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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » To add to the febrile political mix – next week’s boundary cha

One thing I think is for sure – there’ll be no move to remove the diminished TMay next week. MPs will be mostly focused on the position their own seats and the impact of revised boundary plans.
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If that is true it turns it's head on the general opinion on here and in the broadcast media
I think the EU will start trade talks at the start of 2018. But certainly if we haven't had signs from the EU that they're prepared to start sensible discussions by the end of the year we'll have to walk away (Jose)
edit: Wales http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40248155
Hunt http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41590429
I wonder if someone will propose a vote next week on maintaining the 650-seat House? The poor Boundary Commission staff must be pulling their hair out!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/legal-complexities-make-transition-deal-with-the-eu-almost-impossible-wvxfzxsww
What is even the point!?
A negligible reduction in expenditure for a significant political cost.
#LookingOnTheBrightSide
Thing is the behavior of the EU towards us confirms my suspicions about the whole thing and makes me more convinced than ever that I was right to vote leave and get out of this project while we still can.
I suspect I'm not alone.
Always a reasonable one is David.
Even personally I have been waiting since July 2016 for a bi-lateral hernia op and only now have they suggested it may be in November
But the whole thing is about harm reduction. With every passing day the fantasy offered to voters endorsed very narrowly by a nasty spasm of populist ethnonationalism evaporates further. So we keep on buggering on. Moving the line of eventual compromise towards sanity. We must hope for a Dunkirk Brexit. A sucessful enough evacuation for us to mythologise as a sucess. If not it's a Suez Brexit.
https://twitter.com/daily_politics/status/918442619616747520
I think it's daft to 'equalise' based on registered voters, rather than by population. MPs for poorer areas (where voter registration is lower) will end up being responsible for more people who still need time, attention, resources regardless of whether they're on the register or not.
If we want votes to be proportional, change the voting system rather than tinker about with boundaries that are out of date the second they're drawn up even by their own metrics anyway...
And how's that fantastic moustache of his doing?
https://twitter.com/joepike/status/918444984424189953
Once Brexit has been completed I also see no further point to UKIP.
And PS if we don't do it now we will do it later, which ought to encourage us to get on with it.
On Brexit of course talks will fail - we're asking for things that the EU cannot offer. Which leaves us with a spread of unpalatable options:
1. A hard Brexit falling back onto WTO. With all the difficulties in setting ourselves up independently from the EU, the pain the EU will impose with a hard border and customs checks etc. What many Tories want but will literally be an extinction level event for any politician/party associated with it
2. EFTA - if we can negotiate our way back in quickly enough. Politically toxic for both remain and leave in different ways
3. And endless "transition" where we kick the can further down the road. Brexit people will go crazy the longer it drags on, especially with business demanding that the "temporary" EEA membership becomes permanent. Likely to fuel the rise of hard nationalist "no surrender (to the EU)" style parties
4. Facing the reality that all the alternatives to the EU are worse we decide not to leave. As with option 3 I expect a significant switch to nationalist hard right parties from people convinced they have been betrayed.
I voted leave, I support EFTA/EEA as the way forward. And it still feels like the least worst solution. Which is why we won't do it.
I don't think it tells us much either way about the likely reaction of the electorate to a no deal Brexit - particularly as no one, not even on this august platform, seems to be able to agree on the likely consequences of no deal.
I’m a democrat, but I couldn’t trash the economy to deliver Brexit.
The DUP aren’t going to vote for it.
Mrs May really shit the bed in June, if she had any sense of shame or decency she’d have done a Captain Oates.
The problem is and always been the Conservative Party. The referendum itself was cooked up by Cameron as a way of shoring up the Conservative vote from UKIP and it succeeded.
Cameron may not have expected to win his majority - perhaps he hoped for Coalition 2.0 - but the LDs were crushed and he had to implement the Referendum he had promised. Perhaps he thought he could win that by the strength of his charisma, personality and popular appeal but he crashed and burned just as Nick Clegg did with AV.
With his departure, a sensible leader would have made this a cross-party non-partisan exercise inviting the best from all sides (including REMAIN) to come together to craft the best deal for our country.
That didn't happen - instead, part of the Conservative Party decided they would own and control the process completely and spent months telling us not to worry our little heads about it but "trust Theresa". When it turned out we didn't and time and money was wasted on a futile GE we've found ourselves seven months down a twenty-four month road and, platitudes aside, we have the sum total of bugger all.
My error was not to vote LEAVE but to assume those who would find themselves in power would have the interests of the nation at heart rather than their own squalid party political machinations.
Nixon in China, Thatcher and Reagan with the USSR. The way to get agreement is when you can make concessions/extend the hand of friendship safely from a place of ideological purity. Having someone who knows they are already suspected of being a sell out in charge means they are unwilling to make even the most sensible concessions.
The way to sell EEA is to Leavers: "We have left the EU and it's good. Nothing much has changed." To Remainers: "We have left the EU but fortunately nothing much has changed."
http://peterjnorth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/i-dont-like-this-brexit-but-i-will-live.html
Instead we had the 3 Brexiteers. A plan to further disunite the country is hard to conceive of.
https://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/918444878018891776
It would probably be sensible for it to be voted to be delayed again next week, at least until Brexit is out of the way. That’s much easier than voting for the retention of 650 constituencies, which I think requires primary legislation to repeal the previous law from 2011.
https://twitter.com/joepike/status/918449311616323584
The exchange of insults based on little but personal opinion is one of the most depressing aspects of this whole debate. Lawson used to be more sensible about politics, but that was a while back.
Without being a member of the EEA the EU will impose a hard border. What we do on our side is irrelevant - they will stop and check all trucks crossing their border. The delay not only adds massive cost it physically stops trade. Our trucks can't cross the channel to then recross loaded with car parts or food or that fitness tracker I've ordered from Amazon that they're sending me (with free shipping!) from Italy.
What are the realities here? Our port operators say it will take years to install the infrastructure needed for full customs checks. HMRC say it needs 5 years for a computer system to handle "no deal" customs checks. Our big logistics operators are increasingly concerned. I work in the food industry which is now trying to work out what the hell to do with the worst case scenario we're now facing. And thats just one industry - most others are built on easy free unimpeded access to and from European suppliers and factories. The EU will impose a hard border if we leave the single market on day 1.
So in an economy with inflation once again outstripping wages, with 1/3 of households having £0 in the bank, with personal debt north of £200bn and an immediate sharp economic shock brewing with no deal brexit, you will have to excuse me if I - a leave voter BTW - take your dismissive comments about the economy under advisement.
(a) Leavers who were foaming at the bit a year ago for Article 50 to be triggered immediately and conducting Two Minutes Hates of judges who were holding up the process of rule by Government fiat; and
(b) Leavers who are now furious with the Government for having triggered Article 50 too soon?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.