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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Get ready for a big psephological debate on Friday on how much you can read in to the locals
The timing of the 2017 General Election has created an almost unique situation. This is the first time in the modern era when a general election has been called before the May local elections and the campaign period covered those elections.
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Wells also argues, perfectly reasonably in my view:
However, don’t just assume that the projected overall shares of the vote at this week’s votes are going to be repeated in next month’s election: people vote differently for different reasons at different sorts of election.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/05/01/why-local-elections-are-not-useful-indicators-nati/
Voters in locals aren't voting about Brexit. Voters in the GE aren't voting about potholes & bin collections.
What was almost as repugnant yesterday was the shameful glee of diehard Remainers as they gullibly swallowed Juncker’s every last syllable, desperate for their prejudices to be confirmed. They are willing him on, willing Brussels on, hoping their own Prime Minister falls flat on her face.
Why? Because it is more important to them to be proved “right”, to assert what they see as their intellectual and moral superiority over 17.4million Brexit voters, than it is for Britain to emerge with a decent deal and prosper thereafter.
Ultimately they hope we are humiliated so totally that we give up on Brexit.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3458648/jean-claude-junckers-leak-of-his-talk-with-theresa-may-is-treacherous-and-one-sided/
I can't for the life of me think who they could possibly mean.....
Its significance is to confirm - if any confirmation was needed - that the EU will leak selectively to bolster its own case. Meanwhile the Telegraph is leading with:
Revealed: How EU has been secretly plotting to block Theresa May over EU migrants for weeks
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/01/revealed-eu-has-secretly-plotting-block-theresa-may-eu-migrants/
Expect a deafening silence.....
Turnout is lower than a GE, but then so was turnout in the last locals (both 2013 and 2016) so gains and losses will tell us something.
Whilst the vote shares obviously cannot be read straight across, whether or not the Tories are gaining significant vote share (and if so whether this is concentrating in areas like the Midlands and Wales as expected), the extent of Labour collapse (or resilience), the level of LibDem gains (and any regional pattern), the extent of SNP dominance, and whether UKIP achieves anything at all, are all factors to watch and with relevance to expectations for June 8.
Also worth nothing that, despite the vote shares not reading across, there will doubtless be parties tallying up the totals across the county wards within their constituency and seeking to use this data to establish the credibility of their challenge where it is useful.
Very difficult to assess in this unusual circumstance. They are often a free kick at the incumbent government. That may or may not be the case this year.
Says it all really.
You may have as low an opinion of politicians as I have but I doubt even Mrs May - a third rate politician # - is going to knowingly sign a disastrous deal..
# as opposed to Corbyn whom I will charitably call fifth rate, or Farron who is seventh rate..
That statement is a damming indictment of the functioning of the EU. It states it is undemocratic, ruled from Germany and autocratic.
Juncker.
Now we are leaving, lets get on with it (an quit the whining about it).
For UKIP it is going to confirm their continuing disintegration, especially in Wales (in Scotland they barely trouble the scorers already). This is unlikely to give them much of a boost going into the General and may well encourage the already strong tendency of their former voters to vote Tory.
For Labour the loss of 150 or so Councillors in Scotland and a similar number in Wales is going to be a truly dreadful backdrop to the GE. If they lose a similar number in England, as seems likely, there may well be something like panic, especially if they less well in the Mayoral elections than expected.
In Scotland the vote will ultimately be about Indyref2, everything always is. This might drag out some otherwise reluctant SNP supporters to vote. It will certainly drag out some Unionists. The Unionists are a clear majority in Scotland but suffer from their vote being divided amongst 3 parties. I think Unionists will use the locals to work out which candidate is the Unionist to support in the general.
No doubt, if it's revealed that Jezza wants another referendum, he will suddenly be a Churchillian figure - the Abraham Lincoln of our time.
Is the referendum still a sore point in London? Up here, it seems to be history. The prevailing view from the great majority is let's get on with it and have it done - from both sides.
Thinking about the forthcoming negootiations with the European Union, what attitude do you think other European countries will end up taking?
They will probably negotiate constructively to find
a deal that works for both Britain and the EU: 33
They will probably obstruct a good deal to punish
Britain and discourage other countries from leaving: 49
http://www.politico.eu/article/merkel-eu-aims-to-end-phase-1-of-brexit-talks-by-fall/
I hope that the Tory majority is unchanged post June 8th.
