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UK Politics: The End of May


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2 hours ago, Loge said:

Is it? Brexit party got the most votes but still fewer than 1/3. Not exactly an overwhelming vote in favour of a hard Brexit.

They don’t care about the entire electorate, just people who are possible Conservative voters. Or enough of them think that way that it’s effectively what we need to worry about anyway.

This is not the kind of result that’s going to pressure brexiteers in Parliament to have a rethink on the prospect of no deal.

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10 hours ago, SeanF said:

Adding up the totals, Leave beat Remain, but Remain beat Hard Leave.

But, in reality, there are Leave and Remain voters among those who backed each party.

Fewer than 6 million people voted for the Brexit Party, or about 1/3 of those who voted for Brexit in the first place and less than those who signed the Revoke petition.

In fact, the Brexit vote has been transferred almost completely from the former UKIP share to the Brexit Party, with an additional dissatisfied 5-10% swing from the Tories. The Greens and LibDems (and, on a far smaller scale, CUK) picked up a bigger Remain swing from dissatisfied Conservatives and Labour.

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Gove offering to automatically naturalise 3 million EU citizens in the UK who've been here for five years or more, waiving the normal naturalisation fee.

Not a bad opening move regarding Brexit, no doubt an attempt to curry favour in the EU so the backstop can be renegotiated.

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1 hour ago, Philokles said:

Campbell out, yet Farage’s best mate Kate Hoey retains her membership of the Labour party.

Hoey has long been on good terms with Corbyn.  But, really a party has no choice but to discipline a prominent member who advocates voting against its candidates.

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John Bercow has announced that he's not standing down this summer (which everyone seemed to be assuming) and implied that he's going to stay as speaker until Brexit is resolved. I'm sure his former colleagues in the Tory party are all delighted by this.

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8 hours ago, SeanF said:

Hoey has long been on good terms with Corbyn.  But, really a party has no choice but to discipline a prominent member who advocates voting against its candidates.

Hoey is a disloyal fuck who should have lost the party whip and been stripped of membership a long time ago. And as much as I loathe Campbell, I'm furious at the way he's been treated.

He did not advocate voting for another party. He was asked, on results day, who he had voted for. He was honest and truthful in his response, and the reasons he gave for voting LibDem were entirely reasonable. I myself voted against Labour for the first time in my life. And, like Campbell said, it felt really fucking weird. But hopefully the party leadership will get the message and adopt an approach that allows people like me and Tucker to come back at the next election. If not, it's fuckity-bye and Lib Dems all the way.

 

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No idea how reliable or otherwise infacts is (they seem to be remain biased, but their analysis all seems reasonable; and they get their figures from a survation (good repuation) study published in the Dail Heil (leave biased)...

https://infacts.org/pro-europeans-beat-brexiters-55-to-43-in-eu-vote/

Survey conducted on the eve of the EU election

Q: Imagine there was a referendum tomorrow with the question "Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the EU" how would you vote?

Conservative EU voters split 50:50 over remain/leave; Con GE voters split 35:65

Labour EU voters split 75:25 to remain; Lab GE voters split 73:27

Lib Dem EU voters split 85:15 to remain; LD GE voters split 78:22

Green EU voters split 80:20 to remain; no figures quoted for GE
Farage's EU voters split 2:98 to leave; no figures quoted for GE - my guess is that 2% is a statistical fudge; honest mistake, or possibly just too thick to understand the question.

 

It really shows that Tory leavers left the party in droves (to Brexit); but they kept their remainers; whilst labour lost about as many from each side.

 

From those figures, I've made this: http://www.rugbyrebels.co/board/download/file.php?id=775

It takes the number of votes actually cast last week for the biggest 9 parties (so down to Plaid Cymru); applies the percentages polled above for remain/leave to each party (assuming UKIP and CHUK get the same split as TBP; and that Plaid get the same as SNP, assuing 2017's 1/3 of SNP voters supporting leave) and I get:

8,204,802 in favour of Remain

8,178,567 in favour of Leave

Margin is way, way less than the margin of error for any poll.

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Tory leadership just hotted up - this was always a possibility, but...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/boris-johnson-trial-brexit-court-lying-prosecution-nhs-vote-leave-a8934451.html

Quote

Boris Johnson is to go on trial for allegedly “lying and misleading the British public” about the consequences of Brexit.

A judge summonsed the Conservative MP to appear in court after a man brought a private prosecution over claims that the cost of EU membership was £350m a week.

District Judge Margot Coleman threw out arguments by Mr Johnson’s lawyers that the case was a “vexatious” attempt to undermine the result of the 2016 referendum.

A written judgment handed down on Wednesday said: “Having considered all the relevant factors I am satisfied that this is a proper case to issue the summons as requested for the three offences as drafted.

“The charges are indictable only. This means the proposed defendant will be required to attend this court for a preliminary hearing, and the case will then be sent to the crown court for trial.”

Oh, and before anyone comments on how "convenient" the timing is - this has been rattling away since September, and IIRC this decision was given an approximate date in March - any leadership timing is down to May (who can't have not known, surely)

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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

If only he'd said £250 million a week!

He'd still have been massively wrong.

The UK's net contribution to the EU in 2017 was £7.4 billion, or approx. £142,300,000 a week, considerably less than half of Johnson's claim. Once you apply the net economic gains to the British economy from membership of the single market from not paying tariffs and the reduced costs of freedom of goods movement and capital, those net costs abruptly evaporate altogether, so that money would not be available to spend on the NHS.

The only way even that lower figure even starts to make sense is if Britain negotiates a free trade deal with the EU, which rules out a No Deal Brexit. Since Boris's stance is No Deal, the figure remains a complete fantasy.

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2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

He'd still have been massively wrong.

Not really, if he'd said that the UK sends £250 million a week to the EU, he wouldn't have been that incorrect.

There are Brexiteers advocating for a No Deal now, but their original ambition was to negotiate a free trade deal from the start, they only want a no deal because May's deal was so rotten and things have moved towards either that or cancelling Brexit altogether. 

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3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Not really, if he'd said that the UK sends £250 million a week to the EU, he wouldn't have been that incorrect.

Yes, he would. It was total and utter bollocks.

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6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yes, he would. It was total and utter bollocks.

It’s in the very link you posted. The 250 figure is what is paid when the rebate is included, and the rebate comes off first

Its also worth mentioning that the rebate has been argued about by the EU for years , we have a veto which should prevent them from reducing it, but they have tried numerous times.

We will of course almost certainly lose the rebate should we wish to cancel Brexit now as well:

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22 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

We will of course almost certainly lose the rebate should we wish to cancel Brexit now as well: 

You almost certainly wouldn't. Revoke means continuation of membership on existing terms. Including that bollocks rebate. Continue with BRexit re-apply for membership, then the rebate is almost certainly a non-starter.

Brexiter nonsense at its best.

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5 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

You almost certainly wouldn't. Revoke means continuation of membership on existing terms. Including that bollocks rebate. Continue with BRexit re-apply for membership, then the rebate is almost certainly a non-starter.

Brexiter nonsense at its best.

If it’s bollocks then it’s EU bollocks

“In the improbable but pleasant case that the UK would remain – I would certainly find that to be absolutely fabulous but I can’t imagine it – in that instance, then the gradual exit from the rebate would still be kept. I think it is something which is no longer appropriate in a family of 27,” Mr Oettinger said.

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Which isn't at all what you were saying.

That's someone saying that he'd like to see an end to the UK's rebate - not that it would actually happen.

 

If we revoke, we remain part of the EU with all existing rights and privileges.

If we quit and re-enter, we do so on their terms - which means no rebate, no £sterling etc etc.

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