politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » NEW PB/Polling Matters podcast: Why aren’t the polls moving?
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » NEW PB/Polling Matters podcast: Why aren’t the polls moving?
The PB / Polling Matters podcast returns! Keiran is joined by Leo Barasi and Matt Singh to discuss the latest developments in Westminster (and beyond) and what the numbers tell us about what is going on.
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https://nyti.ms/2hvzLEz
http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/bonnie-greer-luddites-acceleration-1-5274333#
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/15/ecb-criticises-banks-relocation-plans-brexit-euro-area
What's the opposite of Dr Pangloss?
However if you don't like that small taste of Project Reality from the ECB try this new report from the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Customs Chaos on Brexit day.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/16/ministers-warned-about-repeat-of-dover-lorry-queues-after-brexit
I am assuming that May needs to offer something like this:
Euro 20 Bn for a two year transition period (agreed and committed to now)
Euro 10 Bn when the high level basis for an FTA is agreed and included in the A50 treaty
Euro 20 Bn when such an FTA is ratified
If she offers this it will be hard for the EU to refuse and, more importantly, hard for the remainers in the UK to say we should offer any more.
If she tries to make an offer without linking it to deliverables, she will be out of power in a month.
Smart? No.
In my experience, most of the money to be made out of political betting is from laying other peoples overconfident predictions.
A commitment to EUR60bn of payments (which, by the way, will be fudged in a number of ways anyway) is contingent on a successful deal on the far end.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/15/christopher-steele-trump-russia-dossier-accurate
I subscribe to The New European print edition. Much more subtle than you think and really an experiment in what newsprint will look like when everything goes weekly. Now I don't commute I find it's enough newsprint for one week.
I've moved to the New York Times recently in light of some introductory offers then a freebie from Google. It's beautiful. A pleasure to be able to follow world news without the Brexit Wars.
The revamped Washington Post is fantastic content wise but I hated the app.
In terms of a centre right source to challenge me I've dropped the Telegraph then the Daily Mail as Brexit has unhinged both. The former has become the Sun with longer sentences. I do buy the Mail on Sunday though which is far more nuanced. I won't even click on an Independent link now as since it ceased printing the online edition is so poor.
Proper journalists being able to afford food is a bulwark against tyranny. The period where we learn to monetise serious non print news is going to be very bumpy and often grim.
May will have to link payment to actual delivery. If she does, she will get away with paying the bill and even hard Brexit guys like myself will shrug and accept it. If the payment is contingent on the FTA there is at least a reasonable basis for the negotiations for the FTA because both sides have leverage.
The extent to which these matters get caught up between Theological objections on one side and ' why the f*ck are we leaving then ? ' on the other will determine how we go.
I'll be particularly interested in the psychological impact of the penny dropping that Brexit Day isn't going to bring closure. That in fact negotiations will continue long into the now 27 month transition.
Wouldn't that cut both ways?
While hugely disruptive - and more damaging for us than them, its not cost-free for them either......
If an UK/EU FTA does not properly cover services it is very simple - it should be rejected as not in the UKs interests.
If they want to be sh1ts about it then we’ll all just buy Jaguars and McLarens rather than Beemers and Ferraris. Oh, and we’ll keep buying Nissans from Sunderland and Hondas from Swindon too, and maybe even Minis from Oxford. It’s not as if British-made cars are all rubbish any more, they’re just as good as the European offerings.
#5 is not going to be acceptable either - you don't pay for 'free' trade. On a CETA style agreement there will be no basis for payments. You could argue that virtual SM access might attract a small ongoing fee, but this doesn't appear to be on offer anyway.
The above are not going to be May's red lines - they are the red lines that will be forced on her by the public, the Tory party and the cabinet leavers. They are also in line with common sense - once you get past the irrational view that leaving the SM is bound to be a disaster, these outcomes would be far worse than leaving with no deal.
So no, I don't think there is any chance that Brexit day will not be a clear break. There won't be a transition at all if she cannot manage these outcomes.
The UK's chemical and pharmaceutical industry will today say it will be resilient in the face of Brexit uncertainty.
The Chemical Industries Association (CIA) will lay out plans for continued growth after Brexit at its annual dinner today.
