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UK Politics: Post-May Edition


mormont

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Absolutely. Consider this is what was accomplished with the entire British media against them, no-one taking Corbyn seriously and very little prep time. Next time it will be an even stronger movement.

Also, after 2015, Labour needed a 8.75% uniform swing for a majority (i.e. the party was at the bottom of an impossibly deep well). Now it's the far more feasible 3.6%* - Corbyn's most important achievement wasn't simply gaining seats, it was slashing Tory majorities in seats Labour needs.

*It's actually even closer if Scottish Labour continues its renaissance. If you give Labour the Labour/SNP seats up until Dundee East (so a hypothetical 8% SNP to Labour swing, based off a Labour Government actually looking viable again), Labour only needs a 2.4% swing in the rest of the UK for a majority, up until Worcester.

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1 hour ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Also, after 2015, Labour needed a 8.75% uniform swing for a majority (i.e. the party was at the bottom of an impossibly deep well). Now it's the far more feasible 3.6%* - Corbyn's most important achievement wasn't simply gaining seats, it was slashing Tory majorities in seats Labour needs.

*It's actually even closer if Scottish Labour continues its renaissance. If you give Labour the Labour/SNP seats up until Dundee East (so a hypothetical 8% SNP to Labour swing, based off a Labour Government actually looking viable again), Labour only needs a 2.4% swing in the rest of the UK for a majority, up until Worcester.

There's also the matter of strategic votes moving from the LibDems to Labour. In quite a few seats Labour leapfrogged the Lib Dems (sometimes the Lib Dems and UKIP) into second place and are now poised to win outright next time. Certainly that is what happened here.

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14 hours ago, Werthead said:

Absolutely. Consider this is what was accomplished with the entire British media against them, no-one taking Corbyn seriously and very little prep time. Next time it will be an even stronger movement.

The counter-argument is that next time the Conservatives will take the challenge much more seriously and will make a greater effort, but the Tories will also be proceeding from a period of greater weakness, having engendered serious public anger with debacle after debacle, and is still divided on Europe. It's not impossible that the Labour momentum will stall and the Tories will recover somewhat, but I can't quite see it unless they pull off a spectacular success on Brexit and the economy.

Labours success for me came down to a number of factors coming together all at the right time, and I'm not sure you can put it down to brilliance of a labour campaign.

If anything it was a huge counter punch to previous lack of interest in politics that most of the younger generation had.After Brexit they saw that actually things CAN and DO change in politics if you aren't paying attention. It was all a push back against the older generation and the hillbillies in the sticks voting for ignorant reasons. 

That the news media was against Corbyn did nothing but fuel an anti establishment sense of togetherness, and I think it has been a major slap in the face of newspapers to see how irrelevant they are becoming now. 

I'm guessing there will be a push back against the push back. Many are genuinely afraid of a Corbyn government but never thought it was likely. We are almost at that point. The Conservatives need to do far more to combat the propaganda from the left against them ( they don't help themselves) that makes them appear out of touch and basically evil. 

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13 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Also, after 2015, Labour needed a 8.75% uniform swing for a majority (i.e. the party was at the bottom of an impossibly deep well). Now it's the far more feasible 3.6%* - Corbyn's most important achievement wasn't simply gaining seats, it was slashing Tory majorities in seats Labour needs.

*It's actually even closer if Scottish Labour continues its renaissance. If you give Labour the Labour/SNP seats up until Dundee East (so a hypothetical 8% SNP to Labour swing, based off a Labour Government actually looking viable again), Labour only needs a 2.4% swing in the rest of the UK for a majority, up until Worcester.

Once the two main parties get up to 85% between them, then a lead of 2% can be sufficient to give a working majority.  A lead of 5-6% can produce a landslide, as it did for Macmillan in 1959 and Wilson in 1966.

 

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15 hours ago, Werthead said:

No, none.

There are scenarios where it all unfolds in a less crappy way than it probably well, but it's not going to unfold very well at all. The government can't survive until 2022 - a similar number of by-elections to the last parliament would endanger even the thin majority it ekes out with the DUP - but it might get a couple of years under its belt and then call another election post the final Brexit deal.

