Brexit process

[Lord Beria3]

Eurointelligence latest...

Let’s talk about Boris

We are full of admiration for the sporting spirit of the British media. But leadership race feels to us like a bit of a misnomer for what is currently dominating Tory and UK politics. It is not really a race. It may not even be a competition. Boris Johnson has been in pole position from the start, and he is now building on his lead.

The Times has a story this morning that three Remain-supporting Tory junior ministers are supporting Johnson. They said that he is the only candidate who can save the party from extinction. Self-preservation - not Brexit - has suddenly become the main issue for the Tories. Johnson is the only candidate with a chance to defeat Jeremy Corbyn in a general election. MPs have strong views on Brexit. But they have even stronger views on the importance of holding their own seats. They are supporting the leader most likely to ensure their political survival.

This also means that they need to support the candidate best-placed to defeat Nigel Farage, too. The main effect of Farage on British politics is not his own election results, but his impact on the Tories. It is possible that the Brexit party could stage an upset in tomorrow’s by-election in the town of Peterborough in the East of England. The seat became vacant after the criminal conviction of a former Labour MP. If the Tories fail to deliver Brexit before the next election, they face the threat of near-total elimination, close to what they experienced in the recent European elections.

Like Farage, Johnson draws on the benefit of a simple message. Farage frames the argument as one of Brexit versus betrayal. For Johnson it is a choice between Brexit and the extinction of the Tory party. This is why we see the chance of a no-deal Brexit as very high. We do not see the EU willing or able to renegotiate the Brexit agreement, especially not the offending Irish backstop.

Is it possible, as some people suggest, that Johnson might do a Nixon-in-China U-turn, and support a second referendum? On this point we would like to point to the excellent column by Daniel Finkelstein in the Times this morning. He noted that the Nixon-in-China metaphor manages to misrepresent both Nixon and China simultaneously. And it won’t work in this case either. If you elected Boris...

"...[w]hat you see is what you are going to get. Expect the expected. You are going to be surprised by how unsurprised you are."

Events might still intrude. Accidents can happen. But they haven’t so far. The whole stop-Boris campaign some MPs talked about never made sense to us because of the way the vote is structured. Starting Thursday next week, MPs will vote for a shortlist of two candidates in four elimination rounds. The remaining three votes will take place June 18, 19 and 20. Johnson has so far received public endorsements by forty MPs, which will be enough to get him into the third round of voting. Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt have twenty-six each.

Tory members will then choose one of the two from the shortlist. We know that Johnson is the strong favourite among the party faithful. If he were to drop out for some reason, we expect the winner to be one of the other Brexiteers - Dominique Raab for instance. We doubt that Tories will vote for Gove, given his support for Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. A recent story in the Daily Telegraph claimed Gove proposed a Brexit extension until 2020 in a cabinet meeting. That makes him essentially unelectable in view of the Farage threat. We cannot see the Tories voting for any candidate who fails to deliver Brexit before general elections. And these might arrive early, given the narrow majority in the House of Commons.

[PS_RalphW]

A clutch of yougov polls asked how people would vote with 4 different Tory leaders.

With Gove as PM they still lose heavily to Brexit.
With Raab as PM, Brexit is nearly wiped out but Labour still wins.
With Boris, as PM, Cons win but would probably face a Lab/LD/SNP coalition.

Of course, this will probably all change by next week, but with numbers like this few Tory MP's would dare vote for any other candidate.

Sadly.

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes, it looks very unlikely that there will be sufficient tory MPs to prevent Johnson making the last two, and he's so certain to win in the membership vote that the other candidate might as well throw the towel in at that point. I did think the last two might be Gove and Raab, but now I doubt it.

If Johnson wins then I think parliament will stop no deal and Johnson will have little option but to do a deal with Farage and call an election. Then the equation is simple. If the tory/BXP alliance gets a majority, we'll get a WTO brexit, unless EU blinks when finally faced with the reality of a Johnson/Farage no deal, and does something about the backstop. And if it fails to get a majority then we'll get a Lab/LD coalition, possibly with C&S from the SNP, and a referendum between remain and either May's deal or a new Labour deal (with different red lines).

What I don't understand is how Johnson, as leader, is going to cope with people like Amber Rudd. If she remains in parliament she will block no deal. If she stands in Hastings then the BXP will surely stand against her.

[UndercoverElephant]

LJ

FT article, my bold:

Mike Greene broke with the Conservative party when Theresa May decided in March that it was better for the UK to delay Brexit than to leave the EU without a deal.

On Thursday the 53-year-old hopes to become the fledgling Brexit party’s first MP, thanks mostly to disaffected Tory voters in the Leave-supporting constituency of Peterborough in eastern England.

