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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The DUP deal has cost a lot more than £2bn: it’s blown apart t

YouGov published the results of an innovative survey on Thursday, where it found that the British public seemed more willing to pay a Brexit bill of £25bn (where 29% said they would find that acceptable), than one of £10bn (backed by 18%).
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Good article DH, but I think that you underestimate both the issues of austerity in the public sector, and the growing economic problems.
The government has long been in denial about efficiency savings, hence the appeal of Boris's £350 million per week for the NHS.
On the economy we have low unemployment, but low performance elsewhere, and all propped up by massive debt. It is a house of cards.
The Leave campaign was a 10 Megaton Bomb on the Austerity Narrative. It said we could and should have lads of extra spending on an iconic public service and that it would be dead easy.
It's a fantastic piece from David and the DUP deal is an awful narrative for Austerity. But lets not ignore that last year an explicitly left wing, economic populist campaign changed British history.
If we want to look for huge changes in the stories we tell ourselves on Austerity June 2016 is a better place to start than the DUP.
More seriously, it’s been instructive to see Liddington talking about ‘plenty of money in police authority reserves’ and sundry Chief Constables coming on the box to say that ‘that may be true somewhere, but it’s not true in our Authority!'
The airline suddenly removed 160 scheduled services to destinations across Europe on Friday without any explanation leaving holidaymakers furious.
It now plans to cancel as many as 80 flights per day until the end of October in a bid to improve its punctuality statistics and clear 'a backlog of crew leave'.
https://tinyurl.com/y7qrzgtk
Is this because of Brexit?
There are other ways to balance the books, notably tax reforms and rises. In particular we need proper taxation of the digital mega corporations and transnational chains as discussed in Junckers speech this week.
Not only do these have a large store of untaxed profits, their unfair advantages due to minimal taxation give them unfair monopoly advantage over indigenous smaller companies.
Luxembourg under Juncker being a massive part of the problem of course, for all his pathetic and barely coherent bleating on the subject now.
There are many very good reasons to stay in the EU, but to crack down on tax avoidance simply isn't one of them.
Economic sensibility is on ice until Brexit is done and the next election. The Tories don't have the numbers.
The hope is there's a new glitzy post Brexit economic strategy to launch some time after 2019 under a new leader, who then (maybe) also seeks a new mandate rather than going to term.
I was at a regional meeting last week at an NHS Trust £80 million in deficit, that cannot recruit to empty posts and is losing staff, in a Brexit voting area. That £350 million per week is sorely needed, and Boris is right to promise it.
If Brexit fails to deliver that sort of dividend, the backlash will be Corbynite. If the Tory Brexit flops, then people will want the alternative.
Boris seems to have realised that WTO Brexit is on the cards, and at least he is breaking from the "cake and eat it" policy that has paralysed the government while the clock runs down.
In March 2019 we are going to perform a massive gamble on the economy. Tories seem to have forgotten that the other way to decrease debt is to increase tax revenues, and the way to do that without increasing tax rates is drive growth. We are a consumer economy, and it's hard to consume when you have less money and everything costs more. They kept the ball rolling for a while with personal borrowing but that bubble is starting to deflate as well.
And what impact on growth will Brexit have? Even the least amount of change - we rejoin EFTA and retain our EEA membership - still prompts uncertainty. And that option appears fo be politically untenable for the government. Which means we face a hard Brexit of some kind. And in 10 years maybe it will all be fine.
But before it's all fine it will all be shit. Ideas about no physical border and we won't impose tariffs or checks and neither will they are absurd fantasies exposed as such every time that cretin DD goes to Brussles for his slapping with Barnier. There will be checks. And a barrier. And HMRCs new customs computer assuming it works from the get go can at theoretical maximum cope with 60% of the transactions needed if we leave the EEA.
So the argument about money going out will be swamped by the pain of the lack of money coming in as our economy has a heart attack in the week after we leave as the reality of the entire M20 a line of parked trucks and half the shelves in the supermarkets empty and food riots kicks in. We could avoid this. But we voted for a fantasy and our politicians have convinced themselves that fantasy can be achieved because aren't we marvellous.
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2017/09/with-the-terror-threat-level-at-critical-johnson-launches-a-leadership-bid-or-so-it-is-bound-to-seem.html
...... what is Johnson up to?
An easy answer is: a bid to destabilise May, create the circumstances for a leadership election, win it – and become Prime Minister.
