Brexit process

[UndercoverElephant]

I still don't think the tories can win a majority! I realise this is a minority position, but I believe people are underestimating the impact of tactical voting at the coming election, as well as the unworkability of a tory-bxp pact.

Bring it on.

What I can't figure out is what Labour could offer as a "credible leave option" in a referendum.

[Mark]

Some politicians lie and some do not.

Go on, surprise us, who are the Politicians that don't lie ??

[adam2]

Brexit extension until end of January 2020 now agreed.

A partial victory for the remainers, who regard each delay as good news.

[Mark]

Brexit extension until end of January 2020 now agreed.

A partial victory for the remainers, who regard each delay as good news.

Are there any 'winners' in this ?
Suspect the vast majority will be unhappy with the outcome, whatever it ends up being.

It is worth remembering that we've had 3+ years of national chaos in order to try and resolve an internal dispute in the Tory Party that got out of hand.
Deal or no deal, we'll be arguing about the outcome for another 10 years.
Meanwhile, there's still no 'band width' to discuss anything else....

[clv101]

Brexit extension until end of January 2020 now agreed.

A partial victory for the remainers, who regard each delay as good news.

Are there any 'winners' in this ?
Suspect the vast majority will be unhappy with the outcome, whatever it ends up being.

It is worth remembering that we've had 3+ years of national chaos in order to try and resolve an internal dispute in the Tory Party that got out of hand.
Deal or no deal, we'll be arguing about the outcome for another 10 years.
Meanwhile, there's still no 'band width' to discuss anything else....

Yes, no winners. But remember, this, or something like it is inevitable. If it hadn't been Brexit it would have been something else.

[Little John]

So apparently 140 Labour MPs are refusing to go for an election, and Corbyn can't force them to do so. So Corbyn is now saying he won't back an election "until no deal has been absolutely taken off the table."

....which isn't possible without revoking article 50 or agreeing a deal.

This is not Corbyn's fault, but it is a big mistake by the parliamentary labour party.

Yes it is his fault. He knew (or should have if he was not stupid) that, in order to achieve his socialist agenda, this was going to be a fight to the death in political terms. There was never any neutral ground left to stand on. Neutral ground no longer exists.

Instead, Corbyn has vacillated, triangulated and capitulated to the point where he has nowhere left to stand.

He has done this because his is spineless or thick or both.

[UndercoverElephant]

So apparently 140 Labour MPs are refusing to go for an election, and Corbyn can't force them to do so. So Corbyn is now saying he won't back an election "until no deal has been absolutely taken off the table."

....which isn't possible without revoking article 50 or agreeing a deal.

This is not Corbyn's fault, but it is a big mistake by the parliamentary labour party.

Yes it is his fault. He knew (or should have if he was not stupid) that, in order to achieve his socialist agenda, this was going to be a fight to the death in political terms. There was never any neutral ground left to stand on. Neutral ground no longer exists.

Instead, Corbyn has vacillated, triangulated and capitulated to the point where he has nowhere left to stand.

He has done this because his is spineless or thick or both.

And you are just irrationally anti-Corbyn. You appear to believe that Corbyn can just magically fix the divisions in the Labour Party or get rid of about 50 MPs who've been trying to frustrate everything he's tried to do ever since he was elected leader.

Any objective person would acknowledge there is nothing he can do about this situation. What is he supposed to do? Deselect people like Stephen Kinnock by command from the top? That won't solve his problem. It will just hand ammunition to the people who want to accuse him of being an anti-democratic, autocratic marxist out to suppress dissent and silence opposition.

The joke is that you, unlike most of the Corbyn-haters, claim to speak for the working class.

[Little John]

Okay then. So, for whatever reason (that reason being functionally irrelevant since the outcome is the same), Corbyn is completely f***ing useless.

But, the working class, who overwhelmingly voted for Brexit for good reason, are now simply to be expected to vote for Labour for the same reason they wipe their arse after taking a shit. That is to say, whilst deeply unpleasant, the alternatives are worse.....right?

Remind me how that tack went down over the other side of the Atlantic.....

[Mark]

Some politicians lie and some do not.

Go on, surprise us, who are the Politicians that don't lie ??

We know very well who you despise.
We're less clear who you'll be voting for come the imminent GE.
Who are these honest Politicians that you're going to put your cross next to ?

Johnson ?
Farage ?

[UndercoverElephant]

Okay then. So, for whatever reason (that reason being functionally irrelevant since the outcome is the same), Corbyn is completely f***ing useless.

No. He's not useless at all. He has single-handedly dragged the Overton Window of british politics way to the left. A lot of people have failed spectacularly to understand this - how much he has changed british politics without actually winning an election. We currently have a tory party which has well and truly discovered the "magic money tree", forgotten all about "austerity" and is currently making all sorts of promises about investing in infrastructure and the public sector. Do you honestly believe that would be happening if the Labour leader was a centrist Blairite like Cooper or Kinnock? Of course not.

