Westminstenders: A False Sense of Security

[RedToothBrush]

The new exit date, unless we agree a deal sooner, is the 31st October.

It seems ages away, but its runs the risk of a false sense of security too.

The first deadline is May 22nd. The Conservative Party would dearly like to avoid European Elections. They are already liable to face wipe out in the early May local elections, as the party was at its peak in 2015 under Cameron when there were last elections.

The EU elections have the added danger of proportional representation meaning UKIP and The Brexit Party could win seats from them. This is despite polling suggesting that Ukip and the Brexit Party are unlikely to reach the high watermark of 2015 and this could lead to fewer UKIP style MEPs this time round.

The liklihood of a deal by 22nd May is low though. Especially given how well Tory - Labour talks are going. The potential for a deal seems remote in the next few weeks.

The next deadline falls on 30th June. If we do have EU elections, the next target for the Tory Party is the end of June to get a deal before the newly elected MEPs can take their seats. However if the goal is unachievable before EU elections, it seems unlikely that agreement will be found in the next 30 days unless there is a major change of heart amongst the hardcore ERG and the DUP. Labour will want to see the Tories humiliated too much.

May who says she will go, will face another wave of pressure to resign during May and June. Messages out of No10, though not May herself, had indicated an exit around 22nd May on the condition a deal was done. Crafty as ever, what May actually said was she would stay on until we reached the second stage of Brexit and had effectively left. This now falls as late as Oct 31st, thus killing plans for a summer Tory leader election.

Once we get past June though, time for a deal, any deal starts to become very limited. Parliament only sits until mid July. Here May hits another problem. The two year parliamentary session ends. There has been talk of it being extended but the DUP have firmly said no to this.

This means when parliament is due to return in September we have an issue. To start a new session May will need a majority to pass a Queens Speech. If the DUP and Hardline ERGers withdraw support in protest at May still being PM what happens? Can May win support from elsewhere. It seems unlikely.

At this point the question of a General Election looms large. And we only have six weeks from then before we exit the EU. If a GE is triggered then, the risk of no deal is extremely high, which might encourage some to support May from across the aisle to prevent parliament from being shut and losing those crucial six weeks.

The danger over the next few weeks, is there is a false sense of there being lots of time left. The reality is our real deadline might be in effect the end of the parliamentary session in mid July. After that all bets are off.

The date of 31st October isn't the one you should keep your eyes on.

Re Yorkshire. It very neatly shows the difference between voting in GE and EU Elections. In 2015 Labour got 39% in GE (49% 2017) but only 29% in 2014 EU. For Conservatives figures were GE 32% 2015 (40% 2017) but only 19% in 2014 EU.

The Conservative figures especially chime with current polling showing up to 50% of their vote would desert to UKIP/Brexit for EU elections.

From a tactical point of view UKIP/Brexit only just polled enough for 3 seats. Both Labour and Conservative had loads of excess votes and so a vote for either of them is the most likely to deprive the Brexiters a seat. However the Greens also came close and would likely attract disaffected Labour Remainers and so would be the best punt at an out and out Remainer. Also probably safish to defect from Labour without affecting their Result. If you are a Remain minded Conservative then defecting to the LibDems looks less likely to have an effect but is also even less likely to adversely affect the Conservative seat allocation.

My MEPs are a grim parade. 3 UKIP, 3 Tory - wall-to-wall gammon. Thank God for Alex Mayer, the only woman, Labour, signed the Revoke petition, backs a referendum, opposes No Deal, seems sound and from what I can see, basically wants us to stay in the EU. So I don't think I'd have to do any complicated calculations over who to vote for (assuming she's standing again, which I hope she is).

He's a brilliant exponent of example of on the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" approach

.....but we collude with that by spreading our outrage at what he says, so we only help raise his profile

There's nothing he'd hate more than to be ignored

I've always maintainted that Farage is an excellent politician, soley in terms of the Machiavellian/ Plebian stroking techniques of his campaigning.

Without him I wonder what traction this idiotic brexist thing would have got.

Despite the way england has chosen to culturally import many anglophone dross from elsewhere, ;

I am still not convinced that transposing trumpian techniques works as smoothly as they seem to expect.

People get bored of men screaming at them, after a while.

Especially British people.

Remain vote and advice to look more closely at the D’Hondt system. That’ll be me off the list then, I expect.

I would have thought your advice demonstrates your knowledge Born. Some people in politics who know stuff would be a pleasant change.

I just googled the D'Hondt system as ignorantly I didn't know what type of pr it was.. even more ignorantly I didn't realise it's used in Wales and Scotland already.

Has this been posted, from the Mail:

Boris Johnson is at risk of losing his seat

The Generation Why? report by centre-Right think-tank Onward found that constituencies with ratios above 1:1 voters aged 20-39 for 60 pluses were likely to be won by parties other than the Tories.

Some Conservative seats have ratios far higher that the tipping point, suggesting they are vulnerable,' it reads.

