UK General Discussion: 2019 and onwards, The End of May

[Former President tack50]

I think the EU claimed that they would only grant extensions in the case of a 2nd referendum or a general election.

At this point, it's all up to the EU.

[Former President tack50]

Honestly, In my opinion, the unanimous consent requirement that the EU has for stuff relating to this process is stupid, and ought to be something more reasonable like 3/4.

To be fair, the EU is often trying to move requirements from unanimous agreement to Qualified Majority Voting (55% of member states representing at least 65% of the EU's population)

However this is the kind of thing that is in the treaties and won't be changed easily.

The main argument used to defend unanimous voting is that otherwise you infringe on the sovereignty of the member states, forcing them to do stuff they don't want, turning the EU into less of a trading bloc and more of a federal superstate.

While I don't agree with this argument, for Brexit this particular argument is particularly stupid.

[Former President tack50]

So, kicking down the can and waiting a couple months for the same outcome? I guess this is relief but still there doesn't seem to be a solution for the Brexit mess.

[Former President tack50]

As a sidenote, how long does it take for the UK to get a new government once the old one is gone?

If May resigned or lost a confidence vote tomorrow, how long would it take to get a successor?

[Former President tack50]

On paper, even if the entire May cabinet (minus may herself of course) resigned, May could stay as PM right?

Just name new cabinet ministers, I guess there will be at least a dozen tories willing to go down with her. If necessary, she could even appoint them from the House of Lords? (where they wouldn't even need to worry for reelection)

[Former President tack50]

Four votes today:

C (common market 2.0) is the same proposal that came close to passing last time.

D (customs union + single market) is supported by both Labour and SNP at the moment (SNP does not back  C)

E (confirmatory public vote) is the same force-referendum proposal as last time.

G (parliamentary supremacy) as an SNP proposal, which, if enacted, would force Parliament to choose directly between revoking Article 50 and No Deal if no agreement is reached by the 12th. This is the only one Labour is not supporting.

Why is the SNP not supporting C? It's probably what they want?

[Former President tack50]

Some Labour MPs defied the party whip and the DUP voted against everything.

At this point I wonder exactly what kind of Brexit the DUP wants. At least the other parties vote for something

[Former President tack50]

No deal really won't be as bad as everyone is trying to make it out to be

Do you have any experience working in EU-UK trade, policing, or imports? Because frankly unless you do, or unless you've spend the last 6 months sitting through briefings and meetings then I'm not gonna be that certain to take your word as gospel.

To give one example, the police currently use a range of databases to track criminals across the EU- as you can imagine our Serious Violent Crime has links to Spain, Holland etc and other places. A no-deal Brexit would see us not only lose access to these databases, but also lose access to the European Arrest Warrant- you heard that, we'd lose the right to easily arrest criminals across 27 other countries! Do you have any idea how insane that is? The most senior counter terrorist police officer has said it will make the public less safe, and greatly increases the risks of violent crime?

I haven't even covered the impact on the NHS (who's running costs would increase by over £2 billion by day), the impact on Trade (it would kill the car manufacturing industry which supports entire cities) or the impact on imports (70% of our pharmaceutical imports come from the EU, including HIV/AIDS medicine, and vital cancer medicines).

It would not only have serious short term impacts, and would cripple the governments output, but would seriously harm our economy for the next 10 years.

Yeah, no deal pretty much guarantees the UK and the EU going into a recession

The economy has already slowed way down, that would be the final nail in the coffin

[Former President tack50]

The question that Leavers are cherry-picking is "And if Britain has not agreed a deal by April 12th
and the European Union refused to grant a further extension, what do you think should happen?" to which the answer was No Deal 44%, Remain 42%, Don't Know 13%.  Note that this is in the context of the EU refusing to grant an extension.

Replying with "don't know" is the equivalent of not voting; i.e. those people don't count.

Except it’s reasonable to say they *will* vote. And, in the other side of things, dishonest to claim there’s an absolute majority of the electorate in favor of No Deal.

In fact, trying to estimate how the people who voted "don't know" will actually vote (or turn out in the first place) is one of the most important things when making a poll.

[Former President tack50]

The big date is probably the 10th of April, that's when the European Council meets and decides whether or not to give an extension.

Of course, remember that now any extension would need to include European Parliament elections and some sort of way forward to break the stalemate, unless Labour somehow starts backing May's deal.

Otherwise it's a final showdown between No Deal and rescinding article 50.

[Former President tack50]

This tweet is downright sickening. How this person gets to run a presidential campaign is a question that deserves to be accounted for.


https://twitter.com/WaywardWinifred/status/1132790657221824512

PM of England. So is Wales, Scotland and NI getting independence?

[Former President tack50]

trouble is "No Deal vs Remain" does not put the issue at rest and dramatically polarises the electorate even more. Possibly even better than a two stage referendum (which obviously isn't great) would be some form of preferntial vote, preferably something like a Borda Count rather than AV given the important outcome is broad consensus.

Didn't the Tories push against AV back in the 2011 referendum?

Imagine them doing a referendum under AV anyways lol

[Former President tack50]

What's the last time the UK had a poll with someone other than Labour or the Tories in 1st? And if the Lib Dems somehow won and Brexit got 2nd, this would be the first time without Labor and the Tories ahead since literally forever right?

[Former President tack50]

all you can say if that result did come to pass would be that three and four way marginals would become the norm, tactical voting would become impossible and there would be loads of fluke winners (and Onasyana/O'Mara style flameouts in the ensuing parliament) and high profile losses from both Labour and the Tories.

Agree that it would be far worse for the Tories than Labour though, because the former would have no real safe regions to fall back on - even blue counties like Surrey would collapse.

The places where the Tories would probably hold up best would be in affluent exurban/rural seats where the Brexit vote was around 50/50 or so. For Labour you're looking at minority and urban post-industrial working class areas. So in the event of both parties crashing, Labour do better than the Tories.

Would Corbyn lose if Labour got 19% and the Lib Dems 24%?

From Flavible Politics, inputting the data from the poll, Islington North would look like this

Labour: 32%
Brexit: 26%
Lib Dem: 22%
Green: 9%
CUK: 8%
Conservatives: 3%

As a bonus, here's Maidenhead as well (May's seat)

Conservative: 30%
Lib Dem: 29%
Brexit: 26%
Green: 6%
Labour: 6%
CUK: 1%
UKIP: 1%

Of course, take all of this with a huge amount of caution as models do break down with these huge swings. But Theresa May would be more likely to lose her seat than Corbyn. In fact, the Tories would only get 70 seats with these numbers

[Former President tack50]

Btw that 17% is the lowest Tory score ever, and by "ever" I do actually mean in any survey since opinion polling as we know it started in the 1930s.

The 1930s? Pff, we can do better than that. If confirmed; it would be a full 11 points lower than the worst Tory result ever since the popular vote meant something (29% in 1832)

[Former President tack50]

So, apparently Boris Johnson is the favourite for the Conservative leadership election.

After looking at his district, it doesn't seem like a particularly safe district. He "only" won it by 10 while the Conservatives were winning by 2 points nationally. Hypothetically, on a Labour wave on the scale of 2001 Johnson could lose; and with the chaos of Brexit who knows what will happen.

Any chance Johnson loses his seat in the next election? It is a 57% Leave seat though, so I guess that makes it safer?

[Former President tack50]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1142462197701984256

Big if true. I guess indyref 2 will not happen in Scotland but rather in Wales? Lol

Also, I guess this is good news for Plaid. When is the next Welsh devolved election coming?