“We have our challenges with Brexit and the rest but we won’t sit around waiting for things to happen to us. This is an industry that has always made its own future and will continue to do so," CIA president Tom Crotty will say.
http://www.cityam.com/275834/uk-chemicals-sector-we-wont-bogged-down-brexit-uncertainty?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=dvTwitter
The component supply chain is a different issue, but yes I agree it’s still a significant hurdle to overcome.
As I predicted during the referendum, Brexit is very likely to involve the UK still following most EU rules, still continuing to make financial contributions, and allowing in most of the EU workers who actually still want to come.
YellowSub is also right that anyone who thinks that Brexit can be ticked off as 'done' in the foreseeable, allowing 'normal politics' to resume, is being naive.
http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/culture/michelin-restaurants-in-britain-how-will-brexit-impact-uk-fine-dining-1-4839214
Which rather summed up one of the reasons Remain lost....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41986090
....It was a suggestion I made to the Dutch minister for European affairs, Anne Mulder. Was it time, I asked, for the Netherlands and other influential EU nations to offer the UK more concessions, given all would suffer from a breakdown of talks?
The Dutch have a reputation for politeness, and I was expecting a reply laden with diplomatic euphemism. What I got was a surprisingly pithy denunciation of Britain's politicians, and their approach to the Brexit negotiations:
"Some of them are unrealistic, they are not rational… they are always saying the ball is in the EU's court. Well there's a great big ball in their court, but they don't want to see, because they are blind."
And what about the claim that the EU needs the UK just as much as the UK needs the EU?
"If you want to dream, do it at night," he suggested....
The polling pretty clearly indicates that a UKIP revival that takes support on the right away from the Tories is pretty much the only way Labour wins for as long as Corbyn is in charge.
Credit rating giant S&P says UK banks are now better placed to deal with Brexit | City A.M.
http://www.cityam.com/275844/credit-rating-giant-sp-says-uk-banks-now-better-placed-deal
Weber’s comments are noteworthy not only because he’s an an ally of the German Chancellor but because on several occasions he has dismissed British proposals on the financial settlement and citizens rights. Last summer he went as far as accusing May of bringing chaos to Britain with her choice of calling a snap election. He even asked May to fire Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as recently as October.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/hawkish-ally-of-merkel-met-may-and-struck-a-positive-brexit-note
In what alternate universe do the Dutch have a reputation for politeness?
I used to work in den Bosch, great people the dutch, but polite? You've got to be kidding me, they are the most straight talking, direct, nation on earth.
For example - take this bell curve produced by the former Beliezian ambassador to the United Nations;
https://dashboards.lordashcroftpolls.com/Storyboard/RHViewStoryBoard.aspx?RId=²¶&RLId=²²&PId=±´»µ¶&UId=´¹¹¹¼&RpId=25
It was bollocks - Michael was clearly overconfident and the result proves his bell curve was garbage.
But punters wanted to believe.
That was never a 17% chance.
The only reason the Government will not be able to execute this is because the civil service, aided and abetted by Hammond, refuse to plan for it.
But if everyone else can manage this, why can't we?
It will just mean a lower standard of living than we currently enjoy. As long as folk are happy with that, no problem.
As it happens, no one has ever made the journey we are attempting, breaking 45 years of ties and institutional and regulatory convergence with so many other countries and our closest trading partners.
Leavers fixate on returning to the pre-70s position and spend very little time considering whether, even if this proves beneficial as they believe, the size of the eventual prize (in real rather than ideological terms) justifies the cost of and damage from making what will probably be a very uncomfortable transition.
Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics, a wonky U.K. blog.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-16/theresa-may-s-job-is-safe-for-now
So even if the trade outcome is slightly worse, we do not think that the evidence suggests it is material and could easily be countered by better trade deals elsewhere, lower regulation and a reduction of tariffs on imports which protect largely French and German interests and not ours.
Given that there is evidence all over the World that trading outside the SM is not exactly a problem, why should be back away from this view?
It makes the graphs of polling we like to make narratives from just trash, reading into shifts in data that are just the result of shifts in methods. Until we know what changes the polling companies have made and when, their data is useless for any purpose.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?dcr=0&source=hp&ei=Bz0NWtXyCcHQkwX8p62YDA&q=https://www.ft.com/content/f3143c7e-c56b-11e7-a1d2-6786f39ef675
UKIP can't take themselves seriously. Why should the voters?
