UndercoverElephant wrote:Nobody actually knows what is coming...
Whatever it is, it is not gong to be some triangulated version of BAU.
It could be that.
I am beginning to wonder whether what is actually going to happen is the one thing that nobody thinks is going to happen, which is a continuation of the stalemate well beyond the end of this year. We don't appear to be any closer to a resolution than we were the day after the referendum. Johnson says "do or die" on October 31st, but what if he is forced to choose between an election he fears he might lose badly and asking for an extension even though he promised he wouldn't? I think the EU are genuinely terrified of a no deal, because it threatens Ireland's status as a normal member, and they may well agree to any extension the UK asks for, even if there is no guarantee of an election or referendum.
If that happens then Boris could decide to play a longer game, hoping for a miracle to come and save him before is forced to fight an election. Just imagine that. Another three years of stalemate, with no guarantee the election will solve the problem.
UndercoverElephant wrote:I am beginning to wonder whether what is actually going to happen is the one thing that nobody thinks is going to happen, which is a continuation of the stalemate well beyond the end of this year.
Urm, that's what I've been saying for several years. An everlasting twilight zone with no one wiling/able to take decisive action.
NI is not the reason for Brexit not being enacted. There are many places in the world with similar border situations where trade is entirely possible and functional. The northern Irish border "problem" is a particularly evil and potentially dangerous fiction (because it risks creating the very reality it pretends already exists) employed by the EU and Remain dominated political class to thwart Brexit.
The reason Brexit has not yet happened is because the people who our political class really serve do not want Brexit to happen because it is not in their interests.
The feel-good factor in the pre-Brexit days
Most of our readers from outside the UK would probably not even know, or care, that England won the world championship in cricket last night. The reason we mention this here is that big sporting successes sometimes have a political impact. We think this may be one of those times. We recall the importance of the 1990 World Cup victory in football for Germany; the 1998 victory for France; or the 2004 European Cup victory for Greece. Boris Johnson’s main campaign message is based on cheer-leading optimism about the country’s post-Brexit future. A big sporting success plays well into that story line.
Another factor that helps him is the decline of the Brexit Party in the polls. As we have pointed out, the Brexit Party's success or failure is related directly to perceptions in the country on whether Brexit will take place as promised, or not. The latest BMG poll has the Tories at 28%, Labour at 27%, and the Brexit Party at 14%. What we are seeing here is the Johnson effect. Even the news media have given up the pretence of a contest. In polling terms Johnson and Nigel Farage are the perfect yo-yo. Their combined support is stable. If Johnson delivers Brexit by October, Farage is finished. He and his hordes of MEPs will leave Brussels unmourned. And there will be nothing for them to fight for in the UK in that case.
But if Johnson were to ask for another Brexit extension and were forced into an election before delivering Brexit, we would take the threat from Farage very seriously indeed.
Farage's effect on an early Brexit-delivery election, in either September or October, would be less clear. We suspect that Brexit supporters will line up behind Johnson, rather than risk a split of the pro-Brexit vote. But that depends very much on the prevailing perceptions at the time.
Peace always has been and always will be an intermittent flash of light in a dark history of warfare, violence, and destruction
UndercoverElephant wrote:Nobody actually knows what is coming...
Oh of course we do!
One day, you and I and everyone we know will die. Same with the planet. Everything other than that is pretty much just the details of knowing the future.
UndercoverElephant wrote:Nobody actually knows what is coming...
Oh of course we do!
One day, you and I and everyone we know will die. Same with the planet. Everything other than that is pretty much just the details of knowing the future.
Depressing, but true....
We'll get 70/80/90 years each, if we're lucky....
At the rate we're going, how long do we give the planet before it's dead - 200 years ?
The planet will not be dead in 200 years, despite the prophets of doom. It will not be dead, probably, in millions of years, unless the sun has a mini-nova, then it might look like Mars.
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with. Cass Sunstein
UndercoverElephant wrote:Nobody actually knows what is coming...
Oh of course we do!
One day, you and I and everyone we know will die. Same with the planet. Everything other than that is pretty much just the details of knowing the future.
Depressing, but true....
We'll get 70/80/90 years each, if we're lucky....
At the rate we're going, how long do we give the planet before it's dead - 200 years ?
With luck, and a lack of a substantial cosmic collision, the planet is good to go until the Sun boils away the atmosphere and oceans and turns it into a lifeless rock, prior to subsuming it during its red giant phase.
Just because humans are unhappy with whatever the most recent climate changes are doesn't mean the planet dies any more than it did when the dinosaurs were wiped out or the Azolla helped turned the place into its current icebox configuration.
I had ZERO intention of doing that ... but seeing Boris in person scared me so I had no choice.
Of course you had a choice, and you chose to vote for Jeremy K Hunt, who wrote a book in 2005 about how to dismantle the NHS.
Better keep your fingers crossed you don’t get sick if he gets to be PM, because his colleague Matthew Handcock who will likely be in his cabinet, is a technophile who thinks we can have smart everyting (except for government ministers who are a bunch of liars and not very smart. Look at the minister at the end of this).
Handcock is also a corporate whore who would like to inject all children with toxic chemicals while telling people they are “safe and effective�. For a critique on that, see this
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with. Cass Sunstein
