months ago sung its praises now believe they were lied to. But if that is the case, what are they now proposing? What new policies do they want? A longer timeframe to eliminate the deficit, higher taxes, an even bigger public spending squeeze, or what?

Was it pointed out so regularly that Tory economic policies would smash their immigration pledge?

The way to square the circle is "points-based immigration system", increasing the quality of immigrants and reducing their quantity. This is impossible while we remain in the EU.

It was clear from all the stats provided that Tory policy depended on ongoing, high levels of immigration. Whether we have a points system or not, to have a chance of hitting targets that immigration has to continue. If you want to reduce immigration, you need to explain how you are going to make up for the hole in government income that will cause: change the deficit elimination target date, higher taxes, less spending, or what?

All of the above.

In fact, haven't we had the first two already?

And, according to Labour, the third.

I am happy to see that you accept leaving the EU will lead to tax rises and further public spending cuts.

@GeorgeWParker: @BorisJohnson uses the old Lynton "dead cat" to move off economy debate on Brexit but not sure deploying Hitler ever a good move

NEVER GO FULL KEN!

Sean_F said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Andrew Rawnsley's take:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/15/nigel-farage-remain-leave-eu-referendum-tories

"The Out side has taken such a pummelling on the economy that, if this were a boxing match, the referee would be stepping in to stop the fight. When anyone dares to express an opinion about the hazards of Brexit, the Outers now routinely wail that it is somehow “unfair” or “bullying” or even a “conspiracy”. That suggests that some of them wish that there really was a referee who could intervene to spare them any more punches."

Remain's problem is that only a minority think they'd be worse off, in the event of Brexit.

Then given BREXIT are way ahead on the issues of sovereignty and immigration why are LEAVE not very comfortably ahead in the polls?

Persuading people to break with the status quo is difficult, unless the status quo is very visibly collapsing.

There's also a big element of my enemy's enemy is my friend. With right wing voters so heavily in favour of Leave, left wing voters tak the opposite view.

But LEAVE repeatedly say the status quo most certainly isn't available, never more so than Boris's Hitler analogy today.

..............................

Carney very measured and impressive on Marr. REMAIN must hate the fact he can't express a view ....

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Andrew Rawnsley's take:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/15/nigel-farage-remain-leave-eu-referendum-tories

"The Out side has taken such a pummelling on the economy that, if this were a boxing match, the referee would be stepping in to stop the fight. When anyone dares to express an opinion about the hazards of Brexit, the Outers now routinely wail that it is somehow “unfair” or “bullying” or even a “conspiracy”. That suggests that some of them wish that there really was a referee who could intervene to spare them any more punches."

Remain's problem is that only a minority think they'd be worse off, in the event of Brexit.

Then given BREXIT are way ahead on the issues of sovereignty and immigration why are LEAVE not very comfortably ahead in the polls?

Persuading people to break with the status quo is difficult, unless the status quo is very visibly collapsing.

There's also a big element of my enemy's enemy is my friend. With right wing voters so heavily in favour of Leave, left wing voters tak the opposite view.

But LEAVE repeatedly say the status quo most certainly isn't available, never more so than Boris's Hitler analogy today.

..............................

Carney very measured and impressive on Marr. REMAIN must hate the fact he can't express a view ....

Pathetic interview from Marr. He was even helping him along at the end by saying that wages will fall (that nice Mr Rose disagrees) if we leave the EU. Marr asked about household debt, but neglected to ask about the nation's debt and that numpty in Number 11's tax cutting in the budget.

kle4 said:

malcolmg said:

CarlottaVance said:

First casualty of the SNP's "triumph" of losing their majority - the repeal of:

“arguably the most authoritarian piece of legislation in modern times in Britain. That you can go to prison for five years for being offensive at a football match is insane.”

http://m.heraldscotland.com/news/14493682.Opposition_parties_unite_to_repeal_SNP__39_s_anti_sectarianism_law/

Ha Ha Ha, of all the ills facing Scotland Ruthie's Top Tory priority is to support Sectarianism. How stupid are these people.

I know, she actually thought she would win a constituency seat too, and that the Tories might climb to second place, how stupid was that?

Ask him about SNP success in Ayrshire.....

