UK Politics: Time Marches On

[The Anti-Targ]

29 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

Forgive my antipodean understanding but why on earth would the UKIP, a party focused on the single issue of Brexit, which largely died shortly after the Brexit vote was delivered as it was now useless, be revitalised by the actual occurance of hard Brexit?

I would have thought that the UKIP will have its renaissance in the event of Brexit not occuring. Not the other way around.

a "no-Brexit" outcome means Britain NOT leaving the EU. For Brexiters that would either be seen as a betrayal, or can easily be propagandised into thinking of it as a betrayal (as opposed to simple incompetence) by the likes of UKIP.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

2 hours ago, Nothing Has Changed said:

What do you know though, buster. 

UKIP is dead anyway, Mr Toad has gone and they're debating letting ol' Tommy Robinson in. They wouldn't win seats. 

they might not flock to UKIP maybe, but I bet Nigel's new Brexit Party would suck in those who really want No Deal if that is not what happens.

[Chaircat Meow]

9 minutes ago, Pebble said:

they might not flock to UKIP maybe, but I bet Nigel's new Brexit Party would suck in those who really want No Deal if that is not what happens.

OK, but unless Uncle Nigel wins seats (v. unlikely) all he is doing is hurting the two main parties and logically he has to hurt one more than the other, so no-Brexit can't be a disaster for both. And even if he does win a dozen or so seats, the same situation applies. 

[Impmk2]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

a "no-Brexit" outcome means Britain NOT leaving the EU. For Brexiters that would either be seen as a betrayal, or can easily be propagandised into thinking of it as a betrayal (as opposed to simple incompetence) by the likes of UKIP.

Oh my bad. My early morning brain thought you said a no-deal Brexit. We're in agreement then.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

55 minutes ago, Nothing Has Changed said:

OK, but unless Uncle Nigel wins seats (v. unlikely) all he is doing is hurting the two main parties and logically he has to hurt one more than the other, so no-Brexit can't be a disaster for both. And even if he does win a dozen or so seats, the same situation applies. 

I was responding to UKIP is dead.

 

but lets break things down.

No deal  - Rabid Brexiteers are happy,  UKIP dies, Brexit party don't get anywhere.  people return to their traditional voting paterns.

                 Non Rabid Leave Voters,  some happy If there are no major issues post Brexit, Tory party get a boost if the election happens soon after Brexit.  Tories more likely to receive biggest punishment from any degrading in life quality no matter if caused by Brexit or not.   Some leavers will be upset there was No deal, and discover the Bus lied.  they may choose to punish the Tories for this.

                  Remain Voters  - are more likely to leave the Tories since they are the ones who failed to get a deal.  They may also blame Labour for not getting their act togther.  - but the Tories get the biggest loss here.

                  Peoples Vote people - will blame Labour and Corbyn for delaying on supporting a 2nd ref and being useless.  they are more likely to switch their votes to Lib Dems (if they ever forgive them) Green and other parties.    I don't know what Tory peoples voters will do.  but I suspect the biggest loss here will be Labour.

 

May Deal  Rabid Brexiteers will return to voting for the cult of Nigel.  These will be from both parties.

                  Leavers  happy we have a deal,  if its successful then Tories may get a slight vote boost,  but generally return to normal voting pattern.

                  Remain Voters,  will be wary and most critical, of any hardship from the deal,  will base their next vote depending on the future  EU agreement and if any food / employment standards are relaxed so we get trade deals.  They may grudgingly still vote Torry if thats how they voted before.  I don't see Labour or Torry gaining from this group.

                 People Voters.  might be relieved we have a deal.  some may still vote Torry on other issues.  they may Blame Corbyn for not backing a referendum and loosing the one chance to stop this shit.   Labour are the biggest looser here.

No Brexit / Delayed Brexit   Rabid Brexiteers will return to voting for the cult of Nigel.  These will be from both parties.

                           a large % of  leavers will leave their traditional votes and switch to Brexit/UKIP again from both parties.

                          Remainers mostly happy, biggest gain goes to whoever is perceived to have caused No Brexit.   A delay however may upset them as they just want this over with.

                         Peoples Voters  are happy.  Tories loose some votes.  Labour may win or loose depending on what Corbyn does.

                  The people who normally don't bother voting but voted in the referendum are more likely to turn out to vote for Brexit party.  Some of these may have voted in the last election, probably for the Tories even if they are normally anti Torry.  This could is more likely to hurt Torry more than Labour  - but at a minimal amount as these are the people least likely to vote.

[ants]

16 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

They assume that May's strategy to run down the clock and effectively tell MPs my Deal or No-deal will force enough MPs to vote for it.

Again this may work for the very same reason it may not work. Westminster is full of morons, who are incapable of thinking the consequences of their actions thru to the end.

