The most likely scenario now is that the EU will grant an extension until at least 31 Jan 2020 (which Tusk has already said this evening he will recommend), and then all parties will agree to hold a general election.
I’m sure the opposition will have a look at the polls and find some excuse for not agreeing to an election.
I’m relieved. In no Universe is it reasonable to have a day and a half to scrutinise a Bill with the level of constitutional import more massive than the Great Reform Act.
I am personally resigned to Brexit happening now but at least the Deal can be screened for ambushes and foul play, like the looming No Deal at the end of 2020. Turn it from a hard Brexit to merely a very shit one.
Hopefully as time goes by and more of the Deal comes to light support for the Deal and for the Tories will ebb.
This is not correct. It’s monstrously unreasonable to expect Parliament to accept that “this deal is the best option” but demand that they do so instantly, and have a massive hissy fit if they indicate they will give the scrutiny of the deal the time that such a task requires. And revoking article 50 is not the only alternative to instantly signing the deal without reading it; the Prime Minister has already asked the EU for an extension (at Parliament’s insistence) and there seems every prospect that it will be granted, so there is the alternative of, you know, parliament actually doing its job and scrutinising, debating and if necessary amending the major, complex legislation which the government has chosen to introduce just days before its own self-imposed but meaningless deadline.
This absurd fetishisation of 31 October is entirely Johnson’s own unforced choice. It’s not a choice that binds Parliament, or the UK, the EU or any other member state of the EU. There is no reason why they should pay any attention to Johnson’s distress at missing the deadline, and certainly no reason why Parliament should indulge Johnson’s capricious whims in priority to doing what is best for the country - which is giving this legislation, and the deal that it supports, proper scrutiny and consideration. Johnson’s apparent horror at the thought that it might be carefully scrutinised simply underlines the importance of doing this.
If he gets elected he can certainly negotiate a better deal; Teresa May did, and she was one of the worst prime ministers of all time, so why not Corbyn? Can he get elected, though? That’s a challenge, right enough, but his chances are certainly better than they would be if he rolls over and gives Johnson the Brexit that Johnson wants, and then fights an election.
They’ve had years to debate Brexit, and months to study the majority if the deal that’s been unchanged. This is an excuse to ensure another delay, and as I said I’m far from sure what that gains Labour.
The polls are saying that Johnson will win with a majority of 100 seats. By letting Johnson spend the last few weeks being successful in everything but Parliament they have thrown away whatever slim chance they had.
Corbyn could only possibly win by fighting for remain, but he’s not willing to do that, being a Brexiteer himself. So, I’ll have to vote Lib Dem no matter what, as there’s no possible protest vote no matter how it stands in my constituency (and I doubt Soubry will make it to 4 figures even if she does stand again). If I wasn’t so against Brexit I’d be tempted to vote Tory just for some stability and progress, and have the vain hope that Labour might get a moderate, electable leader like Blair that could actually get the country back on track. But until we leave it will have to be whoever will revoke article 50, so Lim Dems it will be.
Um… it actually DOES bind the UK and the EU. They can, with unanimous consent, amend the date, but they are, in fact, bound by it.
The UK has already requested an extension, and has legally committed itself to accept an extension to 31 January, if offered (and to consider any other extension which may be offered). The EU can therefore secure an extension, if it wants one. Therefore they are not bound by the 31 October deadline.
Do-or-die by 31 October is entirely Johnson’s whim; it has no traction at all within anyone who is not Boris Johnson. And its certainly no justification for his stance that the Withdrawal Agreement Bill must either be accepted without consideration in detail, or withdrawn to avoid consideration in detail, but at all events, at whatever cost, come what may, must not under any circumstances be considered in detail.
However poor Labour’s chances are, they will certainly be poorer if they have to fight a general election immediately after having caved in to Johnson and helped him to implement this truly dreadful Brexit. I cannot see that it is to their advantage to do this.
As for the polls “saying that Johnson will win with a majority of 100 seats”, take that with a degree of caution. Even leaving aside that polls can move during a campaign - remember the predictions of a thumping Tory majority when the April 2017 election was called? - when the votes are split four ways it is difficult with the UK’s crapulous electoral system to predict how the seats will fall. The modelling on electoralcalculus.co.uk based on recent opinion polls shows the the Tories will get 34.5% of the vote, and projects the most likely outcome as 354 seats (which would be 54% of the seats, and a majority of 159 over Labour). At the same time, though, it gives the Tories only a 50% chance of securing a majority of any size, which tells us that there’s a very wide range of possible outcomes and that 354 seats for the Tories, while more likely than any other outcome, is still not very likely.
The issue facing Corbyin is not, can he win a majority in this scenario? (The electoralcalculus.co.uk modelling gives him only a 13% chance of doing so.) It’s whether his limited prospects here will be less limited or still more limited if, before the next general election, he supports the implementation of Brexit on Johnson’s terms.
I think an election result is in doubt because:
- the longer the deal is out there, the less it will be liked.
- it gives Remain a specific target of attack rather than the moveable feast of before.
- it forces the Tories to defend it, and it goes against a lot of red lines that Johnson and May set for themselves, and there’s stuff that froth-at-mouth Brexiters and traditional Unionists will dislike.