This take is credible. May has downgraded his department, role and status. His survey ratings on this site are at their lowest ever. Jacob Rees-Mogg is the activists’ new darling. Time to act – before any reshuffle.
The Telegraph’s presentation boosts this view. “At last, a positive and bold vision for Brexit,” it says. “Boris…must challenge May,” writes Tim Stanley. Charles Moore asks if it’s “time for new leadership”.
Another interpretation is that the Foreign Secretary’s move is more impulsive than deliberate. Downing Street is not denying claims that the article is a speech which it barred him from giving early next week.
According to this version of events, a frustrated Johnson, chafing from the chains that bind him, has broken loose – and given the speech to his chief Fleet Street backer, for which he columnised for so long....
The economic case was lost when May decided playing the strongest card at the election was unnecessary because she considered being able to more easily fire her Chancellor after inevitable victory mattered more.
Daft bat.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/14/jean-claude-juncker-luxembourg-tax-deals-controversy
Boris has probably just about avoided standing on the PM’s shoes with some careful language in his Telegraph article, but the timing of it when there’s soldiers on the streets is awful.
On topic, we are still £50bn per year in the red and need to get that down before the next recession hits. However the very close Parliamentary arithmetic makes major changes outside the Budget very difficult to get through. It would be a very big rabbit if the Chancellor could find as much as £10bn in his Budget hat for pay rises. Given how much squeezing of departmental spending has already happened, it’s either going to have to come from tax rises (on almost everyone, not just some subset of ‘rich’), or from cutting whole spending programmes.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/exclusive-my-european-tax-plans-are-not-antiirish-insists-juncker-36137506.html
Were it not for the Brexit clock ticking, I could see the attractiveness of allowing Corbyn’s Coalition of Chaos to fail to pass a Budget, followed by a second election in October. But with the EU exit having the priority it does, it would have been somewhat selfish to allow a summer of chaos when there was a workable Parliamentary agreement available.
It would, from every point of view, have been better to offer to talk to the SNP and Liberal Democrats first, so that when they refused to play ball (which they would have done, of course) they would have been unable to criticise this arrangement which was the only viable option. However, we are where we are.
And any government that keeps out Corbyn - a less able and less honest version of Chavez - is a good deal. Given his age, time is on the country's side over that.
Ok ignoring for the moment that it's a Scottish subsample lets take a look at the question.
It's a voting intention question where only Labour and Conservative are prompted for. You can't use t as a voting intention question alone.
Fortunately an actual serious Voting intention question was asked and the Scotland figure was Conservative 23% Labour 25% (SNP on 32%)
So when it comes to the head to head Labour-Conservative question which asks
If these two politicians were leaders of the two main parties at the next general election, for which party would you vote? “Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Philip Hammond for the Conservatives”
of course Labour and Conservatives will poll higher than the headline figure - unless you want to explain some magical process that makes the Labour vote rise 10 points over the general voting intention question.
And looking at those head to heads vs Corbyn
Bojo 32% - 36% Corbyn
Amber Rudd 34% - 34% Corbyn
Hammond 32% - 36% Corbyn
David Davis 33% - 34% Corbyn
Making Bojo the least popular Conservative leader. On the Scotland Sub sample Bojo loses every head to head "which of these 2 would you prefer to lead the conservative party" question as well - a phenominal 46/23 to David Davis.
PS: That was a personal one meant for Mr Brooke
Doubly so after all that was said about Mr Corbyn personally during the campaign.
In any case, the main point is you could not have gone into opposition without *supporting* a Corbyn government. Of the 642 seats in the Commons in practice, Corbyn's allies can only muster 315 - short of the Conservative total never mind the Conservative and DUP combined. No way could even someone as megalomaniacal as Corbyn survive on that basis.
https://twitter.com/marinahyde/status/908958651410509824
Could only be improved if he had said Bigly instead of mightily
You're a historian. Think 1923/4.
But the real reason why May couldn't do that is simple.May could not personally survive Bunning their majority. For her own personal survival - like dodgy Dave before her - she put her party second and balls to what it does to the country.
What that demonstrates is the invertebrate cowardice of Tory MPs. They know both were leading them toward the cliff edge, but they're too congenitally stupid and inept to do something about it
Does he really not know the difference between plans and clichés? That's almost as bad as Corbyn's rubbish on student loans.
https://twitter.com/SarahLudford/status/908375967122513922
Can you not see the circumstances are just a little different here?