What I mean is, if you want to remain or a second referendum about remaining the UK has to participate in the upcoming EU elections. Both major parties rule that out, as I've said in the previous thread there's at least a logical consistency to it. If we leave, it is hard to explain to our voters why we should participate in the upcoming election. That doesn't make sense.

The other side is, how can you remain a full member without representation at the EU parliament. You can't logically. If the UK does not participate and the seats have been reallocated... this is just a complete mess. So here I will shit on the Labour frontbench again, who are now saying they would support a new refenrendum about remaining (if May rejects Labour's Deal), while they also rule out the UK participating in the upcoming EU elections. How on earth do you scare that one out? You can't.

So while they (MPs of both parties) are ruling out remain in everything but name, I can see them still being moronic enough to simultanously vote down May's deal. And then they end up as the deer on the road staring at the headlights of an oncoming car motionless, while JRM laughingly honks before hitting the accelarator and the UK simply crashes out.

On second thought the deer on the road is the perfect metaphor, to avoid the crash the damn thing has to move in either direction to leave the road. Which they can't or won't.

More a bunny on the road than a deer.  A deer has some size to it, a bunny is just crushed.  

[mormont]

12 hours ago, Nothing Has Changed said:

UKIP is dead anyway, Mr Toad has gone and they're debating letting ol' Tommy Robinson in. They wouldn't win seats. 

Oh, that debate is over. They let him in. He's an adviser to the party leader. UKIP have stopped pretending.

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

 They let him in. 

Unlike the guy whose house Robinson was attempting to get into!

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tommy-robinson-mike-stuchbery-twitter-doorstep-video-luton-a8807916.html%3famp

[SeanF]

14 hours ago, Nothing Has Changed said:

Here's the thing:

Ian Lavery, chairman of the Labour party, and possessor of the largest disparity between brain size and body mass since the Stegosaurus has told the Jizzrag that he can't win an election if he backs a second referendum. But the Tory press and commentariat all think no-Brexit would be the worst possible outcome for the Tories, even worse than no deal. We (the Tories) are being kippified and our voters are more purple now than Cameron's in 2010 and 2015. So if the great Brexit Turd is not passed through the Palace of Westminster we are, we are informed, going to get it in the neck. 

So what gives? Surely no-Brexit can't be disastrous for both parties. Someone is telling whacking great fairy tales. 

At the moment, the Conservative leadership is in line with its voters over Brexit, whereas the Labour leadership is not.

[mormont]

25 minutes ago, SeanF said:

At the moment, the Conservative leadership is in line with its voters over Brexit, whereas the Labour leadership is not.

I mean, yes and no.

The Conservative leadership is in line with its membership over Brexit. Largely because anyone who is not pro-Brexit, in some form, has been driven away, is keeping their head down or has changed their mind. Their voters are a bit more heterogenous but if they're anti-Brexit it's mostly not a priority issue for them, because again, any such voters have known for some time that the Conservative party is not the party for them. 

Labour's problem is that there is a minority of their members and voters who are pro-Brexit, but the leadership has decided that these voters are strategically more important than those who are anti-Brexit. The calculation is that the latter will eventually fall into line, because they have nowhere else to go. The counter-argument is that the leadership overestimates both the number and importance of pro-Leave Labour voters, and the anger of pro-Remain ones: and that the leadership's strategy is confused and shifty, and is missing an opportunity to reach out beyond existing voters. But most importantly, the party's current position is clearly tactical, and that is never going to make either Remainers or Leavers feel like you're on their side. 

ETA - the absolute root of Labour's problem, if you ask me (and nobody did) is that at the most senior levels - McDonnell, Milne, and Corbyn himself - Brexit seems to be being treated as an unfortunate distraction that must be got out of the way before the party can get on with serious business. As long as you have that mindset, you're always vulnerable to treating it as a tactical consideration and coming over as insincere. 

[Werthead]

34 minutes ago, mormont said:

ETA - the absolute root of Labour's problem, if you ask me (and nobody did) is that at the most senior levels - McDonnell, Milne, and Corbyn himself - Brexit seems to be being treated as an unfortunate distraction that must be got out of the way before the party can get on with serious business. As long as you have that mindset, you're always vulnerable to treating it as a tactical consideration and coming over as insincere. 

The problem here is that this does reflect the opinion of the country as a whole. Recent polls placed the importance of Brexit as a national issue in at least third place, behind the NHS and the economy. Many people don't see Brexit as being that big a deal and assume that everyday life will be indistinguishable after Brexit to before it, and that issues such as austerity, the NHS, crime etc are far more important.

