politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Nunc dimittis: Theresa May’s exit approaches

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort and with a No Deal option the DUP and ERG could back it while it would keep her commitment to respect the original Leave vote

I could live with that.

grabcocque said:

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort and with a No Deal option the DUP and ERG could back it while it would keep her commitment to respect the original Leave vote

How do you propose May would get such a referendum question past the house and past the electoral commission?

Would have to be deal vs. remain, I suspect, for that very reason.

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort and with a No Deal option the DUP and ERG could back it while it would keep her commitment to respect the original Leave vote

That's only because No Deal is so unpopular, but I expect you knew that.

Roger said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Can I please ask a question for any leavers who believe the backstop is a price worth paying to ensure Brexit ... of whom there are a few here, Casino, Sean F and Richard T I believe ... would you say that still if instead of being for Northern Ireland it instead applied to England and Scotland?

If we were being told that upon exit England and Scotland would still in perpetuity be subjected to EU regulations, would in perpetuity be stuck in the customs area . . . And that we would have no MEPs etc to change that and we could never unilaterally end this arrangement, it would take EU permission to change anything and that might never come ...

... if the backstop applies to us would you still think it was a price worth paying?

It's always interesting to hear the views from the antipodes.

Cold and wet antipodes here in NW England.

This whole article is a must read.

https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1070412979303272448?s=21

grabcocque said:

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort and with a No Deal option the DUP and ERG could back it while it would keep her commitment to respect the original Leave vote

How do you propose May would get such a referendum question past the house and past the electoral commission?

As almost all Tory MPs plus the DUP would vote for it plus Hoey, Field, Stringer and Mann.

The electoral commission can have no complaints as Leave won in 2016, this is just on the method of leaving

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort

I know the apocalyptic "there will be riots" prediction is regularly rolled out by Leavers fearful that their hard-won victory will be reversed, but I also believe there would be civil unrest if a referendum were called without Remain on the ballot.

tottenhamWC said:

grabcocque said:

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort and with a No Deal option the DUP and ERG could back it while it would keep her commitment to respect the original Leave vote

How do you propose May would get such a referendum question past the house and past the electoral commission?

Would have to be deal vs. remain, I suspect, for that very reason.

Deal v Remain was 50% 50% so would resolve nothing unlike the 62% Deal 38% No Deal figures

El_Capitano said:

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort

I know the apocalyptic "there will be riots" prediction is regularly rolled out by Leavers fearful that their hard-won victory will be reversed, but I also believe there would be civil unrest if a referendum were called without Remain on the ballot.

Remain had its chance in 2016 and lost.

Given the Yougov results were Remain 50% Deal 50%, Remain 52% No Deal 48% and Deal 62% No Deal 38% the only chance of a conclusive referendum result is Deal v No Deal

Thus far, not looking great for humanity....

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-06/brexit-a-test-for-humanity
Paul Krugman opined recently that Brexit would likely cost the U.K. about 2 percent of GDP, a fair estimate in my view. But that is not the only thing at stake here. Humanity is on trial — more specifically, its collective decision-making capacity — and it is the U.K. standing in the dock...

Nigel_Foremain said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Scott_P said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

We did. We told them it would only work with someone who understood and believed in Brexit in charge.

Another unicorn

Theresa May demonstrates more understanding of Brexit than any one of the Brexiteers

Rubbish. She understands Brexit as well as you do and to be frank I often wonder how you manage to tie your own shoelaces in the morning.

I have come to the conclusion that 52% of the population have Velcro on their shoes. Perhaps you prefer slip-ons?

Steel toe capped rig boots. All the better for giving idiots a good kicking as well.

El_Capitano said:

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort

I know the apocalyptic "there will be riots" prediction is regularly rolled out by Leavers fearful that their hard-won victory will be reversed, but I also believe there would be civil unrest if a referendum were called without Remain on the ballot.

The three options should be on a ranked choice ballot.
Nothing else is currently on offer.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Presumably when hardcore Leavers moan that there hasn't been enough preparation for No Deal, they means things like slaughtering the beef herds ready for the market being closed off on 29th March, scrapping the fishing fleets for the same reason, beginning the five-to-ten year project to transform Dover from a RoRo frictionless port to partially LoLo and partially customs-checking port, invading Calais so we can do the same at the other end, that sort of thing. Criminally negligent not to have done all that, natch.

This will become the new great Brexit myth, now that most of the others have evaporated after coming face to face with the real world.

As the economy dives into decline after a no deal Brexit we will be told that of course with an extra 24 months planning it would have been brilliant.