'Conservative seats with high ratios include the London seats of Cities of London and Westminster, Hendon, Chelsea and Fulham, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip.'

Only 16 per cent of under-35s said they would currently vote for the Conservatives. Just 17 per cent of Tory voters are aged under 45, and only 4 per cent are under 25.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6920533/Boris-Johnson-risk-losing-seat-election.html

Well it looks as though there's momentum for UKIP being checked over. I wonder if this will extend to the new Brexit Party? I assume the outcome will be a fine for £20k or something

And a punch up...

I might be biased but I like the hybrid d'Hondt system we use in Scotland which both makes it more proportional (except in 2011 when the SNP "broke" the system ) and keeps a degree of local representation, with the combination of constituency MSPs (FPTP) and list MSPs (d'Hondt system), which also take into account the number of constituency MSPs that have been won by party per region, to ensure that the overall parliamentary numbers reflects the voting proportions.

It does have what some people see as the major disadvantage and I can see their point that someone can be rejected repeatedly decisively as a constituency MSP, but they are guaranteed to become an MSP because they are top of the regional list for their party.

Despite using the d'Hondt system, even in 2016, UKIP has still failed to win any seats in the Scottish Parliament (nor, using STV, any council seats in the local elections ), so the single exception is the odious, execrable UKIP MEP who scraped in 2014 due to the collapse of the LibDem vote

Indeed! We could get a ring and televise it as "Best of British Brexit"... I'm sure it would get some viewers although the idea of a sweaty Nige in boxing shorts makes me feel decidedly ill

Now Farage is doing the political equivalent of declaring bankruptcy and starting a new business, I wonder whether we will have to tighten up our electoral laws again?

As DGR mentioned the other day, figuring out where the money goes and how it benefits the people involved is the black hole.

Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 36% (+1)
CON: 29% (-6)
UKIP: 11% (+2)
LDEM: 8% (-1)
GRN: 4% (-1)

One possible effect of ¿Plan Corbyn? (and I'd like to think it was intentional) is that it makes the Labour support figures very ambiguous ... how much of that 36% would not actually deliver with a vote if Labour were to continue their "respect the referendum" bullshit ????? Which is a double-edged sword. OK, so Labour have no idea how that figure will hold up. But neither does Tory Central - suggesting a GE would be a very very very long way down the list of "Things we could do". The question is: would that be above, or below "Revoke" ????

Interesting take: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1117352281207443457.html

Pmk with thanks, as always.

Nigel Farage is "charismatic" because the public have been told he is, and TV (especially) can deliver that. He'd be invisible against someone who has innate charisma. But those sort of people won't be allowed on our screen - unless it's in a news report about a historic crime (is one tinfoil hat view ....)

Kennedy had charisma, Nixon didn't. And it showed.

I guess it's a valid political strategy that if you can't field a charismatic leader, you neutralise the oppositions .....

During a GE campaign Labour would be forced to take a stand. They would then lose votes either way.

windows
During a GE campaign Labour would be forced to take a stand. They would then lose votes either way.
But if they stand for remain they will pick up lots of undecideds
so would gain
I just wish they would ditch JC and then there would be a surge in support for them from the middle

Goodness, page 3 already? PMK...

Maybe we should start recording online political adverts we get unexpectedly.
It must be a deep-pocketed Brexit-party Facebook campaign, as I am clearly not a natural constituent for them.

Boris Johnson is at risk of losing his seat

Good.

Charisma? There's more charisma in most Westminsterenders little finger that there is in the whole of the Yukipexit party including NF. Is that creature really charismatic- I guess it's subjective.

I'm actually struggling to come up with any politician with charisma? David Lammy is a charming orator but who else is there - on either side of the house?
There seems to be a dearth of charm and charisma but then you want politicians who are direct and honest.

Justin Trudeau seems charming though.

new~statesman~on~charisma!

"Brexit is being betrayed" almost entices you to think of a person. I'd love to have a cartoon of "Brexit" a stroppy teen girl with bleached blond hair stomping and acting like Verruca Salt .

"Today, Brexit was BETRAYED because she didn't get the spoon she wanted with her breakfast cereal. To add insult to injury her NAZI mother then asked her to put the dirty bowl in the sink! Brexit knew her worth and fought back by demanding a lift to the shops where she would spend all of her NAZI REGIME parent's money on designer gear to make her as PROUD as she should be as a True Brit."

Iain Dale on LBC now on a Brexit topic saying he has a switchboard full of male callers and wondering if “women don’t care about Brexit”. I’m at work so can’t but does anyone fancy calling up and proving him wrong?!

Interesting how that advert has dressed Farage as a rich country Tory.

The story about Johnson at risk of losing his seat has cheered me up.

@SirWilliamD

What Remainers still need to understand is that Brexit is not based on logic, critical reasoning, economics or the facts. Brexit is like a fundamentalist religion or cult and cannot be overcome by logical argument. A man or woman with a conviction is hard (impossible) to change.

This. You could argue it both ways.