They are of course wrong about Brexit not having a measurable impact on day-to-day life and this is a particularly impressive case of paradigm blindness, but Labour's identification that Brexit was not a top priority for many voters is how they achieved a huge swing in 2017: people on the doorstep wanted to talk about issues other than Brexit and Labour responded (helped by Corbyn and his team's utter apathy towards the issue, sure) whilst the Conservatives did not, and the Tories had little or no answer for Labour's offensive using those issues (the Tories being weak on the NHS is not unusual, but being weak on crime was more surprising).

Quote

It is.

Dubious. Fascism as an outright naked concept (i.e. an outright Fascist Party) is dead, but the behaviour of multiple state actors across the globe, from Putin to Orban to Trump, shows strongly that the idea on a more subtle and poisonous level is still alive and well. The jury remains out on if the political systems, checks and balances in those countries can resist the encroachment successfully.

[Mosi Mynn]

Hunt: UK-EU relations 'could be poisoned' if Brussels fails to budge

What is Jeremy Hunt doing now?  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/08/jeremy-hunt-uk-eu-relations-could-be-poisoned-brussels-talks-brexit  How does kind of talk help diplomacy?

[Heartofice]

21 minutes ago, Mosi Mynn said:

Hunt: UK-EU relations 'could be poisoned' if Brussels fails to budge

What is Jeremy Hunt doing now?  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/08/jeremy-hunt-uk-eu-relations-could-be-poisoned-brussels-talks-brexit  How does kind of talk help diplomacy?

Its not exactly smooth, but it's not as if its been a one sided war of words has it?

[mormont]

40 minutes ago, Mosi Mynn said:

What is Jeremy Hunt doing now?  

He's doing what every politician has been doing since 2016, and even before. Blaming EU intransigence for the UK's unpreparedness, unrealistic goals, and failure to achieve the impossible, because doing so will protect his political ambitions from harm even if it damages the country. 

[Mosi Mynn]

23 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Its not exactly smooth, but it's not as if its been a one sided war of words has it?

No - but t'other side have basically been countering stupid claims/opinions from the UK politicians, for the most part.

I just don't see what putting these kind of remarks out in the media is supposed to achieve.

Quote

He's doing what every politician has been doing since 2016, and even before. Blaming EU intransigence for the UK's unpreparedness, unrealistic goals, and failure to achieve the impossible, because doing so will protect his political ambitions from harm even if it damages the country. 

He could at least try at playing at diplomacy ...

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Mosi Mynn said:

No - but t'other side have basically been countering stupid claims/opinions from the UK politicians, for the most part.

I just don't see what putting these kind of remarks out in the media is supposed to achieve.

Well thats your point of view, but I'd say that the likes of Tusk,Junker, Verhofstadt and even Macron have all been guilty of language and comments which don't exactly help the state of future relations. Of course we have BoJo making a good share of the stupid comments on our side for us, which isn't helpful. 

 

[mormont]

I would honestly struggle to name a single member of the UK government who has not used language that was actively harmful to future relations with the EU during these negotiations. 

[Heartofice]

57 minutes ago, mormont said:

He's doing what every politician has been doing since 2016, and even before. Blaming EU intransigence for the UK's unpreparedness, unrealistic goals, and failure to achieve the impossible, because doing so will protect his political ambitions from harm even if it damages the country. 

I think all he is doing is putting pressure on the EU. Much of the talk in the press has been coming out of the EU negotiators, with words like 'crazy' being bandied about.  Hunt is making it clear that its on the EU to agree to what is now seemingly a pretty clear ask from the UK, which will hopefully get through Parliament, and something that should have been put into the original agreement except for May incompetence. 

[Mosi Mynn]

For some reason my phone won't let me quote 

I think the folk from the EU have been remarkably restrained, considering the insults and careless comments flung their way from a lot of our politicians. I don't blame them at all for getting a bit exasperated at this late stage. They have been consistent and fairly supportive throughout. Brexit has taken up too much of their time - they have other things to do as well.

 Maybe Hunt has reason to believe the EU will waver at this late stage, despite them saying for months that they won't.

[Heartofice]

11 minutes ago, Mosi Mynn said:

For some reason my phone won't let me quote 

I think the folk from the EU have been remarkably restrained, considering the insults and careless comments flung their way from a lot of our politicians. I don't blame them at all for getting a bit exasperated at this late stage. They have been consistent and fairly supportive throughout. Brexit has taken up too much of their time - they have other things to do as well.

 Maybe Hunt has reason to believe the EU will waver at this late stage, despite them saying for months that they won't.

Yeah again, thats a point of view I don't entirely agree with. I think the EU have been very good at 'appearing' to be restrained, whilst at the same time constantly sending out sniping messages and slights. I mean we have made it very easy to make them look like the adult in the room, but that doesn't mean that they are. I will say that the EU has been especially good at using the media, and social media to put out its thoughts and version of events, something the UK and Mays government have been very poor at.  Even rightnow Barnier has been tweeting out the EU's side of the negotiations.