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UK Politics: Trumpy Cat Trumpy Cat Where Have You Been?


mormont

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On 15/03/2017 at 11:34 PM, williamjm said:

Out of the post-Euro states the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Croatia haven't joined the Euro and some of them have been in the EU for over a decade.

I don't know the process to make it happen, but all of them are legally obliged (under the Treaty of Lisbon) to follow the processes required to end up joining the Euro. The only nations exempt from that inevitability are Denmark and UK who both have opt-opts.

I don't see a scenario in which Scotland would be granted an opt-out and still be able to be a full member of the EU. The only country to accede since Lisbon was signed are Croatia, and they still don't use the Euro (as you've said) but are legally obliged to eventually do so.

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8 minutes ago, DJDonegal said:

I don't know the process to make it happen, but all of them are legally obliged (under the Treaty of Lisbon) to follow the processes required to end up joining the Euro. The only nations exempt from that inevitability are Denmark and UK who both have opt-opts.

I don't see a scenario in which Scotland would be granted an opt-out and still be able to be a full member of the EU. The only country to accede since Lisbon was signed are Croatia, and they still don't use the Euro (as you've said) but are legally obliged to eventually do so.

So what happens if they don't? Is there an actual time limit for them to do it? I know Poland has at some point mentioned 2020 to go to the Euro, but any referendum would vote against it and they have outright said they won't do it. 

It seems like economic suicide to join the Euro now.

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37 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

So what happens if they don't? Is there an actual time limit for them to do it? I know Poland has at some point mentioned 2020 to go to the Euro, but any referendum would vote against it and they have outright said they won't do it. 

It seems like economic suicide to join the Euro now.

The current Polish government would likely oppose the EU entirely let alone the Euro.

As I said, I don't know the processes or rules about meeting each step towards joining the Euro. There has to be some kind of incentive behind it; I just don't know what that is.

In other news - interesting read from Michael Crick in The Guardian this morning. I knew he'd been a real hound dog with the by-election and election spending limits being broken, but I hadn't realised it was something he'd been paying attention to since the mid-80s. Article link.

EDIT: And now George Osborne is the new editor of the Evening Standard, while saying he will continue as MP for Tatton.

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8 hours ago, mormont said:

Maybe not independence, but it'll certainly drive people towards voting SNP. I doubt the Spanish government give a hoot, but Ruth Davidson must be feeling fed up.  

I think Sturgeon is probably privately fairly happy with this turn of events (it may well be exactly what she expected to happen), since it'll probably help keep the SNP's polling numbers high as they can campaign against Tory intransigence and still leaves open the possibility of a referendum.

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32 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I think Sturgeon is probably privately fairly happy with this turn of events (it may well be exactly what she expected to happen), since it'll probably help keep the SNP's polling numbers high as they can campaign against Tory intransigence and still leaves open the possibility of a referendum.

It's certainly made the SNP conference an easy ride for the leadership.

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I've seen reports that May's stance was actually Davidson's idea. Focus groups were apparently suggesting blocking the referendum was not as unpopular as assumed.

Real question is: will there be a referendum sometime in 2020 (as the nats might desire) or will May somehow get the SNP to fight a Holyrood election before they can get a referendum agreed.

edit: the petition is doing well, I think it will get to 200,000 now.

''We in Scotland are fed up of persecution by the SNP leader who is solely intent on getting independence at any cost. As a result, Scotland is suffering hugely.''

 

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As someone from London I don't really know what the genuine consensus on a second referendum is like amongst Scots, I'm not inclined to believe the media hype and would hope after rejecting a split in 2014 that the numbers would be broadly similar now.