Of course, given that he's a drunk and Barnier may charitably be described as less than aware of his surroundings, it's possible that they really are confused about what was said. And we should always consider the possibility that even Juncker is right at times (there was a moment in 1992, apparently, when he got the winner of the Euro cup) while Theresa May is quite capable of lying when it suits her purpose.
What it looks like to me is that the EU are providing themselves with alibis to blame the British when the talks (which they clearly have no intention of allowing to come to fruition) break down, so the British people will blame their politicians and come back to the EU.
As a strategy, it seems about as sensible as the time Burnside ordered his men to cross a waist-deep river on a narrow plank bridge defended by machine guns. But unfortunately the very low quality of European politicians right now means they are dumb enough to think it might work.
I would therefore disagree further with Juncker - the chances of no deal were 50% before his idiocy, they're now near 100%.
https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/859274695497142273
Is this true? I thought the bar for a criminal conviction in a case like this was very high?
Edit: Largest scandal in British political history? Hmmm..
Of course. They are generally unelected politicians, protected from the folly of their actions by large salaries and pensions. Of far more importance is their standing and reputation and commitment to the European dream.
Juncker remains an unelected piss pot, but in his own mind, he's a genius with world-wide acclaim, even if he wakes with a hangover in the morning.
The problem is that they have been shown to be devious and untrustworthy while TM has risen above the fray and emerged strengthened.
I would be interested to know from those pro EU on this forum if they feel this has enhanced or reduced TM popularity.
TBH reads a bit like 'whistling to keep spirits up'.......
Which leads to a word they probably applied to is a lot recently...and by coincidence we are now all using about them
If "success" means "a better arrangement" then to a europhile it is impossible for it to be a success.
I suspect a Europhobe would interpret the meaning of success differently. "Success" is a subjective value judgement in any walk of life.
This is the end for May. Voters famously like Juncker coming to dinner leaking the lot and then arranging for the Germans to patronise us.
She'd might as well give up now.....
There's a lot of nonsense going around - not all, or even mostly, on the EU side.
It's a view.....
It's either extremely careless wording or a threat. I would say, even rating him as low as I do, the latter. It's ironic if it was taken as a threat when he didn't mean it, given that's exactly the way he's been treating May.
Summary - she's trying, she's throwing everything she can at it, but she still really needs both to get very lucky and for Macron to mess up, to have a good shot.
http://www.politico.eu/article/how-marine-le-pen-could-win-french-elections-2017-emmanuel-macron/
It seems likely that in most cases the CPS will think of the difficulties and decide not to bother. It may depend on whether there is something really bad in among it that they feel is deliberate, malicious and unambiguously criminal.
It’s been a strange journey for the People’s Party, from Red Clydeside to Cerise Morningside.
But Mr Murray embraced it yesterday, ignoring the siren call of a pasty-lined Greggs to campaign with his neighbour Alistair Darling at a “Bruntsfield Boulangerie” two doors down.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15258309.Sketch__Labour_unity_flakier_than_the_pastry_in_Edinburgh_South/?ref=twtrec
Work beckons. Have a good day.
"I very much doubt the EU side cares what it does to Theresa May's popularity or what the British public thinks. That's not their concern any more."
I tend to disagree. Although I regard you as one of the more perspicacious of the posters, you do lose judgement when it comes to Brexit.
On the basis of "all's fair in love and war", I think that weakening the position of the opposition will give you an edge in any negotiation. They already have an edge as their negotiators tend to be unelected so don't need to worry about PR.
At the moment it's a phoney propaganda war, they are circling for position. I'm not sure Juncker is the right man to spearhead an assault, though.
My mistake was thinking rational heads might prevail after initial wailing, giving negotiations a chance.
The European consensual style of coalition politics is very different to our oppositional adversarial style. Euro-politicians are constantly negotiating with political opponents, while ours are constantly rubbishing the opposition. To a consensual politician, May's position looks like a refusal to negotiate seriously.
I think Juncker is right on the issue. I do not think that the rights of EU citizens in the UK will be clear by the end of June
Exhibit 1 Brexit cannot be a success
The cultist Leavers will rally behind Theresa May and foam wildly about drunken Eurocrats leaking (forgetting how excited they were when Michael Gove planted a story on the Sun's front page about the Queen's views on Brexit).
Remainers will have all their own default prejudices confirmed about the idiocy of the UK's negotiating stance.
The general public will see foreigners being rude in foreign about the British government's approach and will have a spasm of insular loyalty.
It will all be forgotten about by Friday.