The best result is that the EU feels strengthened by the concerns of countries seeing the clusterfuck that's been caused and doesn't actually need to "make an example" of the UK, and we end up with a mostly acceptable deal. That doesn't help the instability brought about in internal politics.

 

Well, they quite clearly can't, and could not have plunged the country into more of an unnecessary pig's ear shitstorm if they'd actively tried.

If they can pass the Queen's Speech, they can govern.  Churchill in 1951 and Wilson in 1964 were able to govern with very small leads.

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22 hours ago, Werthead said:

Well, they quite clearly can't, and could not have plunged the country into more of an unnecessary pig's ear shitstorm if they'd actively tried.

Well, I takes a strong and stable hand to steer a ship into that shitstorm without flinching. Lesser men and women would have halted and tried to sail clear of this mess.

In other news, I am sure I was not the only one who was amused by how quickly Davis gave up in his row of the summer about having parallel talks about future trade deals instead of doing the divorce settlement first. Not that it was a surprising outcome, just the pace of it.

 

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1 hour ago, Notone said:

In other news, I am sure I was not the only one who was amused by how quickly Davis gave up in his row of the summer about having parallel talks about future trade deals instead of doing the divorce settlement first. Not that it was a surprising outcome, just the pace of it.

Maybe now that the negotiations have actually started they might be a bit more inclined to focus on the negotiations themselves (especially considering how much time pressure there is) rather than trying to make statements that will play well in the tabloids, although that might be a bit too much to hope for.

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If they can pass the Queen's Speech, they can govern.  Churchill in 1951 and Wilson in 1964 were able to govern with very small leads.

 

If they want to play by-election roulette, sure. And the DUP are apparently now not playing ball. An 11th-hour deal before the speech is still possible, but it looks now like no deal is the likely way forwards. The DUP may still vote in favour of it regardless, but if they abstain then the Tories will need to muster every single MP they have to get a majority of 2. Tomorrow will really be a bad day for a Tory MP to call in sick.

 

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I'm guessing there will be a push back against the push back. Many are genuinely afraid of a Corbyn government but never thought it was likely. We are almost at that point. The Conservatives need to do far more to combat the propaganda from the left against them ( they don't help themselves) that makes them appear out of touch and basically evil. 

 

Maybe because they are out of touch and, although not actively trying to do evil, are certainly very passive and ignorant when it comes to the ruinous consequences of their actions and proposals.

Or to put it another way, I don't think anyone, not even IDS, wanted people with mental health (or actual doctor-verified health) issues to kill themselves in despair when their support mechanisms are removed, but the Conservatives have hardly been rushing to fix the problem either. The spirit of laissez-faire is alive and well in some corners of the party, as much now as in 1845 and the philosophy is certainly amoral on a grand scale.

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53 minutes ago, Werthead said:

If they want to play by-election roulette, sure. And the DUP are apparently now not playing ball. An 11th-hour deal before the speech is still possible, but it looks now like no deal is the likely way forwards. The DUP may still vote in favour of it regardless, but if they abstain then the Tories will need to muster every single MP they have to get a majority of 2. Tomorrow will really be a bad day for a Tory MP to call in sick.

Party like it's 1974!

A complicating factor is the FTPA (which is looking really stupid now) - the Tories are going to have to suffer through ever more Jim Callaghanesque parliamentary embarrassments until a no confidence vote puts them out of their misery.

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On 2017-6-20 at 7:34 AM, Werthead said:

Absolutely. Consider this is what was accomplished with the entire British media against them, no-one taking Corbyn seriously and very little prep time. Next time it will be an even stronger movement.

The counter-argument is that next time the Conservatives will take the challenge much more seriously and will make a greater effort, but the Tories will also be proceeding from a period of greater weakness, having engendered serious public anger with debacle after debacle, and is still divided on Europe. It's not impossible that the Labour momentum will stall and the Tories will recover somewhat, but I can't quite see it unless they pull off a spectacular success on Brexit and the economy.

Surely the winner of the next election will be determined by how the voting public perceives the outcome of the Brexit process. The UK will be a couple of years post Brexit by then and if things are looking good to people, then the Tories will get rewarded (even if Labour helps out in some way). If things are looking worse than they are now then they'll get kicked.

I don't really see any other issue materially influencing the next election.

