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Leaver or Limpet – How long with Johnson lead? – politicalbetting.com
Leaver or Limpet – How long with Johnson lead? – politicalbetting.com
When dictionaries announce their ‘Word of the Year’ it will undoubtedly be ‘COVID’, ‘Social Distancing’, or something related. But ‘Superforecaster’ is another word which has had a big 2020.
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Good grief... First
I looked into joining the good judgement project several years ago but found it a bit bewildering all the things I was supposed to predict. The idea of using them as an extra data point on betting markets is smart.
Provided Boris secures a Deal I think he's secure until the May elections. The aftermath on the locals and Scottish parliament will prove decisive for him going into June.
If he looks ok going into the summer, he will survive the year and he's probably then ok - barring major events - until 2023, unless another crisis erupts in 2022.
What if Johnson has just had enough?
Say by mid-2021 he's delivered Brexit, got the country through Covid, still feeling the pinch financially, worn down by the actual work involved in being PM, perhaps still suffering from long-covid?
I don't think you can rule out 'my work is done here' resignation... I'd say maybe a 25% chance.
What industry needs is tariff-free trade and impediment-free trade so that we can send goods across the border without checks and paperwork. If we get checks and paperwork then regardless of tariffs we still end up higher complexity and cost than we have now.
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1335935722285649921?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1335935722285649921|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/9252/as-trump-continues-to-be-in-denial-about-his-defeat-biden-gets-a-significant-gallup-favourability-bo/p6
*Gets coat
He's made sure he can't really be forced out before 2024, therefore he goes when he wants to. And depending on his mood, that might be never, or it might be this afternoon. (Seriously. If he wandered off this afternoon and just never came back to No 10, would anyone be that surprised? Disappointed, yes- but surprised?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nycudpbwTI&feature=emb_logo
More, more scream the crowd.
Most of the time something else turns up and we go off in a different direction as the issue has changed.
The only reason that Boris will go is because he's had enough, but I think that's very unlikely. Quite simply its easier to hold onto power than to accept its time to relinquish it or regain any . . . and all PMs start to think about their 'legacy', I don't think Boris will want his only legacy to be Brexit and COVID19 he will want to do something post-Brexit for his legacy.
After dinner talks can wait at least another year.
For there to be a GE a crisis of truly epic proportions would have had to ensue - and before there was a GE Johnson would have been dumped by his party.
I think most likely scenarios for a change of PM in the next two years are (in order of likelihood):
1. Johnson quits
2. The Tories dump him (55 letters from MPs)
3. Death or incapacity
4. Losing a GE
If you extend the timescale to four years, 4. becomes easily the most likely.
I think it's unlikely Johnson goes in the next two years but I think the *most* likely reason is he just quits.
Vaughan Gething said it reflected tighter UK restrictions elsewhere. He confirmed ministers were considering whether any new restrictions would be needed after the Christmas relaxation of rules.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-55214924
AFTER....be too bloody late by then. As for "our rates are going up", cos other places harsher restrictions is absolute nonsense.
What the chart in the articles shows is although Scotland haven't managed to totally squish it, they have been a quicker than England to impose things like ban on household mixing and kept at it longer than Wales, and thus managed to avoid the big uptick.
If we get to No Deal then Boris will be a hero to Eurosceptics and be untouchable from that flank.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/south-korea-warns-medical-collapse-it-races-control-coronavirus-surge-n1250182
Maybe Carrie can get a safe seat.....
https://twitter.com/SamuelMarcLowe/status/1335884707179978753
On one hand you will have the mouth-foamers for whom anything other than WTO Up Yours Delors is a betrayal. Farage's reborn party will be blaming every problem on Johnson's betrayal.
On the other hand you will have MPs across the country being bombarded by angry constituents who will be baffled and outraged that the silver bullet they were promised has turned out to mean higher prices shortages and unemployment.
A pincer move of both groups could make early retirement off to being able to do properly paid work to save up for Carrie's divorce settlement an attractive prospect for him. I know that you don't believe in these downsides which is why you think it simply won't happen (his departure).
2021 staycations will look more attractive
If the Tories do badly, Boris in in trouble. If the Tories do well (boosted by a successful vaccine roll out) then he could be secure to 2024.
That is, any inquiry into COVID will surely look at the response in England, Wales, Scotland & N. Ireland.
If you believe e.g., that the care homes in England were needlessly exposed, you will have to examine what happened in Wales & Scotland as well (where I believe very similar policies were pursued).
In fact, it will be interesting to see what kind of inquiry we do actually get into the response to COVID -- it is not entirely obvious to me that the other parties will necessarily want one that looks at a whole bunch of inconvenient & embarrassing facts.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2020/mass-testing-short-period-contact-restrictions-dramatically-reduced-sars-cov-2
In October 2020, Slovakia tested its whole population for SARS-CoV-2 infections, conducting more than five million rapid antigen tests. A pilot trial took place between 23 and 25 October in the country’s four most affected counties, followed by a round of national mass testing on 31 October and 1 November. High prevalence counties were again targeted with a subsequent round on 7 and 8 November.
The analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was conducted in collaboration with the Slovak Ministry of Health. Using data on the proportions of those attending the mass testing that tested positive, the team estimated the combined impact of this mass testing with contact restrictions on SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence.
Within one week the proportion of infectious people among all tested declined by 61% (50-70%). Within two weeks and two rounds of testing in the pilot areas, the decline was 82% (81-83%).
In comparison, the recent REACT-1 study (Imperial College) results show that SARS-CoV-2 infections detectable by PCR testing fell by 30% in the UK 2-3 weeks into the lockdown compared to infection prevalence before.