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Suddenly lots of stories swirling around a snap election being called. May was apparently not keen but I'd bet money that the Scottish situation makes it more tempting. If the Tories win a much larger majority and even recover just a few seats in Scotland (or if Labour or the LibDems recover a few) then that makes her position versus Sturgeon much stronger.
There are a couple of risks with this. The first is that I can't see it being possible to do the Article 50 negotiations and fight a campaign at the same time, unless May delays Article 50 until June and has the snap election in May. That seems extremely unlikely given the timetable which everyone is down with. If she tries to do both, she risks the EU refusing to negotiate until the new election is held, which weakens the UK position on an already impossibly tight timetable. More acutely, if Labour lose then Corbyn goes and May risks a much more effective leader of the opposition being elected who is much more of a problem for her. If Brexit goes really badly, then she loses in 2022. But that's a long way down the pipe. Gaining an increased majority now, a personal mandate and a greater party mandate for Brexit could all be very useful for her.
The nightmare scenario for May has to be that Brexit becomes a total clusterfuck, the economy nosedives and Corbyn is elected in 2020, which would be pretty damn embarrassing. Although highly improbable, forestalling that possibility may also be tempting.
It's a bit of a gamble either way. May might be better waiting for the negotiations to be concluded, working on the assumption that they will go okay-ish and then call the election early in 2018 or 2019 instead.
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1 hour ago, Werthead said:
Suddenly lots of stories swirling around a snap election being called. May was apparently not keen but I'd bet money that the Scottish situation makes it more tempting. If the Tories win a much larger majority and even recover just a few seats in Scotland (or if Labour or the LibDems recover a few) then that makes her position versus Sturgeon much stronger.

I don't really see how May winning more seats outside Scotland would help in that respect, and I'm doubtful there are many opportunities for them to pick up Scottish seats. The various unionist parties winning a couple more seats each wouldn't really be much of an argument against a SNP mandate if they still had 50 MPs rather than 56. If the SNP do well fighting an election with a Second Referendum as the highlight of their manifesto that would seem to strengthen Sturgeon's position rather than the opposite.

If there was a snap election does anyone know if the boundary changes that have been discussed will have come into effect? I seem to remember the summary was they'd tend to help the Tories overall, although in Scotland the existing Tory and Labour seats would be dismembered which could leave the Lib Dems with the only non-SNP MP.

Having said that, I think there are plenty of non-Scottish reasons why a snap election would be tempting for May, 2020 seems a very risky time to schedule an election since it might be the point of peak Brexit disruption. It must also be tempting to take advantage of the disarray in Labour (and UKIP).

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7 hours ago, williamjm said:

If there was a snap election does anyone know if the boundary changes that have been discussed will have come into effect? I seem to remember the summary was they'd tend to help the Tories overall, although in Scotland the existing Tory and Labour seats would be dismembered which could leave the Lib Dems with the only non-SNP MP.

 

No, the boundary review is still ongoing, I think the final report is due next year and then Parliament has to vote on it.

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10 hours ago, Werthead said:
Suddenly lots of stories swirling around a snap election being called.
<snip>
There are a couple of risks with this. The first is that I can't see it being possible to do the Article 50 negotiations and fight a campaign at the same time, unless May delays Article 50 until June and has the snap election in May. That seems extremely unlikely given the timetable which everyone is down with. If she tries to do both, she risks the EU refusing to negotiate until the new election is held, which weakens the UK position on an already impossibly tight timetable.

I think the main reason people are speculating over there being a snap election is that the Conservatives keep emphasising they will trigger Article 50 by the end of March. If they wanted to hold a General Election along with the scheduled local elections on 4th May, the deadline to do so would be 30th March, but it requires the terms of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act being fulfilled at the same time. Not impossible, but not straight-forward either.

Regarding a possible delay to triggering Article 50 in the face of a General Election; I disagree. The trigger will happen by the end of March for several reasons. Firstly, Theresa May has mandated that is what she will do, and so it must be. She cannot go into a General Election on the back of not doing what she said she would on that point (especially after fighting so hard in the courts and Parliament to get the power to do it). Second; the next round of EU elections are in May 2019 and to delay Article 50 being triggered until June would throw up the complicated question of how the UK will be involved, or not, in those elections. Third; waiting until June will allow Brexit aficionados (of the Kippers variety) to talk about how nothing has been "for a year" since the vote, which will be a significant milestone, and not a good look.