Corbyn has destroyed New Labour and forced the tories to move economically to the left. That is not useless, and we still don't actually know if he is finished yet, although I find it very hard to believe he would serve more than a couple of years even if he becomes Prime Minister in December. He's too old to be useful for very much longer.

[PS_RalphW]

I expect the magic money tree to be declared dead 10 minutes after a Johnson majority government is announced, apart from higher rate tax reductions

[Little John]

Okay then. So, for whatever reason (that reason being functionally irrelevant since the outcome is the same), Corbyn is completely f***ing useless.

No. He's not useless at all. He has single-handedly dragged the Overton Window of british politics way to the left. A lot of people have failed spectacularly to understand this - how much he has changed british politics without actually winning an election. We currently have a tory party which has well and truly discovered the "magic money tree", forgotten all about "austerity" and is currently making all sorts of promises about investing in infrastructure and the public sector. Do you honestly believe that would be happening if the Labour leader was a centrist Blairite like Cooper or Kinnock? Of course not.

Corbyn has destroyed New Labour and forced the tories to move economically to the left. That is not useless, and we still don't actually know if he is finished yet, although I find it very hard to believe he would serve more than a couple of years even if he becomes Prime Minister in December. He's too old to be useful for very much longer.

What a load of delusional old bollocks. He hasn't destroyed the Blairites. He has merely (and even that may be temporary if McDonald has anything to do with it) toppled two or three of their figure heads. Meanwhile, the Blairites still infest the PLP - or, rather, their spiritual successors do - and are now fully in control of the Party's direction. Corbyn is simply along for the ride from here on in until the appropriate moment arrives to oust him.

[UndercoverElephant]

Okay then. So, for whatever reason (that reason being functionally irrelevant since the outcome is the same), Corbyn is completely f***ing useless.

No. He's not useless at all. He has single-handedly dragged the Overton Window of british politics way to the left. A lot of people have failed spectacularly to understand this - how much he has changed british politics without actually winning an election. We currently have a tory party which has well and truly discovered the "magic money tree", forgotten all about "austerity" and is currently making all sorts of promises about investing in infrastructure and the public sector. Do you honestly believe that would be happening if the Labour leader was a centrist Blairite like Cooper or Kinnock? Of course not.

Corbyn has destroyed New Labour and forced the tories to move economically to the left. That is not useless, and we still don't actually know if he is finished yet, although I find it very hard to believe he would serve more than a couple of years even if he becomes Prime Minister in December. He's too old to be useful for very much longer.

What a load of delusional old bollocks. He hasn't destroyed the Blairites. He has merely (and even that may be temporary if McDonald has anything to do with it) toppled two or three of their figure heads. Meanwhile, the Blairites still infest the PLP - or, rather, their spiritual successors do - and are now fully in control of the Party's direction. Corbyn is simply along for the ride from here on in until the appropriate moment arrives to oust him.

It is not delusional bollocks. The blairites themselves have admitted this. Momentum has "changed the locks" on the Labour Party. The blairites cannot win the party back.

[UndercoverElephant]

I expect the magic money tree to be declared dead 10 minutes after a Johnson majority government is announced, apart from higher rate tax reductions

That is another reason why the coming election is not going to be a cakewalk for them.

[Lord Beria3]

Eurointeligence latest...

People's Vote descends into Civil War

We are generally cautious about making political predictions. Some of the firmer calls we made have been that Brexit will happen, and that there will be no second referendum. Events might still turn against us. But at least yesterday's events moved towards both of our central Brexit expectations. 

The second referendum campaign - or the People's Vote as they euphemistically call themselves - had a very bad day. The infighting that has been going on under the surface erupted into the open amid a classic power struggle. The so-call People's Vote is a coalition of nine organisations with different aims. One of the PV's ringleaders is Roland Rudd, the brother of Amber Rudd, and one of the leaders pro-Remain campaigners in 2016. He is the head of Open Britain, one of the organisations behind the PV campaign. He fired two people over the weekend: the head of communications and the campaign director. But they refused to go, challenging Rudd's right to dismiss them. They are backed by Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's former enforcer. There was a staff walk-out yesterday as the whole thing descended into chaos.

So, what is this about?

The two men dismissed by Rudd wanted to keep the PV campaign on the straight and narrow by focusing on the second referendum. Others want the PV to become a vehicle to revoke Brexit by whichever means possible. The split in the PV campaign is the counterpart of what is happening on the opposition benches in the UK parliament. The LibDems no longer back a second referendum, and have switched their strategy to full-on support for Brexit revocation. Labour's official position is to hold a second referendum after it negotiates a customs union deal with the EU. 

We noted a comment on Twitter yesterday that the PV is not really about Brexit but about its supporters' grip on power. It is the crowd that used to run the country. When they started to win their big political battles in the mid-to-late 1990s, they thought they had defeated the Thatcherite right forever. To them Brexit came as a complete shock for which they were ill-prepared in 2016. We noted at the time that they never reflected on the deep causes of their defeat, and moved on seamlessly to the second referendum campaign.