Edit - it is also worth pointing out that Labour then contained senior figures with a proven track record in Government and confirmed centrist credentials. The current shadow cabinet has neither.
Austerity to me signalled cutting some egregious waste but also lots of things you didn't really want to cut because the deficit required it. The second phase had to be structural reform, slower but requiring an appreciation of what you were providing, with the possibility of repairing some of the early cuts. Cameron failed ever to move onto that, or even understand that there was a massive mindset difference between the two things.
There are exceptions, UC was at least an attempt at this, but was run very detached from the PM, whilst NHS reform needed to focus on localism Vs regionalism at the outset in a very open way, not just change which seats the accountants occupied.
There were cuts and there were pay-caps but most of all there was profligacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_February_1974
In fact Heath would have need both the Liberals and the UUP to get a bare majority.
With the benefit of hindsight, what we should have done is what happened in Ireland, with large actual cuts in government salaries, pensions and benefits. This gave the couple of years’ breathing space necessary for the government’s finances to adjust to the new reality.
Of course, life would have been better if we hadn’t been running deficits when the recession hit in the first place, but as Corbyn discovered people will vote for free sweeties.
I will say again, and will say repeatedly, that the parallel is completely wrong. Unlike Baldwin, Theresa May would have to make the conscious choice to prop up Corbyn. She would have to vote with him or abstain (same difference) on all votes or the government could not survive or even function. She would be the one who would get the blame when support was withdrawn, and her party would suffer the consequences.
If Corbyn had won most seats I would have agreed with your suggestion appalling though the prospect is. One of Brown's worst offences - among many - was to ignore the very clear Baldwin precedent of 1929 that a leader who has come second in an election resigns at once (in this he was of course advised by the egregious Augustine O'Donnell, who turned out to be as ignorant of history, law and democratic mandates as he was of economics and administration). Can you not see however that in the circumstances where a party has to either form a government or actively support an alternative government, particularly when the alternative government is composed of dim-witted far-left populists with links to terrorism, Holocaust Denial and Islington Labour Party that they have to form a government or get a brutal hammering themselves?
The alternative to a May government was another election, and that really wasn't feasible.
(My PhD thesis was on the second Baldwin government of 1924-29. I studied this election in a great deal of depth, including the Joynson-Hicks leadership challenge, the Campbell case and the Zinoviev letter.)
https://andrewhickey.info/2017/09/12/why-are-the-lib-dem-leadership-so-keen-on-brexit/
ps vote underway - I can find no live broadcast.
The problem with the poltical situation at the moment is that the antidote is even worse than the sickness. If the Tories were to be replaced by Corbyn, it would be a total disaster-for Britain, for the economy, and for the Labour Party which I have supported all my life.
Yet the Tories keep insisting that is we wish hard enough the EU will cave in and problems like 5 years for a customs set-up won't matter. There are still a large number of voters backing this approach, I've seen messages sent to a Labour MP up here denouncing them for voting against the second reading of the May enabling act.
But by the time we have an election if we have hard Brexit those voters won't be saying that. Instead they will be demanding blood having been lied to about how the EU will give is our freedom and the sunlit uplands lie over the fence. When they realise the uplands are on fire and there is no food the mood will change. And the people to blame will be the Tories.
Hard Brexit is an Extinction Level Event for any politician / party who backs it. Even if he doesn't become PM you can see Boris forcing May's hand which is already clutching the tiller towards the cliff edge. Who was that civil servant who said I'm fucked you're fucked the party's fucked? That's the Tories.
Popcorn anyone?
Caron Lindsay @caronmlindsay 33s
Standing orders suspended to allow #Brexit motion. 377-97. Amazing turnout for first thing.
However, he was in practice assuming that when it came to the crunch they would support his government against Wilson which is why he only spoke seriously to Thorpe.
That election is a very slightly better parallel to David's suggestion as of course Heath had to offer tacit support to Labour - whom he described as 'standing on the most extreme platform of any party in the twentieth century' - and lost 20 seats at the next election as a result.
If the UK government makes a fair offer to the EU (possibly even by Theresa May in Florence next week) and the EU continue to play hard ball it is more than probable the public will insist on the UK walking away, no matter what the economic consequencies are for the UK and indeed the EU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8Xf0EqMJ50
The Conservatives won a majority on the Mainland, so it was their duty to form a government.
The Tories dont really have a response now people bring up the DUP payment...
UK = responsible hard-working spouse
EU = profligate gold-digger