Westminstenders: May plays Sale of the Century

[RedToothBrush]

Theresa May is currently in the midst of a campaign to sell her deal to the public. Unfortunately she appears that there are only 649 people she needs to sell it to, and that's not going so well.

She attempted a sales pitch to potential Labour rebels and succeeded in getting them to actively decide to vote against her.

There are currently 100 backbench tories who have stated they will vote against it, which makes parliamentary maths very difficult.

There is a rising support for plan b in the form of Norway Plus. This may make Remainers less likely to vote for a deal but persuade some leavers to back May.

The ECJ A50 Court case has been heard. Judgment has not been given yet. Its due 'soon'.

Next week the Withdrawal Agreement will be debated in Parliament with the vote due at 7pm on Tuesday 11th December.

Expect a rough couple of weeks.

Have they? the Trump and Brexit polls were all within the 2or 3% margin of error, yes the 2017 GE was completely wrong.

I know a few leavers who ve changed their minds, no remainers though.

The problem with the youth vote is the new method of registering for students has completely changed and getting them to actually vote!

I would expect some leavers to lie to pollsters because they don't want to openly admit they were wrong and then to vote differently in the 'booth.

TBH its giving the people the chance to vote on the deal etc again that is most important, not that they choose Remain.

Has this site been linked to recently?

whatukthinks.org/eu/opinion-polls/uk-poll-results/

This was on our local news today about the food nomination challenge for food banks. www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-46388211

www.deltapoll.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Deltapoll_Fisher181129.pdf

Link to the PDF with results tables for the November Delta poll. If I’m interpreting it correctly it has a very high number of don’t know / would not vote.

Another minister gone:
mobile.twitter.com/SamGyimah
After careful reflection, I will not be supporting the Government on the EU Withdrawal Agreement. As such, I have tended my resignation as Universities & Science Minister – read more on my Facebook page...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46407249 - we're evaluating feasibility of going it alone on a uk galileo.

presumably to pretend "no deal" wont harm our military capability?

laughable unicorn stuff - galileo is almost fully functional - we'd have to build and launch at least a dozen satellites to get basic capability.

Quite apart from the elapsed time when we have no capability, we have no launch capability - and that means we'd be competing for slots over the decade it'd take to get them up.

oh and of course the reason we 'need' these is to provide our military with 'secret' capability - how long is that going to stay secret/remain uncompromised when we have to hand over the satellites to furriners to launch them?

Re Galileo-
.
So we're without anything and will spend £92 m exploring options to build our own having lost the estimated returns of €1.15bn

It's interesting that smart phones that already use Galileo will continue to do so.

Do you know that could have solved the whole thing. If only relinquishing EU membership had meant that we wouldn't have access to sat nav or smart phone signals at all.

Whilst rationing, Kent lorry parks and stockpiling medicine don't seem to bother people I bet a sudden loss of mobile function would.

Most people given the choice of loss of their mobile function might have been a bit less wedded to sovereignty over food regs,

@talkinpeece @BigChocFrenzy. Interesting lists of policies there intended to get Brexit voters back “onside”

2 questions,
First, how many of the policies you suggest do you personally support and not support.?
Second, do you honestly believe that policy list you suggest will have much success because it is aligned with what leave voters want?

I actually bought the New European today.
It’s excellent and they have some great merchandise

Thought there wasn't the available space on the radio spectrum for another GPS system?
Not to mention the billions required.

We'll end reliant on the US...again.

I genuinely wonder how many leavers would, in the privacy of the polling booth during a 2nd ref, drop the bravado they might show to pollsters/friends/colleagues and tick remain.

Back in 2016, it might have seemed exciting voting for plucky little Britain to go in alone it the big, wide world. Two plus years later it might seem daft and more than a bit scary for many.

Last time, the shy Leavers / usual non-voters caught us out

If we have a PV, it could swing on whether those non-voters are discouraged / bored of it all and stay home, or are angered enough about "the elite" trying to reverse a decision to come out again.

It would certainly be influenced by whether a higher % of the 18-24 age group vote next time
Last time wasn't as low as first thought, but still lagged behind the expressed enthusiasm
The PV marchers too seem to be mostly middle-aged or elderly, not as many young as I'd expect at demos

Don't just talk the talk on social media, walk the walk to the polling station !

