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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The magnificent resilience of TMay ploughing on relentlessly a
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The magnificent resilience of TMay ploughing on relentlessly against all the odds
The week before Christmas and the PM looks set to have another uphill task once again this afternoon facing yet again a marathon grilling by MPs after she reports on last week’s abortive mission to Brussels.
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* Her cabinet (around Chequers and through the negotiation, they were not on the same page)
* Her backbenchers (in the run up to the Commons vote)
* Other parties (critically right now, when she needs to give them something)
* The electorate (at the 2017 General Election, losing her majority)
* The EU (recently and through the negotiations)
It was transparent months ago that her deal did not have the votes to pass the Commons and yet she ploughed on. All the signals were there. Anyone with half a political brain could see it, but so convinced of her own wisdom, she took us to the brink.
This is not magnificent. Any fool could have concluded a deal with the EU that could not pass the Commons and bring us to this point.
What would have been magnificent would have been to avoid this in the first place.
The deal was not agreed months ago - it was only agreed a month ago. Anyone saying they would vote against something they hadn't seen, especially on such an important issue, are utter fucking muppets who do not have the interests of the country at heart.
Forbes on Trump and Russia.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2018/12/16/mueller-exposes-putins-hold-over-trump/
But.... Rather than offer her the tumbler of whisky and the pearl-handled, the Tory Party has voted to keep Theresa May as our Prime Minister.
Theresa May comes with Theresa May's Shit Deal.
So the Tory Party has voted for Theresa May's Shit Deal. They might not have thought that's what they were doing last Tuesday, but they will get there eventually. (Or else flounce off to form a new party that will get nowhere and whither away. Taking any form of Brexit with it.)
Theresa May is not for Plan B, Plan C, Plan D. Theresa May is for Plan Theresa. And as the head of the government, she holds most of the cards to block Plan B, Plan C, Plan D.....
I think Brexit shows how poor British politicians and the Civil Service who advise them, actually are. No wonder so many MPs want to ignore the first referendum result before we’ve actually left. Being paid a large amount of money for simply doing what Brussels tells you is far easier.
May’s standing derives from the fact that she is at least having a go and the British do like a plucky loser. It’s not really serving the country very well though to have a PM who doesn’t want to leave the EU and who is failing to prepare for it, turn up to Brussels for ritual humiliations because she wants a post Brexit relationship with the EU that the EU clearly don’t want, whilst domestic policy is ignored.
I don’t necessarily want a popular PM myself if it means having one that is incompetent.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-46588036
Forbes recently challenged a variety of smartphone face-recognition systems with a 3d printed head modeled after the author's head.
The head was printed at Backface in Birmingham, U.K., where I was ushered into a dome-like studio containing 50 cameras. Together, they combine to take a single shot that makes up a full 3D image.
The final model took a few days to generate at the cost of just over £300. With it, the author tested it out against four Android smartphones and the iPhone X. All Android phones tested were able to be unlocked with the fake 3d printed head.
If you're an Android customer, though, look away from your screen now. We tested four of the hottest handsets running Google's operating systems and Apple's iPhone to see how easy it'd be to break into them.
We did it with a 3D-printed head. All of the Androids opened with the fake. Apple's phone, however, was impenetrable.
The Android phones tested included the LG G7 ThinQ, Samsung S9, Samsung Note 8 and OnePlus 6.
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/12/16/3d-printed-head-android-face-id/
FPT @MorrisDancer
Thank you, Mr. Brooke. I hope so too.
Didn't back Thomas (around 3.5 or 4.5) for SPOTY last night. Mildly annoyed with myself, but this betting business would be rather easier with hindsight.
I mus say Mr D I rather thought Lewis Hamilton should have won, his achievements are mucg greatewr than young Thomas
The only viable alternatives are No Deal that would maximise the damage to the economy, permanent Customs Union and Single Market BINO which would mean free movement and we could never do our own trade deals or reversing Brexit altogether after a Remain vote in EUref2
https://twitter.com/frankfieldteam/status/1074568407687880706?s=20
As for the article, anyone using Android phones should avoid going into a specialist photo lab and having a 3d model of their head created...
And you assume that something better was available. Perhaps a master negotiator such as Mark might have (ha!), or perhaps you think some of the geniuses on the Labour front bench might have.
Or perhaps she got the best there was ...
https://tinyurl.com/y735fmgt
However, this year they have decided to hold back the information, meaning Hamilton will not know how close he was to winning his second SPOTY trophy.
BBC sport journalist Francis Keogh tweeted: “I’m told there will be no voting numbers for Sports Personality as the BBC have brought it in line with other programmes like Strictly #SPOTY.”
On the other hand, the government’s control of Parliament means that those 200 MPs have voted to facilitate Theresa May’s Cynical Delaying Strategy: unless they removed her, it remains unclear how Parliament will have the opportunity to follow any other Brexit outcome. The key question is how many of the 200 want to get to TMSD and believe that TMCDS will get there, and how many don’t believe in TMCDS and have an alternative plan. And perhaps, how many have no plan at all.
In the meantime, there’s not a lot the other 450 MPs can do.
Instead she is reduced to using No Deal or No Brexit to scare the different groups of opponents to her deal. She is relying on her opponents being too divided to replace her and follow a different policy.
I’d rather have a FTA myself with complete freedom to regulate our domestic economy as we see fit. That’s fairly standard amongst civilised nations that respect the rule of law. However if the choice is no deal or no Brexit, I would prefer the first to the second.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2016/09/11/meet-the-new-boss/
I could have done worse.