Scott_P said:

@rowenamason: Andrea Leadsom says Mark Carney's warnings about Brexit "incredibly dangerous" and promotes instability, if worried shd have had quiet word

@RyanCoetzee: The Leave case on the economy seems to be that no one apart from them should be allowed to say anything about it. #Marr

She seemed to be very keen to give other European centres the opportunity to start to compete with the City. I can't see how that is in our interests.

kle4 said:

OldKingCole said:

What is it about this referendum which is calling forth all sorts of wild hyperbole from both sides?

That's just how referendums go, it would seem, in a country that has few of them. I think it may in part be because it cuts across party lines, so there's more anger as people go up against people they normally agree with, and with anger people get more over the top.

MikeK said:

Boris' speech on EU expansion was quite brilliant. His allusion to Hitler, among others, was about Europe being under one government, not about the methods to get to that target.

As with a certain other mayor of London, albeit in a worse way, there was need to bring hitler into it. Not to make that point. I've not seen the speech, woukd it have worked swapping hitler out for napoleon?

He mentioned Napoleon, Hitler and the Roman Empire.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/14/boris-johnson-the-eu-wants-a-superstate-just-as-hitler-did/

The former mayor of London, who is a keen classical scholar, argues that the past 2,000 years of European history have been characterised by repeated attempts to unify Europe under a single government in order to recover the continent’s lost “golden age” under the Romans.

“Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically,” he says. “The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.

“But fundamentally what is lacking is the eternal problem, which is that there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe. There is no single authority that anybody respects or understands. That is causing this massive democratic void.”

tlg86 said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Andrew Rawnsley's take:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/15/nigel-farage-remain-leave-eu-referendum-tories

"The Out side has taken such a pummelling on the economy that, if this were a boxing match, the referee would be stepping in to stop the fight. When anyone dares to express an opinion about the hazards of Brexit, the Outers now routinely wail that it is somehow “unfair” or “bullying” or even a “conspiracy”. That suggests that some of them wish that there really was a referee who could intervene to spare them any more punches."

Remain's problem is that only a minority think they'd be worse off, in the event of Brexit.

Then given BREXIT are way ahead on the issues of sovereignty and immigration why are LEAVE not very comfortably ahead in the polls?

Persuading people to break with the status quo is difficult, unless the status quo is very visibly collapsing.

There's also a big element of my enemy's enemy is my friend. With right wing voters so heavily in favour of Leave, left wing voters tak the opposite view.

But LEAVE repeatedly say the status quo most certainly isn't available, never more so than Boris's Hitler analogy today.

..............................

Carney very measured and impressive on Marr. REMAIN must hate the fact he can't express a view ....

Pathetic interview from Marr. He was even helping him along at the end by saying that wages will fall (that nice Mr Rose disagrees) if we leave the EU. Marr asked about household debt, but neglected to ask about the nation's debt and that numpty in Number 11's tax cutting in the budget.

I'm not arguing on the technical merits of what Carney said but rather the tone, measured air and confidence of the performance. In those terms it was impressive.

Plato_Says said:

kle4 said:

OldKingCole said:

What is it about this referendum which is calling forth all sorts of wild hyperbole from both sides?

That's just how referendums go, it would seem, in a country that has few of them. I think it may in part be because it cuts across party lines, so there's more anger as people go up against people they normally agree with, and with anger people get more over the top.

MikeK said:

Boris' speech on EU expansion was quite brilliant. His allusion to Hitler, among others, was about Europe being under one government, not about the methods to get to that target.

As with a certain other mayor of London, albeit in a worse way, there was need to bring hitler into it. Not to make that point. I've not seen the speech, woukd it have worked swapping hitler out for napoleon?

He mentioned Napoleon, Hitler and the Roman Empire.

Good, I'd have stopped at the first and last personally. Far enough back not to flare up emotion that distracts from the point.

He's an experienced man, he has to know if you use the word hitler it's the only word that people will remember, so only use it when you really need to.

DavidL said:

foxinsoxuk said:

@DavidL

Immigration of working age people is not a Ponzi scheme. The problem of an ageng population with increasing dependency ratio is most acute over the next 25 years as the baby-boomers of the 1945-65 years age. The drop in fertility rates in the late sixties to eighties means the age structure of the population then smooths out.

