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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Punters could still be under-rating the chances of No Deal
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What we have to assess is what everyone will do when they are panicking. We need psychiatrists rather than psephologists.
On topic:
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1093925236989480962?s=21
Also, backed Ireland at 1.9 to beat Scotland even with a -6 point handicap (Ladbrokes), though the price has since lengthened a little to 2. So, let's hope the Irish enjoy a 7 point (or more) triumph over the Scots.
The problem is not that No Deal is a preferred option for anyone other than a small minority but that nobody can come up with an acceptable plan to stop it. Given how polarized we are right now, the odds of such a plan emerging are slim.
I'd say the odds are 1-3 not 3-1.
I'd give it until the middle of May before we sue for peace.
With screw ups like this
https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1094129847918649344
and clusterfucks like this
https://twitter.com/lionelbarber/status/1093893179668135936
the reality of Brexit will be much different to the fantasy of Brexit.
The fact that some Brexiteers think Remainers are worried about No Deal because it will show Brexit will be a success is comedy up there with Monty Python at their peak.
The Starmer strategy outlined in the letter he wrote this week that Corbyn signed would probably command a majority in the House on a free vote and be acceptable to a majority in the country, but it’s hard to see how May could ever allow it given her priority is preserving her position and the Conservative party. Likewise, Corbyn’s priority is Brexit because he sees significant political advantages in it. Given May will not agree to the Starmer position, the Commons will not agree the current WA and political declaration, and there is no way Article 50 will be revoked, it’s very hard to see how we don’t crash out from here.
Pause.
OK, OK, I'll get my coat!
However, haven't the EU side basically said that they would take Jezza's letter as the basis of a revised deal? It is only May's stubbornness that is preventing that being the basis of a renegotiation. Instead she turned up in Brussels with nothing and came away, once again, with nothing.
The Tory wets need to take back control and forge a bipartisan deal that will get through parliament.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll be at peak Englishman.
However this may be wishcasting rather than forecasting.
Scotland at 1-2 with +11 looks like easy money
While agreeing that a second referendum is unlikely, having one with a three-way option would create a major difficulty of which I know you're well aware.
Choose between a Hard Leave, May's Leave, and Remain. Let's say the voting was 30%, 25%, and 45%.
Remain is declared the winner even though the majority wanted a variety of Leave. This despite the Remainers being in a minority in two consecutive referenda. There is a lot of anger around at the moment, and people are both fed-up and suspicious. Having the result gerrymandered so obviously isn't a solution.
I suspect a lot of murky water will run under the bridge in the next six weeks but with neither the EU or the UK wanting a no-deal, it will get murkier as we near April.
1. "No Deal" comes in various forms. If it becomes apparent that no general deal can be agreed, there will certainly be lots of holding arrangements - we really aren't going to get into the state where nobody can travel and medicine runs out, because literally nobody on either side of the Channel wants that. The theoretical possibility of a total no deal is there because TM finds it useful to make her deal look better. If her deal definitively dies, alternative arrangements will necessarily be made. In betting terms, I'm not sure if that counts as No Deal or not.
2. There may well be a Parliamentary majority AND EU agrement to renegotiate on the basis of the Corbyn package - the EU signals on this are pretty clear, as are the comments from Boles, Clarke etc. At some stage, Parliament will have the opportunity to say so and instruct the government to pursue it. But if TM refuses, then will Parliament actually VONC her? That is less clear, and we could end up with a different kind of deadlock.
Mr. Eagles, if Project Fear hadn't been so overblown during the dreadful campaign, current warnings would be taken more seriously.
But then, had the Remain campaign not been so rubbish, we would've voted to stay in.
Anyway, I am a Geordie, from the north east, English and British. Next up is being a human - European doesn't come in to it.
Brexit is not a British project, it is an English (and Welsh) one.
Embracing my Irish citizenship is a symptom of the divisiveness of Brexit and it is forcing many other people into similar decisions. Not being English, Little-Englandism has zero appeal to me.
Had I not made a bet which seemed good value, I'd prefer a Scottish victory. After all, you're fully British, rather than partially
FWIW, I tend to estimate 30% No Deal, 30% a deal looking like May's WA & PD, 30% something noticeably softer and 10% Remain, but that's for the final outcome not 29 March. By now, if we leave with a deal it will definitely be later than scheduled.
Remember when Sir John Major warned about the dangers of No Deal and the threat to Northern Ireland that was also dismissed as Project Fear.
Remember when David Cameron warned that No Deal was a risk, he was told he was engaged in Project Fear.
I could list more.
It all depends on whether the UK and EU are secretly working on a compromise that allows both sides to claim some sort of victory over the backstop - which is politically essential - otherwise we really are staring into the abyss.
I'm changing my mind very regularly about that at the moment but I think the EU have finally realised Remain or Revoke is a very big longshot so it's a modified May deal, a Corbyn deal (which they'd clearly far prefer emotionally, but is unlikely) or No Deal.