They can say this safe in the knowledge that it can never be tested. First rule of Brexit, nothing will ever be the fault of Brexit.

grabcocque said:

One serious problem with putting no-deal in a referendum is the Electoral Commission guidance:

o voters can easily understand the question (and its implications)
o voters are informed about the possible outcomes, and can easily
understand the campaign arguments
o voters can have confidence that the result and its implications should be clear and understood

I think you'd find it hard to convince anyone that "no deal" and its implications are clear and understood.

No sensible MP is going to risk no deal going anywhere near a referendum. And those MPs that support it patently aren't sensible.

AndyJS said:

grabcocque said:

Also, I can imagine if we did have a May Deal/No Deal referendum there would be an active campaign to get furious remainers to vote No Deal as an act of pure spite.

And frankly, who could blame them.

Well done, Mrs May, you crushed the saboteurs. Please enjoy your No Deal. Love, remainers xoxoxo

That's why a referendum must have more than two choices, at least to begin with. Whether you use AV or two rounds would have to be decided.

MPs voting for a deal/no deal referendum is the same as voting for the deal, except with the added effect of months of delay, uncertainty, risk, and market volatility, ending up in precisely the same position we are in now. Even I don't believe our politicians are that limp.

But no. It seems that nothing like a majority of MPs are ready to be rational.

Ain't that the truth.

In fairness, that applies to we the public too.

I may not agree with plenty of things Mr Meeks says, but in this piece I think he lays it out very plainly and rationally and has called it mostly right. May will go next week. Whether she calls for a referendum or an interim leader does, I don't see another way around this.

SquareRoot said:

Mexicanpete said:

News from Wales:

New First Minister Mark Drakeford is an absolute Corbynite spanner!

Lets see how a dose of Corbynite "loonacy" goes down in Wales.. A Welsh poll in a few months will be interesting/

I can't think of a more dreary politician. A break from Brexit I suppose.

williamglenn said:

This whole article is a must read.

https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1070412979303272448?s=21

The premise of the headline isn't really true though. The protests in the small towns are mostly peaceful.

The ones in Paris were a combination of mob mentality, far left and far right hooligans using the opportunity to have a go and a lot of criminal elements again using it as a smokescreen e.g. I have seen numerous videos of youths with angle grinders etc attacking cash machines. Nobody goes to a protest about fuel prices with an angle grinder just cos.

However, I did see a tweet from a security guy that pointed to many of the most active accounts furiously retweeting RT, which I thought was interesting.

grabcocque said:

notme said:

grabcocque said:

Also, I can imagine if we did have a May Deal/No Deal referendum there would be an active campaign to get furious remainers to vote No Deal as an act of pure spite.

And frankly, who could blame them.

Well done, Mrs May, you crushed the saboteurs. Please enjoy your No Deal. Love, remainers xoxoxo

This has been the attitude of quite a few influential remainers. They would rather we failed and suitably learnt our lesson.

If Parliament were to move a referendum and deliberately exclude the viewpoint of 50% of the people, what would you expect to happen? That they would sit quietly at home and sulk?

No, you'd expect them to turn out, en masse, to vote for the Wrong answer. Which is No Deal.

Parliament puts no deal on a referendum at its peril. It won't risk it.

And yet many on here are suggesting - or rather arguing vociferously - that 'No Deal' should be excluded from the vote. An outcome that has the support of at least a third of the electorate.

kinabalu said:

It's odd. I'm a no brainer remainer. I actually pricked my finger and marked the ballot in my own blood back in 2016. Silly really but that's how strongly I felt. I think leaving the EU is a very bad call and that it was deeply unwise to give the public the chance to make such a crazy decision. I believe the main drivers of the Leave vote were (i) ignorance (ii) xenophobia (iii) a soft-head hankering for the simpler days of yore. I am almost certain that Brexit will make us economically and culturally poorer and will render us less influential in the world. The only upsides that I can see are that we might if we're lucky get a property crash and a less bloated City of London. Even worse is the potential existential threat to the EU. Without us it is more likely to fracture over time into a collection of aggressively competing nationalist agendas. So, you know, Brexit, I'm not a fan. Yet the thought of it being reversed via the sordid fundamentally dishonest technique of another referendum which is indefensible in principle and will be farcical in practice dismays me to such an extent that if it were to god forbid take place I may well be voting Leave. Like I say, it's odd.

I can't help thinking that need to try get your decision making process onto firmer ground.

Mexicanpete said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SquareRoot said:

Mexicanpete said:

News from Wales:

New First Minister Mark Drakeford is an absolute Corbynite spanner!