Mr Greene said that after years of supporting the Tories, he was left “angry� and “agitated� by Mrs May’s postponement of Brexit, which he denounced as a move to “betray the people�.

“All of my adult life I’ve voted Conservative,� he said. “But that all changed . . . on 29 March.�

The question about this week’s by-election is whether there are enough other furious former Tory voters to catapult Mr Greene and the Brexit party to Westminster — and what threat that poses to the Conservatives’ longer-term electoral prospects.

Although Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, declined to fight the Peterborough race himself, the circumstances of the election could hardly be more favourable for his upstart force.

The Tories are in turmoil. Labour’s national ratings are scarcely better; the party only scraped a win in Peterborough in the 2017 election with a 607 majority and the by-election was triggered after Fiona Onasanya, the sitting MP, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Peterborough will be a real wake-up call for us. It will turn attention on to the leadership candidates who say they can beat the Brexit party.

By contrast, Mr Farage’s party is riding high after coming first in May’s European Parliament elections with 30 per cent. It has thrown resources at Peterborough, which voted 61 per cent for Leave in the 2016 referendum and 38 per cent for the Brexit party in last month’s EU vote.

Mr Greene, a businessman, is also well known locally: he was a trustee of the cathedral and appeared on The Secret Millionaire, a reality show in which wealthy people mix incognito with the less fortunate.

But he conceded the by-election will be a “close race�, adding: “We’re giving it all we’ve got. I’m confident but I’m not complacent.�

An official at Brexit party headquarters concurred: “It is going to be very very tough for us; we’re coming from a standing start.�

Much of the party’s strategy consists of winning over legions of Conservative voters infuriated by Mrs May’s failure to see through Brexit.

John Stranger, a 55-year-old company director and activist, said that during his canvassing he found 80 per cent of voters in Tory areas — typically Peterborough’s outlying suburbs and villages — said they were supporting the Brexit party.

“I’d be surprised if we don’t win it. We’ll be extremely up there,� he added.

He and other campaigners believe the real battle is with Labour — so much so that the Brexit party has been encouraging Remain voters to back the Liberal Democrats. One of the Brexit party’s social media adverts claims that the Lib Dems, who scored just 3 per cent in the 2017 vote, are the only other party with an honest position on leaving the EU.

But Lisa Forbes, Labour’s candidate, has sought to focus her campaign on public services rather than Brexit. Despite a controversy about alleged anti-Semitism, she has been supported on the stump by Jeremy Corbyn, party leader, and shadow chancellor John McDonnell — along with volunteers who have come from as far afield as Doncaster and the Medway towns.

Whenever leaving the EU is raised on the doorstep, “we make it clear we are against no-deal, unlike the Brexit party or the Tories�, said an activist. Labour is hoping to overcome the backlash against Ms Onasanya, by mobilising its urban strongholds.

But the Conservatives appear to face a still greater challenge. On the last Saturday before polling day, the ruling party managed only to gather a few dozen activists in contrast with the Brexit party’s 1,200.

One campaigner, who gave the Tories a less than 1 in 10 chance of winning, described their campaign as “rubbish�, arguing that it focused on issues such as “parking, congestion and fly-tipping because there was a feeling “we can’t out-Brexit the Brexit party�.

Mrs May has been asked to stay away from the campaign, but the most prominent candidates to replace her have put in appearances. Boris Johnson, the frontrunner, travelled to the constituency to film the video launching his bid for the party leadership.

Wayne Fitzgerald, chairman of the Peterborough Conservative Association, acknowledges that Brexit, the issue of the day, is a big problem for his party. “The difficulty is, you can win round eight out of 10 waverers if you can have the discussion and point out to them there is more than Brexit to think about,� he said.

He added that he is as frustrated as Mr Greene — a personal friend — “and all the other Brexit party members about the government’s failure to deliver Brexit�.

Mr Fitzgerald insists that Paul Bristow, the Tory candidate, can count on an “underbelly of core support� and that the short by-election campaign has deprived the Brexit party of “the research and the troops and everything to make the inroads�. But he recognises that Mr Farage’s party has the momentum in the wake of the EU elections: “It’s whether that tidal wave of support carries over into the parliamentary by-election.�

Even if the Brexit party falls short of victory in Peterborough, the ultimate significance of the by-election may come from the threat that Mr Farage’s forces pose to the Tories at the next general election.

Campaigners say that if the Tories lose and Labour wins, it will be entirely down to the insurgent party’s success in stealing Conservative votes.

“Peterborough will be a real wake-up call for us,� said a senior Conservative party official, who says a loss will sharpen minds when Mrs May formally stands down as Tory leader the day after the election. “It will turn attention on to the leadership candidates who say they can beat the Brexit party. We will have proof the threat is real and we need to do something about it.�

That is the result of the triangulation. This is a bellweather seat - a leave-voting tight lab-tory marginal. And the intervention of the brexit party may well be that labour significantly increases its majority even though it significantly decreases its vote share. If this happens at a general election, Labour will romp home.

