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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » At the end of the tunnel

If anyone is wondering what a negotiating “tunnel” is, it’s just Brussels jargon for trying a bit harder not to leak everything
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There are currently zero Sinn Fein MPs - school boy error, we expect better.
Me, I will be out of the country on Halloween, in a tent, high up in the Himalayas, no possible internet or mobile, and will hopefully return to the UK November, if my passport is still valid.
We will have a satellite phone, so I could make contact, but I think I will have a Brexit Detox.
Either all the stars fall into alignment for Boris, or it only gets about 270 votes.
We’ll shortly find out which one it is.
Best of luck with your trek ;o
Class personified. It’s incredibly difficult to have not made a huge gaff in 3 years , when you think of how many news conferences he’s done and the fact he had to put up with Davis and Raab .
But the UK is split on nationalist/internationalist lines. And that is a seam that the LDs can capitalise on.
Let me put this another way: 100 years ago the Liberals found themselves without a clear position as the UK's voting axis switched.
Now, there's a new switch to the nationalist/internationalist axis, and it's Labour who doesn't have a clear position this time. They need to be nationalist in their former working class heartlandsm and internationalist in the Cities.
I could be completely wrong, of course. But that's how the UK feels like it's moving to me.
Since that’s legislation Boris could never bring in and may be stonewalled on a GE I can only assume he’d resign the Government.
didn't JRM vote againt every time?
The problem Labour have in finding a successor is that absolutely all of the potential candidates are awful - at least in terms of potential PMs.
Starmer seems the obvious choice, but he's always seemed to me to be like a consultant parachuted in to fill a role - and of course to some extent that's what he is.
Thornberry is just far too new posh. That'd be bad enough in other parties, but in Labour?
So we're left with Long-Bailey. When she first appeared she was as bad as it gets. However she's improving, although she couldn't have gotten worse, so it's no great compliment. I think she'll prove to be an interesting politician, but that's well down the road.
So, a gap. I imagine David Lammy is considering his options.
I’d say, at present, the numbers aren’t quite there for the internationalists in the same way though. It’s probably 20-25% of the population at most, whereas Labour were appealing to about 70%+ of the population when they took over in the 1920s.
The only spasm of genuine opposition to Brexit this process has manged to wringe from Jeremy Corbyn was caused by Boris' offer letter. The watering down of the PD to homopathic levels was so obvious even Corbyn noticed.
It promoted him to say ex cathedra ( from the opposition despatch box no less ) " no Labour MP " could vote for it.
" no Labour MP " could mean anything from the mild insinuation they were a sell out to the concrete statement anyone doing so would have the whip removed and not be allowed to restand. Or anything inbetween. But I'd suggest we find out what Corbyn meant before we estimate how many whip holding Labour MPs will back MV4.
https://ig.ft.com/brexit-exit-deal-vote/
If so, that leaves a huge, impossible-to-ignore pile of politics still to do. When TM was PM and trying to get her deal through, great play was made of it being the necessary doorway through to single markets and customs unions. So, assuming the Boris deal works out, notwithstanding his preference for a Canada-style FTA, are all the other ideas still going to be on the table?
I find it a good detox from the western world, no beer, vegetarian, no news.
But back in Kathmandu, I will log in. Off out in 10 days.
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1182620121300459521
(Not that it will stop them, mind)
Could we see Bercow voting for Brexit?
If he then goes on to win an election and seal Tory rule till 2025 - 15 years since DC entered Downing Street - you'd have to call that a result given austerity and the unmitigated clusterfuck of sorting Brexit!
I suspect enough MPs will at this point take the middle ground rather than risk the alternative.
They can claim to be healing divides. It's the British way.
Nick Clegg's departure to act as a shill for Facebook sums them up. I note most of LibDems on pb.com have been too ashamed to remark on the record-breakingly derisory tax paid by Facebook, in the news today.
The LibDems will always let you down. It is one thing in politics you can always rely on.
Endless extensions? That seems to be the HoC's preferred option.
The LibDems are the Rebound Party.
The Green party is ludicrous, and all these extinction types are worse. Idiots to a Lesbian.
The issues they raise though are important. And they're right in that they may be the most important issues we face.
(Arsing about and blocking traffic tends to get in the way of that argument)
The obvious thing to do is to create a group within the major parties and press hard for the issues.
The less obvious thing to do is to find a random school-girl and get her to lecture the world in random-school-girl-speak.
Now that the Benn Act has removed an immediate no deal from the table, Johnson's only negotiating card with the EU is that if they refuse to move and parliament inevitably extend, he could come back after winning a GE with a majority sufficient to leave with no deal.
The scale of the Conservative lead in this weekend's polling might be quite critical to that. Even the latest YouGov was based on fieldwork which predated the news that a deal might after all be on the cards, and Johnson might expect to get a boost from that.
Mandate on Brexit whatever the result.
Hardcore jihadi remainers like the LDs, SNP, Phil Hammond, Soubry and the bad losers.
Nobody else will care to be on the wrong side of history.
Has always been Labour or Liberal since 1918!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrexham_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
The Labour MPs in these Brexity seats clearly don't think they can hold on.
We've travelled quite a way from "No Deal is worse than a bad deal" to what now seems like "Any Deal will do".
The pro-Johnson lobby can almost taste the landslide as they seek to reap the electoral benefits of Boris doing, well something, apparently. The only problem is we don't and presumably won't know what he has traded away to get the EU to move until after we've had the euphoric adulation and the metaphorical throwing of rose petals across his path.
We don't have a Deal yet and I imagine the anti-European line is already being stoked in case Boris has to do a flounce next week.
Boris may not want to die in a ditch but it's going to be a question of who he has sold down the river and the degree to which we've all been left up the creek without a paddle in order to save his worthless hide.
Any comment on Facebook's tax & Nick Clegg ?