If you look at the ONS projections for the change in the age structure of the population between now and 2039, the change with the population to is substantially in the elderly and very elderly. The working age population hardly budges, and if you look at table 4 the number of children remains static too.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projections/2014-based-projections/stb-npp-2014-based-projections.html#tab-Changing-age-structure

These are UK figures, but as most population growth is in England rather than in the other home nations we will see different effects in different parts of the country. Oversubscribed schools in Leicester will be balanced by schools closing in Wales through lack of pupils for example.

To date we have offset the increase in the number of retired and elderly with additional people of working age by immigration. But such a policy has many of the aspects of a Ponzi scheme to me: new entrants pay out the old provided there are enough new entrants to do so. Those figures project that by 2039 there will be another 10m people living in Britain, roughly another London. Do we really want to have policies that are going to add to that problem or policies that are going to reduce it?

The figures seem to indicate that EU immigrants are extremely mobile. That is exactly what we need. Young people coming here for a year or two and then heading off again, while we get to export a lot of our non-productive elderly people to the south.

I am glad to see, though, that you accept that in the short term at least Brexit is going to cause a fair amount of pain. It continues to puzzle me that people on here who used to laud the government's economic and fiscal policies now slam them, even though they have not changed.

JackW said:

tlg86 said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Andrew Rawnsley's take:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/15/nigel-farage-remain-leave-eu-referendum-tories

"The Out side has taken such a pummelling on the economy that, if this were a boxing match, the referee would be stepping in to stop the fight. When anyone dares to express an opinion about the hazards of Brexit, the Outers now routinely wail that it is somehow “unfair” or “bullying” or even a “conspiracy”. That suggests that some of them wish that there really was a referee who could intervene to spare them any more punches."

Remain's problem is that only a minority think they'd be worse off, in the event of Brexit.

Then given BREXIT are way ahead on the issues of sovereignty and immigration why are LEAVE not very comfortably ahead in the polls?

Persuading people to break with the status quo is difficult, unless the status quo is very visibly collapsing.

There's also a big element of my enemy's enemy is my friend. With right wing voters so heavily in favour of Leave, left wing voters tak the opposite view.

But LEAVE repeatedly say the status quo most certainly isn't available, never more so than Boris's Hitler analogy today.

..............................

Carney very measured and impressive on Marr. REMAIN must hate the fact he can't express a view ....

Pathetic interview from Marr. He was even helping him along at the end by saying that wages will fall (that nice Mr Rose disagrees) if we leave the EU. Marr asked about household debt, but neglected to ask about the nation's debt and that numpty in Number 11's tax cutting in the budget.

I'm not arguing on the technical merits of what Carney said but rather the tone, measured air and confidence of the performance. In those terms it was an impressive.

Appointing him was one of Osborne's very best decisions. He is hugely impressive for a man partly responsible for a deeply unbalanced economy with a massive public sector deficit and a horrendous trade deficit. Without his calm authority we could be in a much more difficult place.

kle4 said:

He's an experienced man, he has to know if you use the word hitler it's the only word that people will remember, so only use it when you really need to.

@rachshabi: Although perhaps Boris has done us a favour and we could all benefit from a 'why Brussels is not like Nazi Germany' primer.

chestnut said:

Scott_P said:

It's interesting to see Brexiteers crowing that all of the predictions of economic gloom are not shifting the polls.

Stuart Rose, "Wages will rise"

Paddy Ashdown, "Food prices will fall"

George Osborne, "Houses will get cheaper".

Reasons to be cheerful, parts 1,2 and 3.

Chortle

DavidL said:

foxinsoxuk said:

DavidL said:

foxinsoxuk said:

@DavidL

Immigration of working age people is not a Ponzi scheme. The problem of an ageng population with increasing dependency ratio is most acute over the next 25 years as the baby-boomers of the 1945-65 years age. The drop in fertility rates in the late sixties to eighties means the age structure of the population then smooths out.

If you look at the ONS projections for the change in the age structure of the population between now and 2039, the change with the population to is substantially in the elderly and very elderly. The working age population hardly budges, and if you look at table 4 the number of children remains static too.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projections/2014-based-projections/stb-npp-2014-based-projections.html#tab-Changing-age-structure

These are UK figures, but as most population growth is in England rather than in the other home nations we will see different effects in different parts of the country. Oversubscribed schools in Leicester will be balanced by schools closing in Wales through lack of pupils for example.

tion to either care for them or pay their pensions. The economy would have to change quite profoundly to higher taxes/lower pensions/working longer.