But fourth, and finally, triggering A50 in March compared to June will make no material difference whether there's a General Election or not. Negotiations won't begin immediately because the French will be embroiled in their own Presidential election. You come out of that and suddenly the federal German elections are on the horizon, and Merkel is under a lot of pressure from Martin Schulz's party there.

So if there is to be a General Election, the speech that announces the intention will (in my opinion) be along the lines of "We have just triggered Article 50 and we now want to ask the country to give us the strong mandate we need in our negotiations with the European Union." How they make that happen under FTPA is up to them, but Labour have declared themselves on an election footing and an opposition party (surely) can't be seen to back away from challenging the ruling party in an election. The two parties would more than cover the 434 votes needed to trigger an election, and all 9 Lib Dems strengthen that position.

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New Panelbase poll on Scottish Independence:

56/44 to the UK when don't knows are removed, 53-42 to the UK with don't knows in. Panelbase has now shown a very big shift back to the UK, from a low point after the Brexit vote, and a corresponding decline in YES support, from 47 in June to 42 now. The poll also suggests yougov's 57/43 poll was not necessarily an outlier.

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13 hours ago, Werthead said:

The nightmare scenario for May has to be that Brexit becomes a total clusterfuck, the economy nosedives and Corbyn is elected in 2020, which would be pretty damn embarrassing. Although highly improbable, forestalling that possibility may also be tempting.

In which reality is Corbyn winning an election in 2020. I'd wager a beer Corbyn is gone by then.

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1 hour ago, Notone said:

In which reality is Corbyn winning an election in 2020. I'd wager a beer Corbyn is gone by then.

Hopefully not the same one where people scoffed at the utter, ludicrous impossibility of Donald Trump becoming US President.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that Corbyn will ever become PM or win the 2020 election, but certainly not impossible. Our public services crumbling to a disastrous extent (the NHS is very nearly at the cliff edge, the schools not far behind them), Brexit going catastrophically wrong and the UK being dragged into any possible military or political crises caused by Trump are all possible causal factors for that.

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42 minutes ago, Notone said:

Yes, but I don't see him holding on to the Labour leadership for 3 more years.

I don't see that as a problem at all, unless his membership support and Momentum suddenly turn on him (which is frankly less likely than him winning the 2020 election), he loses more by-elections or he chooses to quit voluntarily. The PLP has already tried to unseat him, got absolutely nowhere and will not be in a hurry to repeat that humiliation without a very strong and credible alternative in place.

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33 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I don't see that as a problem at all, unless his membership support and Momentum suddenly turn on him (which is frankly less likely than him winning the 2020 election), he loses more by-elections or he chooses to quit voluntarily. The PLP has already tried to unseat him, got absolutely nowhere and will not be in a hurry to repeat that humiliation without a very strong and credible alternative in place.

Three years are a long time. True, the PLP is not in a position to unseat him in the next couple of months. But give it a year or two. Corbyn has stumbled his way through Brexit. Let him make a few more calls like the three-line whip, and let him lose a few more seats and it's over. I think, had the PLP waited instead of trying those half-arsed attempts to remove him, they might have been in a position to do it. The seat he lost to the tories, and his three-line whip (that call was never going to be popular with his own base). But now they can't do it and have to wait, exactly because of their ill-suited and ill-timed attempts.

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I agree the situation can change. There was that reasonably credible report that Labour were considering alternative leadership candidates when it looked like they might lose both by-elections, so Corbyn would probably have resigned if he had lost both.

The big problem remains a credible alternative. Keir Starmer seems to be doing a good job at Shadow Brexit Secretary, the Tories seem to respect him, he has formidable legal experience and has that mix of being a new MP (so untainted by the Blair years) but also very experienced in other areas. The only issue is that he has said he doesn't want to throw his hat in the ring until he has more years in Parliament behind him, but a year or two from now that may be a different situation. The only other name I see being thrown around is Clive Lewis, but I don't see either man really exciting the public in large numbers.

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