So it is perfectly reasonable to say that the basic concept if Brexit was sound, that a far better deal could have been negotiated if someone else had been doing it but also that now we are here it is right to support this Deal as the best we are now going to get.
On us not leaving the EU is say 62% it not happening is about right. May is trying - she clearly did respond to parliament by trying to get changes so the charge she never listens is false, she just failed in the task and is stalling until Xmas - but the momentum is building.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/brexit/7993374/brexiteers-are-like-vermin-and-communist-revolutionaries-europhile-lord-patten-claims/
https://twitter.com/johndillonsport/status/621242958617137152?s=21
It is No Deal or Remain which will hugely divide the country
https://www.globebmg.com/globe-business-media-group-named-20th-fastest-growing-business-britain/
As Barnier has confirmed there can only be a FTA for GB not the UK without a backstop for NI.
No Deal means huge damage to the economy
Hindsight is wonderful, and the question comes whether the decisions she made that led to the 'mistakes' were reasonable decisions at the time. Such brilliant brains as IDS might have avoided the mistakes she made, but might have made absolute howlers in other areas.
I would say two things:
1) It is clear that too many Brexiteers saw Brexit as being 'easy', and had utterly unrealistic views on what was possible or feasible - and I fear this would have carried through into negotiations, and potentially been disastrous for them.
2) Too many Brexiteers don't want a deal. Putting them in charge of negotiations would have been disastrous. And the ones who wanted a deal would have run into the same problems as May has in selling it to the likes of the ERG.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2018/12/16/mueller-exposes-putins-hold-over-trump/#b032d7e48f68
There will be a hard border in Ireland if there is no deal. That will be because the EU and the ROI overplayed their hand. As for Scotland, who knows. It’s votes not polls that count and the last referendum and the last GE didn’t gothe SNP way.
And when they do come back to the Meaningful Vote, are they going to scrub the first three days of consideration, and start the five days of scrutiny afresh? That kicks it a few days nearer to No Deal if so.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-46261983
"YouTube Rewind 2018 is officially the most disliked video on YouTube"
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/13/18137894/youtube-rewind-2018-dislike-shane-dawson-logan-paul-pewdiepie-mkbhd-philip-defranco
https://twitter.com/DominicRaab/status/1074372746384166920
Dumber than a bag of rocks
'Leave voters would rather lose Northern Ireland than give up the benefits of Brexit'
https://tinyurl.com/y72lqs85
'Most English Tory voters would be happy to see UK break up as price of Brexit, survey suggests '
https://tinyurl.com/ya244klu
Normally "us" entails Brits, or westerners in general perhaps. But to the news media who shape the agenda a journalist is "us" too.
1. She could have made definite plans for a No Deal so she was arguing from a far stronger position. This would have involved spending money but given that her plan from the start was (apparently) that we would be outside the CU and SM anyway, the infrastructure would still have been needed.
2. She could have been consistent in her approach. As an example at the start of the negotiations she was talking about a unilateral guarantee to EU citizens in the UK. She then reneged on that and made their status a bargaining chip. Then finally she agreed that they should be given those guarantees. In the meantime she had caused huge uncertainty for EU citizens here and also annoyed the EU negotiators with her inconsistency.
3. She should never have agreed to the timetabling that was set out by the EU at the start. It led directly to the crazy situation where we needed the backstop because we were negotiating the Irish border without actually knowing some basic fundamental information - what the trade situation would be after Brexit. There were plenty of people on both sides of the argument pointing out how stupid this was at the time.
4. She should never have called the GE and then decided not to bother campaigning.
5. She should not have made ending FoM the most important issue over and above all others.
There are dozens of other examples big and small of where she screwed up. This is not hindsight as there were plenty of people pointing out these idiocies at the time.
So yes, someone negotiating in good faith who actually knew what the issues were and cared about them could certainly have got a better deal that satisfied both sides. I would have trusted Ken Clarke, Keir Starmer, Michael Gove or Geoffrey Cox (to pick two from each side) to have done a better job in these negotiations
"One Yorkshireman struck dead by lightning
equals
Five Irishmen killed by mudslide
equals
Ten Frenchmen in motorway pile up
equals
25 Americans in rail accident
equals
100 Brazilians in earthquake
equals
etc etc etc"
The deal she came back with she could have probably got in the first few months (she wasted most of the time demanding things from the EU that she eventually capitulated on), so she has basically just run the clock down for almost 2 years without getting a deal that can pass through parliament.
But we have a few specific negatives, in particular our reliance on consumer spending, and very low household savings rates. The fear for the UK is that falling house prices results in falling consumer confidence, and therefore rising household savings rates and lower retail sales.*
The risk is that we enter into a negative feedback loop, where falling confidence leads to ever higher savings rates.
The irony is that this problem is essentially nothing to do with Brexit.
* All those headlines are from today.
Does remind me of the BBC giving more coverage, and the live pictures, of half an inch of snow in London when south Wales had a foot of the stuff.
And the points are not straw men: they're critically relevant to the question of whether a leaver (or indeed anyone) could have got a 'better' deal.
You are also talking with hindsight, which is a wonderful thing. There was also f'all chance of the people you mention being put in charge of negotiations - and you knew that before the referendum. You were more likely to get (say) IDS or Boris doing the negotiating - do you think they'd have done better?
Brexit has been proved to be horribly difficult and messy. Some of us were saying that it would be so before the referendum. I understand why you want to think it needn't have been so, but you seem to have precious little evidence for it aside from some perverse faith in the skills of Brexiteers; a faith that goes against all available evidence.