Immigration will never come to zero, even on a net basis, but saying "only" half the increase comes from immigration frankly shows what a major problem remain has with this issue. I agree with you that finding room for 5m will be hard enough. Why do we want to stay committed to an open borders problem that is going to double the problem?

Staying within the EU with its current policies would only work if we have the mother of all recessions and stop being the place of choice for the unemployed youth of the EZ. Leaving seems a lot more attractive than that.

Politically, immigration is the absolute killer for Remain and is why Leave is likely to win. But the fact is that this government - which you support - has built its fiscal and economic policy on high levels of ongoing immigration. If you accept that the UK population is going to grow by five million without a single extra immigrant over the coming years and that most of that growth is going to be attributable to a rising elderly population, how do you propose rebalancing the economy to support the additional infrastructure spend we are going to need and to create the resources necessary to look after that elderly population?

Scott_P said:

@tamcohen: Jacob Rees-Mogg: 'What Boris said was absolutely true...but instead of doing it by force, EU doing it by stealth.' #Peston

Bloody hell. So are there secret gas chambers and ovens out there that we do not know about?

O/T

10 hours till London's newest train station, Lea Bridge, opens.

richardDodd said:

When will Lefties on PB realise that Labour has absolutely no chance whatsoever of winning in 2020 as long as Corbyn and his current front bench are in place...the Brits might be auld sentimental softies but they are not bloody fools

When will you realise that almost no Leftie that posts on here believes that Corbyn will win in 2020? Not even those that support his leadership think that.

I tend to think that No. 10's private polling must have some validity. Not sure about the harder to reach aspect. Possibly some bravado when being polled that will evaporate on the day?

VapidBilge said:

chestnut said:

Scott_P said:

It's interesting to see Brexiteers crowing that all of the predictions of economic gloom are not shifting the polls.

Stuart Rose, "Wages will rise"

Paddy Ashdown, "Food prices will fall"

George Osborne, "Houses will get cheaper".

Reasons to be cheerful, parts 1,2 and 3.

£8bn to spend on NHS.

Only if you believe that the government tax take will not fall as a result of Brexit. And given that you have accepted Brexit will lead to higher taxes and further public spending cuts, you clearly don't believe that.

foxinsoxuk said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Morning guys

OT but has anyone heard how JosiasJessop is doing. It is a month or so since he last posted and I know he was having health problems. Just wanted to check that he was okay.

When he last posted, he seemed OK, mostly just wanting a quiet period to recover.

Hopefully that is all it is. I like arguing with JJ. He always comes over as extremely well informed and measured. I was just thinking about him this morning when I saw the Telegraph piece on HS2 and wanted to get his view on it free of all the newspaper hype.

DavidL said:

foxinsoxuk said:

DavidL said:

foxinsoxuk said:

@DavidL

Immigration of working age people is not a Ponzi scheme. The problem of an ageng population with increasing dependency ratio is most acute over the next 25 years as the baby-boomers of the 1945-65 years age. The drop in fertility rates in the late sixties to eighties means the age structure of the population then smooths out.

To date we have offset the increase in the number of retired and elderly with additional people of working age by immigration. But such a policy has many of the aspects of a Ponzi scheme to me: new entrants pay out the old provided there are enough new entrants to do so. Those figures project that by 2039 there will be another 10m people living in Britain, roughly another London. Do we really want to have policies that are going to add to that problem or policies that are going to reduce it?

Only half the population increase (51%) is due to migration, so even if it stopped completely (rather unrealistic) we would need to find room for 5 million extra people. These would mostly be the very elderly and infirm, without a younger population to either care for them or pay their pensions. The economy would have to change quite profoundly to higher taxes/lower pensions/working longer.

Immigration will never come to zero, even on a net basis, but saying "only" half the increase comes from immigration frankly shows what a major problem remain has with this issue. I agree with you that finding room for 5m will be hard enough. Why do we want to stay committed to an open borders problem that is going to double the problem?

Staying within the EU with its current policies would only work if we have the mother of all recessions and stop being the place of choice for the unemployed youth of the EZ. Leaving seems a lot more attractive than that.

The extra 5 million will not be all from the EU, half of migration is non-EU, so we are looking at a ball park figure of 2.5 million extra people in 25 years time. Many of these will be British born children of EU migrants, so apart from their surnames much like you and me. Without them we will be converting closed schools to old peoples nursing homes.

