A second referendum, is this how Starmer wins a second term? – politicalbetting.com
A second referendum, is this how Starmer wins a second term? – politicalbetting.com
?????? Second part of our polling on Brits attitudes to foreign policy in today's @thetimes.com. This week looking at Brits attitudes to 3 big power blocs, the EU, the US & China. On Brexit we find just 29% of Brits would vote Leave if the Referendum were held today. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/…
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It's a fair idea to raise - it's most odd that in a country which now overwhelmingly rejects Brexit, and at the very least a plurality would support the idea of rejoining, not a single UK party has anything near such a thing as part of their platform.
Sounds a winner.
Now that the air raid sirens have stopped sounding, the next task is to try and find a bar that can show the cricket!
It'd be a bold move. Might work out.
But what would the referendum be for?
Status quo ante? In, but not in Schengen? A single currency opt out? No rebate?
F1: just glancing through my season predictions for a summer break podcast. Some looking sensible. A few looking rather rubbish. Turns out Sainz isn't beating Albon, and Verstappen won't win this year.
44% Remain
47% Leave
Crossover soon.
But there is something of a democratic deficit on the issue, with no party speaking out for what appears to be the opinion of the majority.
You can only credibly make the case that such a thing would be an unnecessary and damaging distraction (true in spades of Brexit itself) when at least one party comes out in support of the idea.
The indirect cost of the referendum however....
Nobody kmowspn what terms we would join but it will be pricey. The rejoin offer is to make yourself poorer and hand the country over to the prats who screwed it up over the last 30 years.
Starmer's rejoin would just make the Red Wall walk away permanently and strengthen the Lib Dems its biggest supporters. Mind you he's stupid enough to try it.
The hitch is, I don't think Kier Starmer is bold?
To be honest the city looks clean and tidy, apart from the town hall being obviously fortified and the memorial in the main square outside, there’s a lot less evidence of war than there was when I was here two years ago.
Still a lot of military uniforms worn in public, a few military cars and trucks, and the people walking around at the weekend were predominantly women and children.
A referendum would be quite cheap, and quick (beating the average public enquiry on both metrics), but rejoining might be neither.
The Coldstream Guards at Buckingham Palace playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath, on the day of Ozzy Osborne’s funeral.
https://x.com/historyrock_/status/1950881300610519129?
That's a different question.
The terms would be absolutely critical.
But "to be negotiated" - or even "terms to be put to a vote" - would not an indefensible position ahead of a GE.
*none of these will happen
A second referendum would not win him a second term, it'd almost guarantee he'd lose it as he'd lose all his Reform facing marginals, whilst piling up votes in safe seats.
Would be intriguing to see by 2015 Tory voters.....
The only way to end the Brexit psychodrama is to end Brexit.
@atrupar.com
Trump claims he’s cut drug prices by “1,500 percent”
However, it's radical, bold and brave. SKS is none of those things so he won't do it.
It’s simplistic to add Tory + Reform but pretty clear it will turn into a 52-48 issue soon. Angela Raynor seems to be the only mainstream labour politician savvy enough to realise it. Who knows perhaps she’ll defenestrate Starmer, solve the issue and we’ll all vote for labour next time rather than the wet fart of a vote total he managed.
Hypothetical referendum polling is notoriously unpredictable and can change radically in reality. Actual voting hinges on what's actually on the table, the quality of the campaigns, and the popularity of the government at the time they are held.
Do you think Starmer is good at any of those things?
It just hasn't been implemented right...
The question is not being considered wholly independently at the moment.
The EU is top down driven in a French dirigisme fashion.
There's an electricity company here called Octopus Energy that claims it can sell you "effectively 100% renewable" electricity. It seems to be a collaboration between the British energy company called Octopus and Tokyo Gas.
https://octopusenergy.co.jp/
Apparently the energy market here works a lot like the British one. There's a utility descended what used to be the electricity monopoly TEPCO (famous for the time one of their nuclear power stations got a bit explodey after a tsunami) that gets the power to my house over a piece of wire, but then I can choose to contract with one of a bunch of competing firms who in turn buy power supply contracts from people.