Could you explain the labour position? I read it as BINO with absolutely no advantage over Remain. We stay in the CU and the EU, FOM is retained, and we continue to pay billions. The only difference is we lose any influence we had. Is that correct?
PS: finally took + 8 on Scotland
https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/01/rise-and-fall-political-class-0
The question is whether there's something in between and I'd have thought that would be based around the customs union and a floor of rights.
The EU side seem to be happy with this. May should bite their hand off.
Overblowing the omens of doom was a mistake both in the campaign and for subsequent discourse.
Mr. Royale, May capitulating is entirely possible.
Mr. CD13, indeed.
Mr. G, I meant 'you' as in Scotland generally. Anyway, the match may well be quite entertaining.
Windy there? It's pretty windy here, about 50mph winds.
Insert usual tedious PB debate about whether the Leave vote implied leaving the CU/SM here. (Please don’t, it’s almost as boring as the “second referendum should be Deal vs No Deal” one.)
[Cotswolder and exiled Rutlander; English for Howells RVW and Britten, but not Elgar or Purcell.]
I am taking my grandson to the football later , Scottish Cup day if weather permits. Kilmarnock v Rangers.
Gloria de Piero was much better yesterday.
You're certainly right to say it's divisive, which is very sad, but it's not an English project either. It's a UK decision. In 1975 Scotland was the most eurosceptic nation of them all.
Why? The clue is in those two letters EU - and their track record of sorting out problems at one minute to midnight. Was their crisis with Greece solved with 94% of the clock run down?
"No Deal is intolerable" Sub-optimal for sure, a damning indictment of the lack of creative thinking from both sets of negotiators undoubtably. But intolerable? As against failing to implement the democratic instruction of the people? That would be intolerable. It would come with issues, issues made much worse by a Govt. that has singularly refused to plan for it as an outcome. (Some might consider there is a VIP area of Hell, fenced off with fiery red rope, just for these advocates of inactivity.) But No Deal would start April with decks cleared, a much sharper idea of who needed what to make our future trading arrangments work. It would pull the planks from underneath those who have spent two and a half years grandstanding. We would have a very focussed set of discussions on How To Make Things Work Again. Focussed by both sides, hopefully with completely new teams on both sides.
"What is, I think, still much more possible than is being given credit for, due mainly to the fact that neither front bench wants it, is a second referendum."
Nobody has agreed what form that should take, There are - and still would be - competing formats. And they would all be underpinned by the risk of it being rendered pointless by a mass boycott, by those who have already indicated how the Govt. should have listened the first time.
A second referendum that achieved a lower turnout and less than 17.4m votes for the winning option would always be tainted. And would just be fuel to the fire for those saying we are STILL going to leave the EU, damn it. We'd still be a semi-detatched member of the EU, as they waited for the political groudswell that leads us to making that walk away. And in the meantime, every ill on the face of our land would belong the EU.
"but end FOM, leave the CAP and CFP and stop paying in. I think I've got that right."
That would be fine with me, but I fear you're mistaken.
No one will get exactly what they want. My personal preference will be for Remain, with the proviso of a commitment to no more progress to a single state, and immigration decided the sovereign government. Labour will probably go for FOM, the LDs would and even the Tories make little difference to the figures, so the change will be more cosmetic more than anything else.
That will never be possible but Mr Rentool's version, if correct, could well suffice.
You know nothing about my understanding of Ireland. Nor could you ever. We have never met.
All nations have good and bad parts to their history. Your claims are significantly overblown, however.
What's it like to dislike your own country so much?
The obvious way to it is just to do Remain vs Deal, because if TMay agrees to it then there's probably a parliamentary majority for it in the form of Loyalist-Tory + Remainist-Lab + SNP + LD. It's simple, you know the next step for both the possible outcomes and you can legislate for them in advance so there's no concern that one of the factions will renege. No-Dealers would cry blue murder but they'd cry blue murder anyhow.
If you really had to have 3 options then the solution is to have two rounds:
1) What's Brexit? Deal vs No Deal.
2) Do it or not? Winner vs Remain.
This has the benefit that the final round gives you a 50%+ winner. We election nerds understand that you could do basically the same thing quicker and cheaper with AV or similar, but two rounds are harder to demagogue. But like I say, I don't think any of the veto players would want a No Deal option, especially while they're trying to clean up the mess from last time they tried asking the voters if they wanted to not-this-but-¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Mr. Observer, I don't buy that line which you've consistently espoused. The EU is on a constant bearing towards integration. Opposing a United States of Europe (including the UK) does not mean one must be a nationalist or on the right. Supporting the right of a nation state to govern itself is a democratic approach, not a nationalist one.
"Says it all, I'm afraid". What an arse you are.