 

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13 hours ago, Werthead said:

If they want to play by-election roulette, sure. And the DUP are apparently now not playing ball. An 11th-hour deal before the speech is still possible, but it looks now like no deal is the likely way forwards. The DUP may still vote in favour of it regardless, but if they abstain then the Tories will need to muster every single MP they have to get a majority of 2. Tomorrow will really be a bad day for a Tory MP to call in sick.

 

The DUP have confirmed they'll vote for the Queen's Speech (and it's most unlikely that Lady Sylvia Hermon will vote against it).  The arguments are about Supply, not Confidence.

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12 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Party like it's 1974!

A complicating factor is the FTPA (which is looking really stupid now) - the Tories are going to have to suffer through ever more Jim Callaghanesque parliamentary embarrassments until a no confidence vote puts them out of their misery.

The FTPA makes it very difficult to get rid of a government.  It does require an explicit vote of No Confidence.

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52 minutes ago, Lyanna Stark said:

Speaking of Brexit, I found this translated article from a Swiss newspaper pretty depressing to read. Thoughts?

Personally I find Brexit more depressing and saddening than anything else.

I agree it is all very depressing, but there is a hint of optimism at the very least somewhere.

The article (which I've seen shared numerous times) is sadly quite accurate in its portrayal of incompetence I think. Hard to argue against it.

But at the same time its coming from the perspective of a European who obviously have their own bias' and way of looking at the issue. It portrays anyone who might be anti EU as ignorant or 'lied to', and the EU as a place of sensible decision making (we might be helping them in comparison right now) 

I'm not saying the article is especially wrong, but its also coming from the perspective that Britain in the EU was already totally fine and there were no problems, and so leaving is idiotic. Leaving is rather silly, but mainly because the penalties for doing so are seemingly so prohibitive. The EU is really not such a great institution, the EURO has been quite disasterous for many, and we are looking at a future where countries start to lose even more sovereignty in the cause of ever closer union. It might be that we are better off outside of that in the long run, even if in the short term things look quite bad. 

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17 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Surely the winner of the next election will be determined by how the voting public perceives the outcome of the Brexit process. The UK will be a couple of years post Brexit by then and if things are looking good to people, then the Tories will get rewarded (even if Labour helps out in some way). If things are looking worse than they are now then they'll get kicked.

I don't really see any other issue materially influencing the next election.

The lesson from this election is that Brexit is a significant issue, but it is not an issue materially affecting people's everyday lives (or, if so, in too roundabout  way for them to immediately causally link) and, with both main parties in favour of Brexit, it really disappeared as a major issue for many people. The Tories were not expecting that and it blew up in their faces since they had literally nothing else on the table. If the next election comes after Brexit is completed and it's a moderate success or a total fiasco, then it may play a larger role. But the future of the NHS, the statue of education, jobs, the police etc will always be the things that people are most immediately concerned about.

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Speaking of Brexit, I found this translated article from a Swiss newspaper pretty depressing to read. Thoughts?

 

The central thrust of the argument is fine. Britain lost its Empire in the war and immediate aftermath, and without that its economic strength waned quickly and it found itself in debt to the Americans (somewhat unfairly, given the money the US lavished on its former enemies to help them rebuild, for all that it was in the grander scheme of opposing Russia). Our military and political influence also dropped. The only things really keeping us in the game were nukes and our permanent seat at the UN.

The EU helped reverse that somewhat, helped boost the UK economy and also created a new tier, where the EU itself is easily an economic superpower to rival the States or China, and countries within the EU can gain or lose influence. The most powerful country in the EU becomes the spokesperson for the whole EU and thus gets to sit at the top table with the US, China, Japan and so on. Germany has traditionally been the most powerful country in the EU (and is again now, thanks to us) but Britain and France have occasionally given it a run for its money. Britain's overseas aid, its willingness to use its military only for resolute self-defence (as in the Falklands) or police actions alongside allies and our stronger economy put us in a pretty good position in the late 1990s. Indeed, we were well-situated in the EU by refusing the adopt the Euro (which was clearly going to turn into a clusterfuck when it started) and picking up alliances with the new eastern European powers (particularly Poland) as well as having both population and economic growth which would outstrip that of Germany by the 2030s, and make us the de facto leading power of the Union.