Steven Swinfordd@Steven*Swinfordd_

_Exclusive
_
Eight Cabinet ministers have held talks about pivoting to Norway-style "plan B" if PM's deal is voted down

They are Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Geoffrey Cox, Matt Hancock, Amber Rudd, Philip Hammond, Greg Clark & David Gauke

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/11/30/eight-cabinet-ministers-hold-secret-talks-pivoting-norway-pms/amp/?twitterr_impression=true
....
It means nearly a third of the Cabinet have shown support for Norway.

They've held calls over weekends, attended briefings on Norway, some have held private meetings.

Suspect number of Norway backers in Cabinet is higher, but others have proved more difficult to stand up.

They do know that Norway has FOM with the EU, right!

LouiseCollins Those are all policies I have wanted long before the ref,
but too few people seems to want actions - that would cost them money / taxes / house values - rather than just handwringing over how the precariat are suffering.

So, it isn't particularly intended to try to get Leave voters onside

• although it might give hope to those hammered by austerity. who voted in desperation and anger at the smug mc they see, who give them lectures rather than help. iirc, There was a contour map showing that the areas worse affected by austerity had the highest Leave vote

However, the ref might be a wake-up call that the country can no longer ignore the growing number of Left Behind -
they've shown they can and will try to wreck things.

Ideally - if we don't Brexit and crash the economy - we would see these kind of policies.
In the real world, I expect inequality to continue to grow, because too few of the better off want the kind of change that costs them money.

The country may reach boiling point in the next decade or so and explode,
or may just continue becoming an ever more miserable place for the bottom 50%, with the top 5-10% pulling further ahead of everyone else (even if a few of them wail how unfair it is)

I do know people who voted remain who have said they would vote leave upon reflection. They quoted the EU punishment as the reason. This was some time ago before it became apparent what a mess Brexit was.

I also know leavers who would now vote remain. Citing they did not fully appreciate the consequences of leaving and the government making such a hash of it.

I certainly would not like to hazard a guess as to what happened at the ref.

Too many on the remain think they would win easily. Its far from the case from what I see / hear.

I wonder what sort of turnout a PV would generate.

With a few exceptions, most people I know's viewpoint of brexit is 'bored' and 'fed up with it'.

And whilst this is of course simply anecdata it does feel like there's a big portion of people who are, rather naively, not that fussed either way.

If it wasn't for the fact that it's destroying people's lives, it would be quite fascinating.

bellini It's mainly May who's fixated on FOM

Most Tory Brexiters & Remainers alike quite like FOM, because it helps business:
they just cynically played on immigration to win the ref.

It fits in the fav Tory theme of "get on your bike and look for work"

However, the ref might be a wake-up call that the country can no longer ignore the growing number of Left Behind

Various posts on MN and comments in real life lead me to think that too many comfortably off haven't woken up to this realisation.

Yes, red even those who express concern aren't prepared to pay higher taxes, or sacrifice their house profits

Not just Left Behind Leavers who are very angry...

Veteran Leaver Richard North was formerly very measured and sane,
but has become vitriolic the last few weeks over the possibility of Remain, or even Norway++
He wants No Deal instead - despite his years of warning how catastrophic it would be for the country

"If you actually get close to stopping Brexit (not that you will), you will find you have a bigger battle on your hands than the nation had with Hitler.
You will spark a civil war, the likes of which will rip the country apart".

www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87071

His Flexcit plan seems basically that the UK should create and lead a huge new European bloc using UNESCO, which would replace the EU - and he expects the EU to relinquish its power in UNESCO, e.g. give up their 27 votes.
i.e. never going to happen.

He savages the CU WA, or including some form of CU in Norway++ for frictionless trade (SM is not quite enough)

That's because a CU would lock Britain to the EU - anathema to all ideological Leavers - and prevent his dream of the UK creating what looks rather like EU MkII, his version of Empire 2.0

Nationalist Leavers seem to hate the EU mainly because it's not run by the UK

Ah, I wondered when his emotional core would break through.The rational version of his vision has been "we just want to have a good but more distant relationship with the EU," but getting the UK to take over the EEA and then the EU itself is precisely the kind of pie-in-the-sky claptrap I've started to expect from hard right Englishmen.

None of the seem to be able to think past leaving the EU to explain how, if the UK kept "failing" to be influential one one of the Big Three in the EU, they expect the UK to be able to make friends and influence other nations within the EEA to the extent that they will a) become the defacto leader and b) start luring over EU members to be lead by the UK.

It all goes back to the bloody Empire, doesn't it?

I stopped reading Pete North a while back. He is unable to be civil to, or about, people he disagrees with. I don’t want his vile words inside my head.

My mistake - you were talking about Richard North (Pete North’s father??) - I don’t know if he writes in the same vein.