[Lord Beria3]

Well, UE, the bookies are already stopped allowing bets on a Brexit Party victory.

It will likely be close but the odds are on BP winning rather then Labour.

We will see soon.

Either way, if even a fraction of the Labour Leave vote (along with the army of Tory voters) shift to BP they will win.

The European elections were shocking for Labour in the north. Hartlepool, a Labour safe seat, went 53% to the Brexit Party.

https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/downloads ... y_election

https://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/p ... -1-9787827

Now, in a ge, one can expect a higher turnout which may benefit Labour but the odds of a shock defeat for Labour must be high. And there goes a Labour government if that happened across Wales, the midlands and the north.

[UndercoverElephant]

Nobody will be surprised if Labour lose this byelection. The question is by how much. It's the perfect seat to give us an insight into how both the tory and labour vote is redistributed in a 50/50 marginal where the Libdems usually lose their deposit.

[Little John]

This is what the mainstream Left has to acknowledge and adopt if it is to have any chance of winning back the working class both here and all across Europe.

It's not going to be pretty. But, it also didn't have to get this ugly had the Left acknowledged and addressed the pain of the internal proletariat of nations much earlier.

But they didn't. So, it is what it is.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... mmigration

[UndercoverElephant]

Rumours coming out of Westminster is that Labour have probably just about held Peterborough.

[clv101]

Peterborough, a pretty strong leave voting area (61%), and a Labour marginal, remains Labour. If Brexit Party are to make a significant impact in Westminster, seats like this should have been easy.

[Little John]

Peterborough, a pretty strong leave voting area (61%), and a Labour marginal, remains Labour. If Brexit Party are to make a significant impact in Westminster, seats like this should have been easy.

The Brexit party lost to Labour by just over 600 votes.

But, they still lost

If they are to make headway, they are going to need policies and that is where it gets tricky for them.

One solution might be to field overtly "left-brexit party" and overly "right-brexit party" candidates depending on constituency political demography. They could even wear different rosettes to indicate that the Brexit party is necessarily a coalition of left and right. The message would be that so far as getting Brexit over the line, the coalition will hold. but once enacted, the Brexit party would formally split into it's left/right constituent parts and become two parties.

Meanwhile, before Brexit is enacted, any manifesto would need to be extremely carefully crafted in order to hold that coalition together.

[Lord Beria3]

Agree.

Note though that the Tories, despite limited local campaigning, managed to get 20 per cent of the vote.

If we are still in the EU after Halloween will even more Tories shift to BP? I suspect so given that I would be one of them!

I also think May resigning put the sting out of voting Tory for traditional supporters. Their is hope that a better leader will come soon to deliver Brexit by 31 October.

Labour sent their v best campaigning team to deliver. It worked again and hats of to them. Experience matters in politics.

[UndercoverElephant]

Peterborough, a pretty strong leave voting area (61%), and a Labour marginal, remains Labour. If Brexit Party are to make a significant impact in Westminster, seats like this should have been easy.

The Brexit party lost to Labour by just over 600 votes.

But, they still lost

Yes. And it is absolute vindication of Labour's fence-sitting strategy. It suggests there is a solid core of Labour voters who either agree with that strategy or care enough about momentum's socialist agenda that they'll vote Labour because of that, regardless of brexit.

Labour increased their majority even though their vote share dropped a long way.

If they are to make headway, they are going to need policies and that is where it gets tricky for them.

Yes, and selling off the NHS isn't going to do it for them.

One solution might be to field overtly "left-brexit party" and overly "right-brexit party" candidates depending on constituency political demography. They could even wear different rosettes to indicate that the Brexit party is necessarily a coalition of left and right.

Won't work. Part of their appeal right now is that their message is really simple, and Labour has been repeatedly attacked for being too complex for normal (non-political) people to understand.

[UndercoverElephant]

Labour sent their v best campaigning team to deliver. It worked again and hats of to them. Experience matters in politics.

So does boots on the ground. Labour bused in loads of Momentum activists and knocked on all the right doors. They got their own core vote out. The fact that Labour now has five times the number of active members as the tories does matter.

[fuzzy]

Do we know anything of the labour MP? If it got rid of a blairite I don't see it as a total waste. I am dissapointed, but I think unless the press support you, a 1st MP is going to be a mountain climb. Which is totally illogical, as one Westminster MP could do zero harm, and would shake the tree for everyone's benefit.

[UndercoverElephant]

Do we know anything of the labour MP? If it got rid of a blairite I don't see it as a total waste.

Labour MP is a remainer, high-ranking Unite union official.