Lets see how a dose of Corbynite "loonacy" goes down in Wales.. A Welsh poll in a few months will be interesting/

Poor Wales - he is useless beyond useless

+1

What happened to Carwyn ? Labour did particularly well in Wales at GE17 I thought.

notme said:

williamglenn said:

This whole article is a must read.

https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1070412979303272448?s=21

Won’t take many malcontents to get such protests working here, though we generally don’t do civil disobedience.

Remember the London riots in 2011?

(The ones that would bring down the evil coalition government?)

But we've had one of these events in a different form: Brexit. Leave's manifesto was simple: whatever's wrong with your life isn't your fault, it's theirs. Without the malign hand of the EU pulling the strings, we'd still be a world power. Everything would be rosy and brilliant.

It's easy to blame others. As we see with Brexiteers on here. Stinking winnets who cannot take responsibility for the mess they've taken the country into.

Pulpstar said:

Mexicanpete said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

SquareRoot said:

Mexicanpete said:

News from Wales:

New First Minister Mark Drakeford is an absolute Corbynite spanner!

Lets see how a dose of Corbynite "loonacy" goes down in Wales.. A Welsh poll in a few months will be interesting/

Poor Wales - he is useless beyond useless

+1

What happened to Carwyn ? Labour did particularly well in Wales at GE17 I thought.

Carwyn had enough before he made some disastrous calls over Carl Sergeant. I suspect he found towing the Corbyn line was unsatisfactory too.

FrancisUrquhart said:

williamglenn said:

This whole article is a must read.

https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1070412979303272448?s=21

The premise of the headline isn't really true though. The protests in the small towns are mostly peaceful.

The ones in Paris were a combination of mob mentality, far left and far right hooligans using the opportunity to have a go and a lot of criminal elements again using it as a smokescreen e.g. I have seen numerous videos of youths with angle grinders etc attacking cash machines. Nobody goes to a protest about fuel prices with an angle grinder just cos.

However, I did see a tweet from a security guy that pointed to many of the most active accounts furiously retweeting RT, which I thought was interesting.

I usually go with a JCB

And Corbyn could hardly go AWOL again during a second referendum.

grabcocque said:

AndyJS said:

grabcocque said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Eagles, has readership decline increase or decreased since Greig[sp] took over?

The Daily Mail has lost about 200,000 daily readers since he took over. But that's entirely in keeping with the Mail's trend rate of decline.

He's only been in charge for a very brief time hasn't he? 200,000 seems like a lot of readers to lose in a short time.

The Daily Mail's readers are very old. Old people have a habit of dying.

I didn't think they were that old, not as old as Telegraph readers for example.

Richard_Tyndall said:

grabcocque said:

notme said:

grabcocque said:

Also, I can imagine if we did have a May Deal/No Deal referendum there would be an active campaign to get furious remainers to vote No Deal as an act of pure spite.

And frankly, who could blame them.

Well done, Mrs May, you crushed the saboteurs. Please enjoy your No Deal. Love, remainers xoxoxo

This has been the attitude of quite a few influential remainers. They would rather we failed and suitably learnt our lesson.

If Parliament were to move a referendum and deliberately exclude the viewpoint of 50% of the people, what would you expect to happen? That they would sit quietly at home and sulk?

No, you'd expect them to turn out, en masse, to vote for the Wrong answer. Which is No Deal.

Parliament puts no deal on a referendum at its peril. It won't risk it.

And yet many on here are suggesting - or rather arguing vociferously - that 'No Deal' should be excluded from the vote. An outcome that has the support of at least a third of the electorate.

Not me. No deal has to be on any referendum ballot, and has to be seen to be defeated.

grabcocque said:

AndyJS said:

grabcocque said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Eagles, has readership decline increase or decreased since Greig[sp] took over?

The Daily Mail has lost about 200,000 daily readers since he took over. But that's entirely in keeping with the Mail's trend rate of decline.

He's only been in charge for a very brief time hasn't he? 200,000 seems like a lot of readers to lose in a short time.

The Daily Mail's readers are very old. Old people have a habit of dying.

How do you make a habit of something you can do only once ?

Richard_Tyndall said:

And yet many on here are suggesting - or rather arguing vociferously - that 'No Deal' should be excluded from the vote. An outcome that has the support of at least a third of the electorate.

A third of the electorate are going to be upset regardless - the challlenge is getting it down from 2/3 of the electorate being upset. If the question is some kind of 50/50 then this is just going to rumble on for decades. I've felt for a while that the only way of getting to only 1/3 being upset is some kind of referendum, and probably the only option that allows 2/3 to be happy is some kind of variation on Norway. Right now, getting a stable result is more important than the detail of how much harm each version does.