After 2030 or so the population of the very elderly stabilises, in part due to the low birthrate in the sixties and seventies, and in part because of the biology of ageing. Migration helps us manage that transition. Of course it has costs, but the costs of not having migration are not negligible either.

In passing: I note that Leavers do not believe Economic forecasts but do believe population ones as if they are Holy Writ! Both have been wrong at times in the past.

Off to walk the pooch, on a glorious day in Leics. Laters!

Plato_Says said:

kle4 said:

Plato_Says said:

kle4 said:

OldKingCole said:

What is it about this referendum which is calling forth all sorts of wild hyperbole from both sides?

That's just how referendums go, it would seem, in a country that has few of them. I think it may in part be because it cuts across party lines, so there's more anger as people go up against people they normally agree with, and with anger people get more over the top.

MikeK said:

Boris' speech on EU expansion was quite brilliant. His allusion to Hitler, among others, was about Europe being under one government, not about the methods to get to that target.

As with a certain other mayor of London, albeit in a worse way, there was need to bring hitler into it. Not to make that point. I've not seen the speech, woukd it have worked swapping hitler out for napoleon?

He mentioned Napoleon, Hitler and the Roman Empire.

Good, I'd have stopped at the first and last personally. Far enough back not to flare up emotion that distracts from the point.

He's an experienced man, he has to know if you use the word hitler it's the only word that people will remember, so only use it when you really need to.

I suspect it's a dog whistle to imply Cameron is Chamberlain. That's not much of a stretch right now.

Who?

https://gallery.mailchimp.com/8d465e9ef1a8030aadf046685/images/0a38e6b6-9abb-492b-a4e0-bd037a0e4f1a.jpg

DavidL said:

JackW said:

tlg86 said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Andrew Rawnsley's take:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/15/nigel-farage-remain-leave-eu-referendum-tories

"The Out side has taken such a pummelling on the economy that, if this were a boxing match, the referee would be stepping in to stop the fight. When anyone dares to express an opinion about the hazards of Brexit, the Outers now routinely wail that it is somehow “unfair” or “bullying” or even a “conspiracy”. That suggests that some of them wish that there really was a referee who could intervene to spare them any more punches."

Remain's problem is that only a minority think they'd be worse off, in the event of Brexit.

Then given BREXIT are way ahead on the issues of sovereignty and immigration why are LEAVE not very comfortably ahead in the polls?

Persuading people to break with the status quo is difficult, unless the status quo is very visibly collapsing.

There's also a big element of my enemy's enemy is my friend. With right wing voters so heavily in favour of Leave, left wing voters tak the opposite view.

But LEAVE repeatedly say the status quo most certainly isn't available, never more so than Boris's Hitler analogy today.

..............................

Carney very measured and impressive on Marr. REMAIN must hate the fact he can't express a view ....

Pathetic interview from Marr. He was even helping him along at the end by saying that wages will fall (that nice Mr Rose disagrees) if we leave the EU. Marr asked about household debt, but neglected to ask about the nation's debt and that numpty in Number 11's tax cutting in the budget.

I'm not arguing on the technical merits of what Carney said but rather the tone, measured air and confidence of the performance. In those terms it was an impressive.

Appointing him was one of Osborne's very best decisions. He is hugely impressive for a man partly responsible for a deeply unbalanced economy with a massive public sector deficit and a horrendous trade deficit. Without his calm authority we could be in a much more difficult place.

I'd like him to be gone.

Charles said:

foxinsoxuk said:

All nice easy ones then!

Reducing the number of immigrants from europe would have quite a few economic effects, some possibly beneficial such as easing pressure on housing, but others less so. The increase in population from young and fertile europeans offsets our ageing baby boomer population. Without them the dependency ratio becomes a lot worse means higher taxes/lower pensions/working longer for the working age population.

The maths doesn't work under your scheme - either these immigrants are going to return home (presumably, if they are EU) with some portable pension rights from the UK government. Alternatively they will stay and require additional people in future to fund them.

The real solution (easy in theory, I warrant!) is to fund pensions on an ongoing basis. But unfortunately as they are currently paid out of taxation this will be very expensive over a 30 years+ basis...

The baby boomers aren't going to live forever. If we can have a stable demographic path then the fact today's workers are going to be the futures pensioners is less of an issue. Especially if that is combined with funding pensions smarter.