My question is: If I switch from my current no-particular-opinion-about-renewables company to Octopus, will that actually cause (at the margin) more renewable energy to be deployed in Japan and less fossil fuels burned? Or am I just contributing to an accounting shuffle where power is produced in exactly the same way but some solar power is now notionally going to be that would otherwise have notionally been going to someone else, and the fossil fuels that would notionally have been burned by me are now notionally being burned by someone else instead?
If that were the case, they'd neutralise Reform's strongest attack line, while attacking them on a policy disaster which is the only other thing that really defines Reform. "Brexit failed the UK" might also help neutralise attacks on their economic performance.
Of course the chances of Starmer delivering either thing aren't massive, but it's not a ridiculous idea for Labour's strategists to consider.
Yes, well. I suspect one day we will seek to rejoin but not any time soon and not until it looks clearly in Britain's economic and political interests to rejoin. At the moment, it doesn't.
Indeed, the Kensington Treaty suggests we can have perfectly harmonious bi-lateral and multi-lateral relationships with countries inside the EU without having to be part of the EU and no one wants to go back to the status quo ante bellum so to speak.
The EU might demand we sign up to the Euro and Schengen as part of any new membership safe in the knowledge that would be unacceptable to the UK so we can build new relationships which work in an evolving world rather than trying to go back to something which patently didn't.
I've no problem with us having good relations with France, Germany, Italy, Sweden or any of the others and it could be argued global developments are forcing European countries to co-operate and that in itself is no bad thing - there are plenty of common issues (the environment, security and immigration) where a European approach would be advantageous and we should be part of that.
Do I think a referendum will be held in the next five years ? Almost certainly not.
But it is deeply odd that not one party is advocating for a policy which apparently has the support of nearly half the electorate.
You can quibble about the particular questions in the poll, but the point stands.
Nevertheless Brexit is a problem. No-one much thinks it works. As a policy it's a void. Membership of the EU is rejected but we don't have any consensus, or even thought, about what replaces it.
Closer to the EU while staying outside it effectively means being a rule taker with limited influence and fewer benefits than membership. Is that what we want?
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Politically I can see a lot of merit in Labour doing this. The scenario is that today's polls are largely still the shape of it in spring 2028: Reform will win, Labour winning get mullered, the Tories will end up 5th.
A massive narrative change is needed. Something to utterly disrupt the "established" acceptance of PM Farage. Something which harnesses the visceral anger and discontentment out there and harnesses it for your benefit.
Rejoin the EU. Fix the economy by going free trade. Smash the current mess by doing something different. If progressives campaign against things they usually lose. Campaign for something and they usually win - Brexit aside.
So why not - Labour would be set to lose anyway. Roll the dice. Watch as Reform show us clearly what their version of Britain looks like - insular, jingoistic at best and openly racist at worst, with a cabal of cronies set to take over running things to their benefit, shouting abuse at best at people who disagree, openly attacking them at worse.
Reform want to whip people into a mob electorally. Provoke them into whipping up actual mobs and I think that most normals will look at them in horror and choose to go back to normal - the quieter times of the past which are now looked at through rose-tinted geps.
The UK could be a success outside the EU.
If we have failures, it's got exceptionally little to do with the extranational organisations we're members of. It's much more to do with the decisions we make within our own powers.
I also don’t see Canada joining as they protect their own trade positions brutally and the EU aren’t going to budge to dance to Canada’s tune and ultimately trade is more important to Canada than any sort of solidarity or vague benefits they might get from joining the EU that they don’t get from existing international groups they are in such as NATO. Also when Trump goes there is a chance Canada will want to rebuild close ties with the US and so won’t be overly keen being restrained by the EU in any way.