So that feels like some kind of STV referendum between Deal/Norway/Remain.

grabcocque said:

AndyJS said:

grabcocque said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Eagles, has readership decline increase or decreased since Greig[sp] took over?

The Daily Mail has lost about 200,000 daily readers since he took over. But that's entirely in keeping with the Mail's trend rate of decline.

He's only been in charge for a very brief time hasn't he? 200,000 seems like a lot of readers to lose in a short time.

The Daily Mail's readers are very old. Old people have a habit of dying.

That is just nasty

HYUFD said:

Philip_Thompson said:

HYUFD said:

grabcocque said:

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort and with a No Deal option the DUP and ERG could back it while it would keep her commitment to respect the original Leave vote

How do you propose May would get such a referendum question past the house and past the electoral commission?

As almost all Tory MPs plus the DUP would vote for it plus Hoey, Field, Stringer and Mann.

The electoral commission can have no complaints as Leave won in 2016, this is just on the method of leaving

DUP won't vote for deal being an option.

Many 'wet' Tories wouldn't vote for no deal being an option.

Even Ken Clarke backs the Deal, the DUP backed Leave and would prefer Deal v No Deal to Deal v Remain

Ken Clarke backs the Deal, he opposes No Deal.
DUP oppose the Deal.

You can't get MPs to back a referendum just by putting their favourite option as an option, not if something they bitterly oppose is also there and could win.

El_Sid said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

And yet many on here are suggesting - or rather arguing vociferously - that 'No Deal' should be excluded from the vote. An outcome that has the support of at least a third of the electorate.

A third of the electorate are going to be upset regardless - the challlenge is getting it down from 2/3 of the electorate being upset. If the question is some kind of 50/50 then this is just going to rumble on for decades. I've felt for a while that the only way of getting to only 1/3 being upset is some kind of referendum, and probably the only option that allows 2/3 to be happy is some kind of variation on Norway. Right now, getting a stable result is more important than the detail of how much harm each version does.

So that feels like some kind of STV referendum between Deal/Norway/Remain.

I agree. I am not advocating voting No Deal. I am saying since it is clearly a well supported (if minority) outcome it needs to be on the ballot. Personally of course I think if there is a ballot it should just be a Deal/No Deal choice since we already decided the Leave/Remain question but the bad losers won't let that happen.

AmpfieldAndy said:

May being ousted and being forced to resign can’t happen soon enough. She has been a total disaster ever she called the 2017 general election and is now, in my opinion anyway, the worst Troy PM post 1945 - even worse than Eden or Heath.

I disagree totally with Dominic Grieve’s position on Brexit but he is the only one to come out of the Brexit debates with any credit because he is the only one who has thought through his approach and applied that to his actions. May has just capitulated to the EU without negotiating anything rather like Cameron over the EU budget and then the pre referendum renegotiation; most Tory MPs have followed her like lemmings whilst the Brexit supporters have betrayed their cause by failing to put in the hard yards to come up with any credible plan at any stage.

I desperately want Brexit to happen and not because of immigration but it’s going to be betrayed by a supine Parliament with a Remain majority who don’t believe in it and are scared of it.

Labour look nailed on favourites to be in power early next year but ditching May at least gives the Tories a fighting chance of stopping them - if they pick the right leader.

Wrong, no alternative leader polls any better than May and most poll worse.

No current poll gives a Labour majority, including Survation

grabcocque said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

grabcocque said:

notme said:

grabcocque said:

Also, I can imagine if we did have a May Deal/No Deal referendum there would be an active campaign to get furious remainers to vote No Deal as an act of pure spite.

And frankly, who could blame them.

Well done, Mrs May, you crushed the saboteurs. Please enjoy your No Deal. Love, remainers xoxoxo

This has been the attitude of quite a few influential remainers. They would rather we failed and suitably learnt our lesson.

If Parliament were to move a referendum and deliberately exclude the viewpoint of 50% of the people, what would you expect to happen? That they would sit quietly at home and sulk?

No, you'd expect them to turn out, en masse, to vote for the Wrong answer. Which is No Deal.

Parliament puts no deal on a referendum at its peril. It won't risk it.

And yet many on here are suggesting - or rather arguing vociferously - that 'No Deal' should be excluded from the vote. An outcome that has the support of at least a third of the electorate.

I agree, and that's part of my argument for why a PV is a dangerous and foolish idea. The last referendum showed the enormous political risk of calling a referendum where Parliament does not believe that one of the two outcomes is reasonable and viable.