Martin Pavelka from LSHTM and MoH Slovakia, said: “Population-wide COVID-19 interventions such as lockdown result in a huge social and economic toll. This is because they target everyone, not just those who are actually infected and spreading the disease. Low-cost rapid tests that can be produced at large scale may offer the opportunity to conduct mass testing campaigns which identify most infectious individuals.
Stefan Flasche, from LSHTM’s Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases (CMMID), said: “Slovakia’s strategy identified more than 50,000 infections, many of which would otherwise have been missed. Importantly, we found that the biggest impact of mass testing is achieved by quarantining the household contacts of those who test positive.”...
Remember, we've already heard the reaction on vox pops - "This isn't the Brexit I voted for".
Brexit is lower cost and more freedoms. Yet unless we get a continuation deal we're getting the opposite and the same right wing press who screamed for Brexit will be screaming about the effects of Brexit. When pretty much everything gets more expensive and more difficult to do it's difficulty to cling on to vague notions you never really understood anyway like sovereignty.
As the Manics so eloquently put it, Freedom of Speech won't Feed my Children.
I suspect a No Deal would end up being quite dramatic in January/February, and the odds of that maybe 50/50 today - and depending on what happens in the Commons tonight, much higher than that by tomorrow morning.
What I can't quite work out is whether that would make Johnson's departure highly likely in 2021.
It's no use retaining hard Leavers if you lose the centre.
Like Antiochus at the Battle of Raphia, he might charge triumphantly against a fleeing wing only to eventually return to the battlefield and discover he's lost.
he'll do his Churchill schtick and keep going until things pick up
But then her opponents thought Thatcher was disliked by "the centre" yet she won comprehensively in 1987 as well as 1983 and 1979. Johnson v Starmer could be like 1987, after Corbyn played the role of Foot.
I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".
Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay in that office for that long. cf J Corbyn.
That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.
*no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
And yet, and yet... We're about to enter a scenario completely unprecedented in peacetime, one where a major Western country and complex inter-connected economy voluntarily imposes massive economic and practical disruption on itself. Someone is going to get a hell of a lot of blame for that from every side. For the Brexiteers, as well as blaming the EU being bastards for having the temerity to take back control, it will be the wrong deal or the wrong sort of No Deal which causes the chaos. Farage is already on the case. For everyone else it will be the whole principle of Brexit, or at least the particular chaotic and bungling form of Brexit which the UK government has blundered into. Either way the buck stops with Boris. Enough to displace him? It doesn't look like it at the moment, but the chaos hasn't hit yet. Who knows?
* Until it does, of course. Then it can happen fast.
People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.
"This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
(It's now also overtaken the pre-circuitbreak high of 302, which means the circuitbreak bought five weeks altogether.)
However, it's the latter thing that they think is the danger, and that there's sovereign right. They can demand whatever they think is in their interests.
Edit: More topically, I think there is a very good chance that we will get no (significant) deal. There just doesn't seem to be any common ground on which a deal can be made. Ergo, no deal.
Even if the replacement turns out to be brilliant (and that's optimistic, because we don't know what the replacement is, just that we will be free to choose it), the early months are going to be brutal, because people don't know what to do. And we've forgotten how important that is, because it hasn't been an issue for a couple of generations. Do you think "Mr Gove told you all to prepare" is going to cut it? I don't.
And in that situation, Johnson basically doing a runner feels very on-brand.
I can only thank the man for the opportunity to vote.
May, foolishly, didn't.
Her successor, foolishly, hasn't.
May at least had a deal on the table. Boris Johnson hasn't achieved concord* and hasn't prepared for discord.
*Yet. There's still time. But precious little.
I am not quite sure how Drakeford screwed up so badly -- he is by nature a very, very cautious individual.
As N Wales is pretty low, then it follows that S Wales (Cardiff & the Valleys) are in some trouble.
I really fear for parts of South Wales
The responsibility for Brexit lies firmly in the hands of those who campaigned and voted for it. If it is a success, they can claim the credit; if it is a failure, well, they are to blame.
If we do go to No Deal and Starmer Labour build a big poll lead and the Tories do terribly in the big round of county, district, London, Scottish and Welsh elections next year then Boris will find things start to get difficult, if not they won't
You claim that there will be "big price rises" but how big? By how much? Inflation has been on the floor for years despite people repeatedly claiming that we were going to see big price rises, eg after sterling fell after the referendum I repeatedly was told on here that it would cause big price rises despite me regularly pointing out the official statistics said otherwise.
Even if there are WTO tariffs, even if sterling falls again, quite frankly inflation will be within standard ranges for inflation there is not going to be extreme stagflation or big price rises.
Whichever supermarket I go to do my shopping, the overwhelming majority of the produce sold - the milk, meat etc is stamped with a union flag. Those are products made in the UK, that would supposedly be facing tariffs in the EU if farmers wish to export them - and we're supposed to see massive price rises? Pull the other one! Price falls for domestic produce are more likely.
There'll be differential price variation - some products will go up in price and some will go down in price. That will lead to some product substitution as consumers choose naturally to go from more expensive (imported) products and instead purchase cheaper (domestic) produce. Which will mean less trade with Europe more than major increases to the cost of your weekly shop.
Large ticket price imports, like a Playstation 5 for instance, may become a bit more expensive. But people normally save up for those anyway.
1. He did stand up to the loons on lockdown after a lot of prevarication.
2. If you did want to do a deal and hoodwink people into supporting it, the less time you would want to give them to scrutinise what you have signed up for the better.
As a bad deal is undoubtedly better than no deal, here's hoping.