The most sensible option is still the “outer ring” concept of a loose relationship for countries such as the Uk, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, maybe Canada, Morocco, Ukraine etc and any current EU countries who would like a looser relationship allowing the other EU countries to move ever closer as they wish.
There are a number of senior Reform characters who support the restoration of the death penalty. I'm pretty sure they'd have it in their next manifesto id the believed it would net them votes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c201e9qq9g6o
Perhaps if we want to keep people safe, we should keep migrants and deport the rioters.
If we want to rejoin the EU, it will have to be under a different mechanism than a referendum. More plausible would be a gradualist rapprochement over the next 10 years, say, followed by a straightforward manifesto pledge to seek to rejoin in the mid to late 2030s. No referendum - vote for us, and we'll try to rejoin.
The odd thing is all the Brexiteers who seem to be trying not to see it.
Confusion and anger in Switzerland - hit by highest tariffs in Europe
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c987l633zdgo
Looking at a pair of tits does not require a greater sense of maturity than determining how the nation should be governed.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
Wouldn’t it be easier to abolish “the rabble”?
This has been the case since Thatcher
At this point Labours policy of closer links seems the way forward , still more can be done on that front and a youth mobility scheme is especially important for Remainers who deeply regret the lost opportunities for that group post Brexit .
I agree with this, and we have no idea whatsoever how the world will be trading in the next few years and in these circumstances the ideal relationship would be for the EU and TPPA to merge
As I said yesterday Canada is a founding member of TPPA, and certainly is not going to leave that trading group and of course we are also members
Were the percentages above based on recalled GE vote or current voting intention? Many Tories are now Reformers.
It's telling that Brexit has occurred, and many of the same people who were, ten years ago, droning on about how the EU was dragging the country down, have now moved on to migrants and trans people.
It's never *their* fault.
This is one area where 16-17s may tilt towards the Government?
(The other rapid adaptation that is required is easy transporting of dogs across borders. If the umpteen fees involved can be reduced, that will show up in the pocket.)
Passed Chillam Castle the other day. A Jacobean mansion now owned by an Indian pharmaceutical billionaire (Alembic). The rewards for exporting to the US (and other places).
https://www.tatler.com/gallery/chilham-castle-kent-for-sale-15-million-knight-frank
The EU has already started one thing it always should have, which is do something about the Schengen border. I always thought that should be an EU responsibility and not left to members, Schengen is a great idea but needs a ring of steel outside.
But the big issue is the democratic defect. I don't much like the way the UK is being run, but I dislike it less than I did 15 months ago, and you know what I got to vote. If I don't like the way the EU is run, I have no say.
Of course if we ever rejoin it will have to be on a basis of freedom of movement, Schengen and the Euro, and no opt-out, and that might be enough to turn people back to "no"
Even holding a second referendum would certainly give a huge boost to Reform.
I don't think there's much chance of a referendum being won once the terms of rejoining are known, which would almost certainly include joining the Euro and Schengen and losing most of the rebate we had. The main reason for the Rejoin lead in the polls is because Leaver propagandists have got what they wanted and have moved on to other issues since 2019, letting the argument go by default,while Remoaners have kept Remoaning,
Lawrence Taylor is a former professional football player. He pleaded guilty to charges after having sex with a 16-year old (below the local age of consent), having paid her $300. He has also been found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident twice, of drunk driving, and of failing to report a new address as a registered sex offender. Trump has appointed him to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.
Various people have been putting the fake claim out, such as Cllr Laila Cunningham, who swapped to RefUK last month and posts fiction repeatedly. But believing Isobel Oakeshott?
Rejoin of the UK and the utter humiliation of the leavers would be the final vindication of "The Project" on an emotional and philosophical level. For that prize, they'd give a lot and a Euro opt-out marketed as an assessment period of undefined duration wouldn't even make them blink twice.
What do you expect ?
People,with a predilection for violence turn up,where there’s violence expected. No different to a football game. Many were former/current football hooligans.
The EDL grew out of football hooliganism.