The current gold standard has Labour 6% ahead.
1) the polls have never really been very reliable so this isn't a new thing; and
2) where methodologies haven't changed between polls, directions of travel are of some use. So I'm not very interested in ICM finding that Labour and the Conservatives are level. I am interested in them finding that neither seems to be declining much and that both' poll ratings have been consistent for months.
Our economy has been built on the presumption Single Market membership. We can adapt to being outside, but until (if?) we construct trade deals that are a net positive compared to EU membership for our economy (and these usually take 7+ years in the meantime we are growing slower) we will be poorer than we would have otherwise been.
And on the customs/imports issue you are saying that we can put in place a system before March 2019 that is equivalent to systems built up over decades in other countries. Well, maybe with massive costs and bringing in a lot of migrant labour....
Because there's a LOT of heat, and not much light.
1. Question is irrelevant, there is no election.
2. Positions increasing entrenched, switching May<->Corbyn hard. Both recruiting sergeants for other team.
Stability in top line figures doesn't mean stability, if they've got the weightings for different groups as badly wrong as previously. Over-weighted groups could be compensating for shifts in under-weighted ones. We just don't know.
The polls have never been reliable, but it's crazy to allow the polling to guide how we talk about politics when they've been so consistently wrong previously.
Who is going to electorally benefit in that period?
Polls this far out are bizarrely irrelevant, as there is no GE on the cards. The polls shifted hugely when there was one called. The starting point was forgotten very quickly.
If May had another 2 digit lead would she call an election? No, because nobody would believe it.
Mr. Paris, indeed.
Also, I am still not convinced that Jezza will still be there in 2022, and a change in LOTO will also have a big impact.
So at the moment movements in the polls (when there are any) are interesting, but not much else is relevant.
The estimate is about 1-2% GDP benefit derived from the single market itself in that it reduces certain costs derived of regulatory difference. Customs unions rarely 'create' any wealth - they simply divert trade to keep it inside the bloc, which allows it to entrench old technologies or old working practices if that is politically advantageous.
Australia found this when it set its American deal, that the trade liberalisation it had pursued around Asia started to reverse. The trajectory of the economy didn't massively shift, but their trade displaced itself towards the USA.
Of course, once you're in, you've already tied in that effect and it isn't easy or cheap to undo. That's why the big nations/powers favour these arrangements (USA/EU) because it ties the smaller economies in semi permanently because they can't undo the arrangements as easily as they made them. The big nations become the centre of gravity regulation wise.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/brexit-heartlands-want-someone-else-to-pay-pthzgl35g
It would be like expecting Mr. Dancer to tell us who was going to be the top dog in F1 in 2022....
Of course things are not equal and those who point out that our economic model is currently built on unrestricted access to the Single Market are right. There would be some disruption and refocusing of effort over a period of time. There might be some adverse investment decisions as well as some positive ones (where import substitution is made more attractive by the barriers). There would probably be a period of growth that would be modestly below par.
The point I have made on here on previous occasions is that these are very small effects and are likely to be subsumed in other effects. A material slow down in the US (our biggest single customer), for example, would have a larger effect than this. In reality I think that 10% is a significant overstatement of the consequences of WTO rules so the effects will be even smaller.
I completely get that some people think why should we suffer these adverse effects at all, however minor. I even get the argument that we might have better growth opportunities in the future inside the SM although the evidence for that is weak. But those who try to paint this as the end of the world (or indeed a fabulous new opportunity) are seriously overstating the case. It just isn't.
This means that all the borrowing of the local housing associations were included as part of the Government debt and deficit numbers. As a consequence the Government was controlling their borrowing, reducing affordable house building.
Over the past couple of months a new statutory instrument has been approved which put restrictions on local government control over housing associations. The purpose was to enable the ONS to change the classification of housing associations so that they were no longer included in the Government accounts, and hence debt numbers. See this letter from last August: https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/news/statementsandletters/furtherstatementonenglishhousingassociations/englishprpsaugust2017.pdf
It would appear that the decision has now been taken by the ONS to reclassify, thus enabling the Government to permit more borrowing by Housing Associations and hence more affordable house building.