Our current pensions problems that migration is helping to mitigate is caused but the twin problems of an incredibly lopsided demographic mix combined with completely unfunded pensions. A toxic mix.

Mr. Observer, that's a human pyramid scheme, though. When the migrants become elderly themselves, we'll need even more to come in. And so on.

tlg86 said:

JackW said:

tlg86 said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

JackW said:

Sean_F said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Andrew Rawnsley's take:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/15/nigel-farage-remain-leave-eu-referendum-tories

"The Out side has taken such a pummelling on the economy that, if this were a boxing match, the referee would be stepping in to stop the fight. When anyone dares to express an opinion about the hazards of Brexit, the Outers now routinely wail that it is somehow “unfair” or “bullying” or even a “conspiracy”. That suggests that some of them wish that there really was a referee who could intervene to spare them any more punches."

Remain's problem is that only a minority think they'd be worse off, in the event of Brexit.

Then given BREXIT are way ahead on the issues of sovereignty and immigration why are LEAVE not very comfortably ahead in the polls?

Persuading people to break with the status quo is difficult, unless the status quo is very visibly collapsing.

There's also a big element of my enemy's enemy is my friend. With right wing voters so heavily in favour of Leave, left wing voters tak the opposite view.

But LEAVE repeatedly say the status quo most certainly isn't available, never more so than Boris's Hitler analogy today.

..............................

Carney very measured and impressive on Marr. REMAIN must hate the fact he can't express a view ....

Pathetic interview from Marr. He was even helping him along at the end by saying that wages will fall (that nice Mr Rose disagrees) if we leave the EU. Marr asked about household debt, but neglected to ask about the nation's debt and that numpty in Number 11's tax cutting in the budget.

I'm not arguing on the technical merits of what Carney said but rather the tone, measured air and confidence of the performance. In those terms it was impressive.

He might not have been so measured had he got the Andrew Neil treatment.

Perhaps so but we may only comment on what was rather than what wasn't.

@nsoamesmp: .@BorisJohnson The unchallenged master of the self inflicted wound . Gone too far #sansjudgementsanscredibility

VapidBilge said:

chestnut said:

Scott_P said:

It's interesting to see Brexiteers crowing that all of the predictions of economic gloom are not shifting the polls.

Stuart Rose, "Wages will rise"

Paddy Ashdown, "Food prices will fall"

George Osborne, "Houses will get cheaper".

Reasons to be cheerful, parts 1,2 and 3.

£8bn to spend on NHS.

There's a rather good Leave poster of a syringe filled with banknotes.

SouthamObserver said:

Scott_P said:

@tamcohen: Jacob Rees-Mogg: 'What Boris said was absolutely true...but instead of doing it by force, EU doing it by stealth.' #Peston

Bloody hell. So are there secret gas chambers and ovens out there that we do not know about?

I like JR-M (a lot more than I like Boris) but I really can't understand why he is pushing this line.

For the vast majority of the British public the name Hitler means genocide and gas chambers. If you want to make a claim about European domination then there are lots of other plausible examples without the emotive connotations of Nazism. Invoking Hitler is a lazy, ill informed route to take. It is Leave doing exactly what Remain have been doing and making ludicrous claims.

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Observer, that's a human pyramid scheme, though. When the migrants become elderly themselves, we'll need even more to come in. And so on.

A lot of the migrants are in and out. But if you are correct, what do we do instead? Our population is going to grow whatever happens and it will be increasingly old and unproductive. If the working age population falls or does not increase at a rate that matches or exceeds the rate at which people move into retirement, the tax take goes down. So, what's the plan?

blackburn63 said:

This place is becoming a parody, thread after thread for Remain, yet I see new members appearing in support of Leave.

You now think PB is a "parody" and a few nights back you thought it "pointless".

I'm just surprised that you should enter the portals of this pointless parody with such regularity and fervour.

Southam Observer said:

Politically, immigration is the absolute killer for Remain and is why Leave is likely to win. But the fact is that this government - which you support - has built its fiscal and economic policy on high levels of ongoing immigration. If you accept that the UK population is going to grow by five million without a single extra immigrant over the coming years and that most of that growth is going to be attributable to a rising elderly population, how do you propose rebalancing the economy to support the additional infrastructure spend we are going to need and to create the resources necessary to look after that elderly population?