If someone has options as to where they choose to treat as their home nation under their multiple passports, they have not the same level of enforced commitment to a country as those of us having just the one. Is that too difficult a concept for you to understand?
I was 48% English and 35% Irish. My wife (an in-bred bogtrotter) was 91% Irish. I pity the kids - that makes them more Irish than British, but they are British, being born here. Even if my son, living and working in Copenhagen has an Irish passport for convenience, he still passes the Tebbit test.
(This DNA analysis is for fun only, but it did stack up with my family history. Perhaps we're not all illegitimate after all).
Even areas where we have opt-outs, the single currency being the most obvious, EU institutions end up being used for eurozone-only matters. QMV has stripped away vetoes, the EU is intent on building an army, there's chuntering about harmonising taxes. The ratchet only moves one way.
Machiavelli was right about large confederacies necessarily centralising power away from constituent members, others the numbers involved make it unwieldy. The fact EU ideologues have integration almost as a political religion only accelerates that.
Last Saturday I walked part of the London Loop walk. On the way, I passed the Wilberforce Oak, where Wilberforce and Pitt the Younger decided to table a bill to abolish the slave trade. It took many decades, but eventually it was done.
But Britain did not just abolish our slave trade: we actively enforced a ban. The work of the West Africa Squadron cost a massive amount of treasure (2% of annual income annually for sixty years) and lives of our sailors, mainly to disease. 25% of sailors died in one year alone.
But the results were significant: "Between 1808 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans." And that does not count the ones who were prevented from boarding slaving ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron
In addition, we gradually took a lead in preventing slaving by other countries. It has been argued that the costs of doing this were greater than the profits made from slaving in the previous hundred years.
Does this in some way compensate for the previous 120 years of active slaving? No. It was hideous. But I can take some pride in our role in trying to abolish slavery worldwide.
Except perhaps during the American civil war ...
It would be crass to go on about our role in abolishing the Atlantic slave trade, without mentioning our earlier role in that trade. But I can take pride in our later actions.
(Awaits Ydoethur...)
You do perhaps miss how the slave trade was abolished as part of a wider trade embargo on Napoleonic France, but as that was basically a trick to slide it past the Liverpool block vote I don't see it's particulary relevant.
We election nerds know that AV does not of course guarantee a 50%+ winner due to discarded ballots.
This is also the question of boycott raised by Brexiteers. If voters from round 1 boycott round 2, you can't guarantee the 50% threshold.
/pedantry
https://twitter.com/Jamin2g/status/1094014385775955975
History's complex, innit? History and morality's even more so ...
The thing that *does* have a problem that people have occasionally suggested here is to make the second round conditional on choosing "No Deal" in the first round. That would makes the first round an incredibly weird choice (Deal vs a whatever's behind the mystery door marked No Deal vs Referendum) and be a deeply terribly idea. Luckily, even more than putting No Deal on the ballot in the first place, this particular stupid thing would have basically no supporters in parliament.
1 Brexit outcome, relationship with EU
2 Configuration of the nations/potential nations of the whole British isles (I would like to end with one, but 5 is thinkable)
3 Shape of the political parties of the British isles (What if all the uneasy party internal coalitions presented to us daily all broke down)
4 Who will lead each and every political party
5 Who will win the next elections, and when
6 Whether we stay or leave, what is the next black swan
When last did no-one at all have any idea about the answers to any of these questions?
https://twitter.com/haggis_uk/status/1093966760628404224?s=21
My point is that a nationalist argument based on the europhilia of England dragging Scotland into the EEC against its will could have been made in 1975, just as the opposite is made now.
James Naughty pointed out that we have two nations of the UK for Remain and two for Leave. If Brexit happens the two nations which voted Remain will never accept the result and vice versa.The likely outcome is that we move to a more federal structure which will move the goalposts all over the place and change the nature of the UK more than Brexit ever could
I wonder whether this may be quite a likely outcome: No Deal followed by the resurrection of the Deal as an emergency measure (obviously with whatever legal changes need to be made for it to be adopted post facto).
I don't share your pessimism about the UK. We will be fine.
Those retiring there (people generally only retire to one place) will simply need to get a residency visa. Just as Brits do for Australia.
https://twitter.com/bitnch/status/1043501662835494912
Farage in full flow in Telegraph over his new Brexit party. It will not have an NEC, but will be run by the leader "like a company" with a board the leader appoints himself.
He believes in the long run it will be a threat to the main parties, as voters now divide over Leave/Remain rather than other issues.
This development was probably inevitable, since most European countries have a right nationalist/populist party (separate from any existing centre-right unit).
Deeply worrying imho.
I'm not so sure we can just hope FPTP will save us from this man.
It's the Good Lady Wifi that likes her creature comforts. With a spa....
I think you would be surprised, possibly unpleasantly so, at how much of that support is because the EU is seen as a powerful and highly effective counterweight to nine centuries of English political hegemony in the British Isles.