- Johnson is utterly dreadful at handling hostile crowds. He excels with sympathetic crowds obviously, but seems to get stage-fright the moment he is challenged.
- technology lessons.
- FPTP. From what I’ve read, the Tory strategy was to box in the Brexit Party to keep the pro-Brexit vote united. That may (MAY) have failed now. But conversely, this doesn’t apply to the anti-Brexit vote in the same way. Seats where Labour lead generally have Tories as the main alternative, while seats with Lib Dems lead have Tories have the main alternative too. So Labour and Lib Dems aren’t competing for the same vote in the same areas as the Tories are against the Brexit Party.
- whatever happens, an election is the right thing to do. If Parliament had caved last night, it would have been unforgiveable. If the electorate end up endorsing the Tories in an election they’re fucking stupid, but it’s democratic. Unlike 2016.
- In five years nobody will admit to having supported Brexit.
I agree with all that. I think that when Brexit fails to happen on 31 Oct, as Johnson promised - do or die - he will lose a lot of support to Farage.
Brexiteers are not into subtle reasoning. He made a promise and he broke it, even though Parliament passed his deal. They won’t easily trust him again.
As you pointed out, Johnson doesn’t like hostile questioning. And even more, when that hostile questioning comes not from Remainers but from Brexiteers, he won’t handle it well.
The European parliament has backed a Brexit extension to Jan 31. Now it’s just up to the European Council. They are highly unlikely to refuse.
I do so love that the EU are simultaneously being the adults in the room and trolling Boris “I’ll ask for an extension but not sign the letter” Johnson.
One of the added benefits to yet another punt of the Brexit deadline into the long grass (from my personal, petty viewpoint) is that it must wreak merry havoc with those investment portfolios designed to short the economy post-Brexit. This can’t be good for JRM and his ilk.
“I’ll get you your Brexit, it’s Parliament that are preventing it” is not subtle, especially when amplified by the media.
I can’t find anything online to show that they’ve actually done so yet.
Thing is though, The figures tend to lend some credibility to that. By a reasonable estimate, about 64% of constituencies across the UK voted to leave, but 75% of MPs wanted to remain.
Exactly how committed to this project do we think parliament is?
I’ve said it from the start. A strongly remain parliament (which it is) will do everything it can to ensure that brexit doesn’t happen. A lot of them will outwardly deny it but I cannot imagine there are enough MP’s in there ultimately willing to take a course of action against their personal desires.
I make no judgement of that being good or bad but I do think it is clearly true and I’m not sure what an election will do to change it.
An election will change nothing while Corbyn is in charge of the Labour party. Remainers can’t trust him, moderates don’t want him, and he’s shown himself as being incompetent against Johnson again today.
However, it seems that him getting defeated at an election is the only think that will get rid of him and allow a potentially electable opposition leader to emerge, so Brexit and several more years of Johnson now seem almost inevitable.
I’ll still be voting Lib Dem in the hope that they will somehow come to hold the balance of power, but even if that happens it will likely just be another recipe for delaying and buck-passing, which would strengthen the Tories even more.
There was a chance to deal with this in the last couple of months, but the opposition have blown it, and effectively handed the next few years to the Tories. If it wasn’t for Brexit, that wouldn’t be such a bad think - especially with the Marxists running the Labour party - but that all needs to take a back seat at the moment.
It will be fascinating to see exactly how Labour navigates an election on a platform of both remaining (the bulk of the MP’s) and leaving (the leadership ) whilst maintaining support in their constituencies (the bulk of which were “leave”).
The Tories may well have a clear manifesto, the Lib Dems and Brexit party definitely do but Labour? It will be challenge for them, even the official “policy” seems to commit the UK to another round of lengthy negotiation followed by even more referenda…woo-hoo! how can that fail to appeal?
I predict a lot of waffling. Every political party is its own worst enemy but Labour take this to new extremes year-on-year.
Sure, if you carve up the country into arbitrary chunks you can make a majority of them favour remain, if you want to play that.
Many of those Remain MPs have submitted cravenly to the new ochlocracy and are supporting this deal or Brexit in a wider sense.
Unless you arbitrarily exclude soft-Brexiters who opposed May and Johnson’s deals and label them as Remainers because it suits you.
Plus, that was three years ago.
An important wrinkle here is that just because a Labour MP is in a Leave voting constituency it doesn’t mean that her voters are Leave voters. Most Leave voters in any given constituency will be Tory or UKIP voters. So you could perfectly easily have a constituency which voted 52/48 Leave and in which the party votes are:
LAB 40%
CON 38%
UKIP 12%
LD 8%
OTHER 2%
That 52/48 vote has some Labour Leavers, but many more Labour Remainers. Our hypothetical MP might be best served by pushing a Leave line and hoping to pick up CON and UKIP Leavers, but that seems like a big ask - why would’t they vote for the Leave through-and-through parties they originally backed? And where would the Remain-voting bulk of their voters go? Whereas taking a Remain line risks losing a small share of their original vote, but offers the chance to pick up CON Remainers and almost all the LDs. The route to victory is not obviously to back Leave.
I’ve seen (but can’t now find) British Electoral Society papers demonstrating that a lot of northern “Labour Leave” constituencies actually do fit this pattern: overall Leave vote, but structured so that Labour MPs won’t derive much net benefit from pushing Leave.