It is not going to be easy. We need to address the underlying problems I set out down thread and which I am conscious that you too have pointed out on many occasions. We need to improve training of the existing workforce by making it less easy to hire tradesmen and other skilled workers off the shelf, we need to sort out our tertiary education systems, particularly at everything below the elite level, we need to train our management to focus beyond the next quarter and invest accordingly and we need to find a means of living within our tax base whilst still providing for the needy in society. Hugely difficult but importing more and more people as a short term fix to some of these issues is not the answer.

And I for one fully accept that anyone who thinks we can make these necessary changes without years of sub optimal growth is just kidding themselves. Every bit as much as those who claim the sticking plaster of another 5m people is going to be fine are.

DavidL said:

SouthamObserver said:

DavidL said:

foxinsoxuk said:

@DavidL

example.

To date we have offset the increase in the number of retired and elderly with additional people of working age by immigration. But such a policy has many of the aspects of a Ponzi scheme to me: new entrants pay out the old provided there are enough new entrants to do so. Those figures project that by 2039 there will be another 10m people living in Britain, roughly another London. Do we really want to have policies that are going to add to that problem or policies that are going to reduce it?

The figures seem to indicate that EU immigrants are extremely mobile. That is exactly what we need. Young people coming here for a year or two and then heading off again, while we get to export a lot of our non-productive elderly people to the south.

I am glad to see, though, that you accept that in the short term at least Brexit is going to cause a fair amount of pain. It continues to puzzle me that people on here who used to laud the government's economic and fiscal policies now slam them, even though they have not changed.

Over the last 5 years 1.6m proved to be "mobile" in that they moved on and 900K didn't. My daughter has a relationship with a chap from Portugal. He runs the family restaurant there really through force of circumstances. He is looking to come to the UK. He is immensely pessimistic about his own country's prospects. And, frankly, he is right.

The destruction being wreaked by the policies of the EZ mean many bright, aspirational, educated young people in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and, increasingly, France are going to be tempted to come here, meet our young people and settle down. Who can blame them? And these are good people on the whole. If we only had room it would be great...

And not just the 'bright, aspirational, educated young people'.

In the supermarkets and shopping streets I'm increasingly seeing whole families of what I assume are Balkan Roma. A very different demographic from the 'Poles' of the last decade.

And I can't blame them - being poor and deprived in south-eastern Yorkshire is far preferable to being poor and deprived in south-eastern Europe.

malcolmg said:

Scott_P said:

kle4 said:

I know, she actually thought she would win a constituency seat too, and that the Tories might climb to second place, how stupid was that?

Malky has an enviable record.

Almost every time he calls Tories stupid, which is almost every time he posts, turns out they are right, and he is a turnip.

It's a gift.

If only he was that good at picking the horses...

Not hard to beat the Tories record in Scotland , anyone can forecast that they are losers, will be losers again and again and again.

If only the Tories were good at picking politician's rather than donkeys. Deluded that you think being a DISTANT loser getting losers seats and having 1 MP in Westminster is actually great, high aspirations indeed. The result of all that is that they desperately want to promote sectarianism, dear dear.

I really do not udnerstand this tactic of some of deriding the Tory recovery in Scotland, in this particular manner. Yes it was a distant second, yes the SNP are hugely dominant, yes there is no guarantee it will be sustained or extend to MP recovery, and yes they used to be stronger still.

But it was still a major improvement on where they had been, and an improvement that people who predicted it this time (as opposed to in jest all the time, and I did not predict it) were repeatedly laughed at and bluntly called idiots.

There is no contradiction between them having achieved something and acknowledging they are still a long way back from the dominant force, and those who said they wouldn't even achieve this (and more, that it was preposterous and idiotic to suggest it) aren't in much of a position to use exactly the same tone to dismiss them now. Give it a month or do at least, when the shines of relative triumph, and yes that this is a relative triumph is sad for them but true, wears off.

And now to enjoy some sun.

chestnut said:

Scott_P said:

It's interesting to see Brexiteers crowing that all of the predictions of economic gloom are not shifting the polls.

Stuart Rose, "Wages will rise"

Paddy Ashdown, "Food prices will fall"

George Osborne, "Houses will get cheaper".

Reasons to be cheerful, parts 1,2 and 3.

For the rentier class those are not reasons to be cheerful.