If anyone wants to watch the live debate in parliament this evening, it’s here.
O Britain, my beloved Britain…! To what a sorry pass you have come.
Richard Murphy does a very good job of pointing out the many issues with the GERS claims here: The GERS data is ludicrous: Scotland does not generate 60% of the UK’s net fiscal deficit and here Whatever GERS reports today it’s important to remember it’s still CRAp – or a Completely Rubbish Approximation to the truth
“the accounting is biased and theoretically utterly flawed. When accounting it is vital that all estimates are prepared consistently and on the same basis. GERS has not been. Income is estimated on the basis of that arising IN Scotland but spending is estimated on the basis of that arising FOR Scotland. So, only taxes paid in Scotland are included. But expenditure in England (mainly), Wales and Northern Ireland is also charged to Scotland when Scotland is deemed to benefit from it. But the tax paid to generate that expenditure is not taken into account. The system is, then, inherently designed to show a deficit. This is why the Scottish government claim about it is wrong.”
Please do check the first link in particular (hard to quote here, as much of the data is represented in graphics)
Now that Boris has lost control of Parliament (due to a Government MP switching to the opposition), his only hope is to avoid all voting and keep bleating “we had a referendum several years ago and that’s all that matters.”
And of course letting Dominic Cummings run the country…:smack:
Things are getting positively spicy in the debate right now. Some of the tories are just ripping into the government. I don’t think the threat of deselection has worked.
My guess is Boris’s likely path:
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Agree to Labour demand to the delaying legislation (he will plan to repeal it), to give him the General Election in October that he wants, and that they also want as well.
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While he could potentially use various procedural tricks to try to ignore this legislation until the UK barreled out of Brexit, it would leave him no real path forward as a politician. The scenario of agreeing to it and getting Labour to sign off on a general election gives him freedom to run with a 10/31 exit as the Tory manifesto.
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If they win–and let’s have an aside:
it’s worth noting most swing polling sites for Parliament (Electoral Calculus one I frequently use) still suggest it’s not at all a foregone conclusion Boris will lose a general. Labour’s support is horrible even compared to what they drew in 2017, and the voting landscape is very fractured. In a FPTP system it makes it very possible for the conservatives to come away with a commanding majority in the face of a more divided opposition.
But if they win, Boris will seek to push through legislation on the single day he will have after winning the election to reverse the delaying legislation. Assuming he had won the general, he could insist the Lords not block the repeal effort on the basis that exiting on 10/31 was part of the Tory (winning party) manifesto, and thus the will of the electorate.
- Britain crashes out of the EU, Boris gets to be PM for 5 years. Probably outright ignores calls for Scottish independence or poisons any potential referendum efforts by imposing untenable requirements on Scotland; likely Boris also blames the chaos of hard Brexit on the conservative rebels and Labour who “undermined his last minute negotiations” (which from all accounts, were not actually happening.)
To go back to #3, “if they win” is difficult to say. I think the reason all the projection sites show them winning such a strong majority is because of all the fracturing right now, with Labour having lost significant % support and Lib Dems having gained, and the expectation Brexit Party won’t win a single seat and thus not costing the conservatives too badly. But right now as we speak a lot of, frankly “brave” (if we can use that word) conservative politicians are standing up to Johnson and sacrificing their political careers to do so. They will be purged from the party and unable to run as conservative candidates in the general, but do they take significant party support with them? To some renegade faction or etc? Who knows.
The Rebel Alliance wins the vote.
Philip Hammond, Ken Clarke, Rory Stewart, Oliver Letwin and Nicholas Soames are no longer Tories. 21 Tory MPs defied the whip to vote for Letwin’s motion tonight:
Bebb
Benyon
Brine
Burt
Clark G
Clarke K
Gauke
Greening
Grieve
Gyimah
Hammond P
Hammond S
Harrington
James
Letwin
Milton
Nokes
Sandbach
Soames
Stewart R
Vaizey
Theresa May voted with the government.
Unusually, this time I think there might be a lot of “shy Labour voters” just like there used to be for the Tories. The Tories generally get more votes than their polling suggests, but that fluctuates.
I’m entirely against Scottish independence, but to appeal to just the economics against them being independent is totally ignoring the Irish example right next door.
Ireland was impoverished for years after independence but by and large was seen as ‘Worth it’
Word on the street is that no one is being deselected unless they rebel on tomorrow’s vote.
Thirty minutes later - because these are the times we live in now - the word on the street is they appear to be being called by the Chief Whip one-by-one and are no longer Conservative MPs.
Just-expelled Rory Stewart, MP:
Good chance that Boris Johnson won’t be moving up on this listever.
I guess that’s one way he might make his mark on history. Centuries from now, will he be remembered as a great British hero, great British villain, or the answer to a trivia question?
Meanwhile, political correspondent for The Times:
True, but that was pre-EU. If Scotland wants independence to stay in the EU, it has to meet the EU deficit/GDP ratio. If they’re over that ratio and can’t get admitted as a member, then their independence could cut them off from both the EU and the rump UK.
It may actually have emboldened them. There is party discipline, sure, but there’s always a limit to that when a party is internally divided.
Plus, there is likely a strong element of “Fuck off, Boris!”
Not necessarily. You can be PM now without a majority, thanks to Cameron and Clegg, and as Prime Minister Theresa “Worst-parliamentary-defeat-for-a-British-government-in-modern-history!” May conclusively demonstrated.
If Corbin isn’t prepared to vote non-confidence, **but ** isn’t prepared to vote for an election, then Boris stays as PM. There’s a strong “Molon labe” element to parliamentary government.
“Now”? You always could have been PM without a majority. It’s never been about commanding a majority. It’s about not being openly voted against by a majority. The UK has had minority governments since before the Crimean War.