To make the same mistake *again* by risking a No Deal, and then perhaps refusing to implement no deal, would be absurd. Which practically means, No Deal cannot be an option, which in the interests of democracy means that a second referendum cannot happen.

If there were a remain/deal referendum, I'd expect a massive leaver boycott, which would reduce the legitimay of the entire thing to a sad joke.

I agree with all of that.

Pulpstar said:

HYUFD said:

grabcocque said:

HYUFD said:

Given Deal beats No Deal 62% to 38% with Yougov May might be tempted to call a Deal v No Deal referendum as a last resort and with a No Deal option the DUP and ERG could back it while it would keep her commitment to respect the original Leave vote

How do you propose May would get such a referendum question past the house and past the electoral commission?

As almost all Tory MPs plus the DUP would vote for it plus Hoey, Field, Stringer and Mann.

The electoral commission can have no complaints as Leave won in 2016, this is just on the method of leaving

Grieve Wollaston Soubry Clarke and a.bunch of others would not

Clarke has already said he would back the Deal and Field, Mann, Skinner, Stringer and Hoey would vote for Deal v No Deal anyway, cancelling out the above

JosiasJessop said:

notme said:

williamglenn said:

This whole article is a must read.

https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1070412979303272448?s=21

Won’t take many malcontents to get such protests working here, though we generally don’t do civil disobedience.

Remember the London riots in 2011?

(The ones that would bring down the evil coalition government?)

But we've had one of these events in a different form: Brexit. Leave's manifesto was simple: whatever's wrong with your life isn't your fault, it's theirs. Without the malign hand of the EU pulling the strings, we'd still be a world power. Everything would be rosy and brilliant.

It's easy to blame others. As we see with Brexiteers on here. Stinking winnets who cannot take responsibility for the mess they've taken the country into.

Except the manifesto didn't say any of that at all. Keep on making stuff up JJ.

HYUFD said:

May got the Deal which as Yougov shows is the only way over 60% of the country will ever agree a solution to Brexit

When you ask voters about the specific tradeoffs they'd want to make, the Rand/KCL/Cambridge survey translated into requests that look something like Norway
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/policy-institute/publications/What-sort-of-Brexit-do-the-British-people-want.pdf

We realise that compromises will have to be made. We would like to have completely unrestricted trade with Europe, as we have now, as well as being able to control immigration and make our own trade deals. But we realise that it is not possible to have everything we want. A compromise would:
•
Allow us to travel to the EU for holidays without a visa and for EU citizens to
visit the UK under the same terms. However, in both cases we would prefer that
people should need health insurance to cover medical emergencies.
•
Allow us to go to EU countries to look for work, and for EU citizens to look
for work in the UK, but for public services only to be accessible to those who
have a job.
•
Allow UK businesses to trade freely in EU countries, and EU businesses to do
the same in the UK. This is important both for goods and for services such as
banking.
•
Allow the UK to make its own laws in most areas, although we realise that we will
need to be bound by EU laws around trade.
•
Allow the UK to make its own trade deals outside the EU, which we accept may
mean remaining outside the EU’s customs union.

algarkirk said:

notme said:

grabcocque said:

notme said:

grabcocque said:

Also, I can imagine if we did have a May Deal/No Deal referendum there would be an active campaign to get furious remainers to vote No Deal as an act of pure spite.

And frankly, who could blame them.

Well done, Mrs May, you crushed the saboteurs. Please enjoy your No Deal. Love, remainers xoxoxo

This has been the attitude of quite a few influential remainers. They would rather we failed and suitably learnt our lesson.

If Parliament were to move a referendum and deliberately exclude the viewpoint of 50% of the people, what would you expect to happen? That they would sit quietly at home and sulk?

No, you'd expect them to turn out, en masse, to vote for the Wrong answer. Which is No Deal.

Parliament puts no deal on a referendum at its peril. It won't risk it.

48%. And we wouldn’t be having a second referendum to decide whether to do it or not. You don’t get a second spin of the coin. It will be to decide the type of Brexit. Any remainer who has not realised that a Norway or Norway+ option is their best end game needs to think a bit more about what they want out of this.

An under examined problem of a further referendum is that it seems to be impossible to devise questions which would command general assent as being legitimate. Millions (including me) would regard 'Remain' being on the ballot as illegitimate, millions more would regard its omission in the same way. Same with options within 'Leave'. It is as difficult and potentially problem creating as another GE. Continuity May keeping on working at the present deal could easily turn out to be the best of a bad lot

Yep. I don't like the Deal but it is better than Remain any day. And probably better than No Deal in spite of its serious flaws.