We also has extraordinary exemptions, favoured treatment and Special Snowflake Status in the EU. The amount of shit we avoided that every other country had to adhere to was quite ridiculous. That's when I felt sorry for Cameron (ergh), because when he tried to get a "better deal" for Britain in the EU it was very much taking the piss and we clearly weren't going to get much back in return. That was then very easily spun by the media into a defeat - both because of people having no idea whatsoever which of their local amenities had been paid for by the EU and by a hideously badly-run Remain campaign - and made Brexit a more compelling argument.

The problem is that when we leave the EU, we will really have jack shit left to keep us relevant, aside from the nightmarish suggestion of the entire country being turned into a regulation-free tax haven for billionaires, an aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic for 1%ers in easy flying distance of the new EU economic centre in Frankfurt.

 

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The Swiss themselves seem to have no desire to join the EU.

 

The Swiss are also not kidding themselves that they get to be a major player in world affairs without it.

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:
3 hours ago, Werthead said:
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The Swiss themselves seem to have no desire to join the EU.

 

 

The Swiss are also not kidding themselves that they get to be a major player in world affairs without it.

And they are kidding themselves if they think they are genuinely independent of the EU. And I don't think the Swiss are kidding themselves on that front either. Is the UK (or the hard Brexiters in particular) kidding itself about the extent to which it can exorcise the EU?

In goods trade the USA is the UK's biggest single country export market. But it's less than 1/3 of the total goods trade into the other EU members

EU (top18) : GBP 145,628,023,465 (2015); 138,378,799,795(2016)

United States: GBP 48,598,095,717(2015); 44,125,290,184(2016)

The EU 27 is less dependant on the UK for export trade, though it's still a very important market. So for goods trade at least, the EU 27 is in a pretty strong bargaining position.

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12 hours ago, Werthead said:

The lesson from this election is that Brexit is a significant issue, but it is not an issue materially affecting people's everyday lives (or, if so, in too roundabout  way for them to immediately causally link) and, with both main parties in favour of Brexit, it really disappeared as a major issue for many people.

I don't think that's the lesson, no. Not when the swing to Labour in Remain areas was much stronger than that in Leave areas. That strongly suggests Brexit was in fact a major issue in some sense.

I think the lesson is that Remain voters are resigned to Brexit but are not in favour of the government's approach as set out before the election, and it's likely many voted Labour for that reason. (Or possibly because they're opposed to Brexit but saw the Lib Dems as a wasted vote.)

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Tories were not expecting that and it blew up in their faces since they had literally nothing else on the table.

They had other things, but they were badly selected and presented. Abolishing the triple lock on pensions is a necessary step and the sort of policy you put forward when you're confident of winning and think you can take the hit, so I actually don't blame them for that. I don't know who in the Tory campaign team thought that resurrecting fox-hunting as an issue was a good idea, though.

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

I don't think that's the lesson, no. Not when the swing to Labour in Remain areas was much stronger than that in Leave areas. That strongly suggests Brexit was in fact a major issue in some sense.

I think the lesson is that Remain voters are resigned to Brexit but are not in favour of the government's approach as set out before the election, and it's likely many voted Labour for that reason. (Or possibly because they're opposed to Brexit but saw the Lib Dems as a wasted vote.)

They had other things, but they were badly selected and presented. Abolishing the triple lock on pensions is a necessary step and the sort of policy you put forward when you're confident of winning and think you can take the hit, so I actually don't blame them for that. I don't know who in the Tory campaign team thought that resurrecting fox-hunting as an issue was a good idea, though.

I agree with abolishing the triple lock.  The mistake was to issue a manifesto which simply took things away, and offered nothing in return to the voters.  As Pierre Trudeau put it, you have to offer the voters some prizes.

Quite why anyone thought abolishing free school lunches was a good idea escapes me, since the cost of providing them is peanuts in the scheme of things, but it was precisely the kind of measure that angered people in the 35-44 age bracket, where the Conservatives did so badly.

The Conservatives could have absorbed any one or two of a big lead for Labour among 18-34 year olds, a swing to Labour among 35-44 year olds, or a drop in turnout among 55+ year olds, and still won a majority, but they couldn't absorb all three.

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