GE2019 Results: Rotten, Uncooked, Scottish, or LibLab?

This was first posted on Facebook on 18th November 2019, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

I have no idea which of these is most likely to happen in GE2019. But I’m pretty sure one of them will.

For the purposes of this scenario slicing: I’m assuming The Brexit Party Ltd wins no seats. It might, but I don’t think it will win *enough* to make any difference to the balance of power.

If on Friday 13th December we wake up to:

Writing About Brexit: Will There Be A No-Confidence Vote?

This was first posted on Facebook on 19th August 2019, and posted here with support from my Ko-Fi network.

At the moment, Boris Johnson has 311 MPs.

He also has, for now, 10 DUP MPs.

As a practical matter of fact, while officially a majority in the HoC is 326 (650/2 +1) in actuality it’s 322 ((650 – (7 Sinn Féin MPs + 1 Speaker)/2).

If I Were A Tory Prime Minister –

For the purpose of this blogpost, I’m going to suppose that I might be a Conservative Prime Minister.

By heritage and upbringing, I am a natural Labour voter: I’m a trade union member, my dad was a trade union member, his dad was a trade union member, and so on back to my great-grandfather: further than that family legend can’t tell me.

Further, since the Tories imposed the poll tax on Scotland, if not before, I’ve always been clear that I would not only never vote Tory, in FPTP elections I’d always vote for the even-slightly-leftier candidate with the best chance of beating the Tory.

So hold my hand: this is a big jump.

Brexit, the four directions: part 3

There are four ways the UK can go from here with regard to Brexit, and all of them are bad. Read the first and second directions: hard Brexit, or no deal, soft Brexit, or the EU’s deal.

There is no good way to do Brexit: there is only a choice between catastrophe and different flavours of disaster.

Third: Another EU referendum

The consistent argument of MPs and others against stopping Brexit – even now when it’s clear that hard Brexit is catastrophic and soft Brexit is not going to benefit the UK in any measurable way – is that a majority who voted in the EU referendum, voted to Leave the EU, so they have no choice: the UK government must obey the will of the people and the UK must Brexit.

But what if the UK ran the EU referendum again?

Oh, Snap! General Election 2017

“Guess what we’re doing on 8th June 2017?” I asked.

“I dunno,” said the love of my life, busy with her coursework.

“Having a general election.”

Theresa May today announced (following a cabinet meeting) that she would hold a “snap general election” on 8th June 2017.

If you want to read her claimed reasons for doing so, her full statement is available.

Parliament is sovereign: Vote on article 50

Why I think you should contact your MP to ask them to vote against Theresa May’s Article 50 bill – whether your MP is pro or anti Brexit.

Theresa May claimed as Crown Prerogative the right to invoke Article 50 and take the UK out of the EU without consulting Parliament.

The Supreme Court has ruled, as matter of constitutional law, that she’s wrong: Parliament is sovereign, and only Parliament can take the UK out of the EU.

So Theresa May has had written a very short bill which will by Parliamentary vote give her the right to invoke Article 50 without further consultation.

Way to miss the point, Prime Minister.

This is the full text of the bill Theresa May has published today, two days after the Supreme Court ruled she couldn’t just use her Crown prerogatives to invoke Article 50:

Confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.

Why is the UK leaving the EU?

“Does anyone know why the UK is leaving the EU?” someone asked.

This was my answer:

From where I’m sitting, the UK is leaving the EU because, in no particular order:

EU Referendum on the day

I think the UK will vote to Remain in the European Union today.

I have no confidence that it will do so by a large margin.

The last poll from Ipsos Mori, based on telephone polling done over the last couple of days, shows 52% for Remain, 48% for Leave: the poll of polls shows a Remain majority. More telling still, 74% of those polled expected Remain to win.

What will happen if Remain gets the majority?

David Cameron remains Prime Minister until he chooses to step down – which, as we already knew, he planned to do before May 2020. He held the referendum to keep his Brexit MPs with the Tory party, and by their own boys-club rules, he’s won. He undoubtedly expected to be part of a Tory-LibDem coalition and to use the referendum as a trading point with his coalition partners, and keep his unruly anti-EU MPs and Ministers quiet in that way, but having won his point, I doubt if he will see many Brexiters go to UKIP: the Tory party has a talent for power and unity.

One genuine upside: Iain Duncan Smith has lost his place at the Department of Works and Pensions, and I very much doubt he will ever get it back. It’s difficult to think of any politician who has been more dishonest or more incompetent, and reputedly David Cameron had tried to edge him out at the last couple of reshuffles, but IDS sat tight. He was tempted out with – I’d guess – the hope that if Leave got the majority, the Tory party would once again recognise his gift for leadership as they did in 2001, and make him their leader and Prime Minister.

(I really do think Iain Duncan Smith is arrogant and stupid enough to think that. Of course, if he stands down in 2020, it will certainly be to a seat in the House of Lords, where he can continue to reminisce over those wonderful days where he deprived people of their benefits and forced them to work for no pay, until he dodders off stage still wondering why his party and his country never properly appreciated him.)

There will be no other referendum on leaving the EU for at least ten to fifteen years: the conditions required were odd in the first place, and I don’t think any of the parties except UKIP would have stomach for another.

Which brings us to UKIP, the party which will benefit most from a Remain majority.

They retain their main income source, the MEPs who don’t like Europe, and they are in the lovely situation where they convinced nearly half of the British electorate to vote based on lies, without having to be in a position to take responsibility for them.

Because the UK will not leave the EU, the Leave campaign can continue to push the idea that all of the austerity-fuelled cuts to public services are the fault of too many immigrants straining the system: they can continue to push the idea that immigrants are to blame for the housing shortage: they have no reason to stop this, now they’ve established so many white voters are gullible enough and racist enough to believe it. And while David Cameron didn’t want to leave the EU, he certainly sees the benefit of having a built-in group of vulnerable minorities who can take the blame for his own policies.

What will happen if Leave gets the majority?

I think this is unlikely, but it’s worth remembering: this EU referendum has no legal trigger. Neither the government nor Parliament was required to do anything as a result of a majority of UK voters deciding they wanted out of the EU: it’s effectively a giant opinion poll, no more binding than a petition to Parliament.

What many Leave voters were expecting to happen was that they’d wake up on Friday 24th June and discover the UK was no longer in the EU and their lives would get better because there’d be more money to spend and fewer foreigners around.

In fact, even if the EU referendum did have a legal trigger, all that could happen would be that the UK Government would invoke Article 50, and then 27 other EU countries and the EU Commission would spend two years negotiating with the UK on the conditions to be set for the UK to leave the EU: those conditions to be ratified by a vote of the European Parliament.

The negotiators for the UK would have to choose between the UK no longer having access to the European market of free trade – which, combined with the loss of the money that flows into the UK from the EU, would likely trigger a recession – or to accept that if the UK were to continue to have access to its biggest market, the UK would have to accept being part of the Schengen free movement area, as Norway and Switzerland have, and to accept that the UK would be bound by all EU laws and regulations – while losing any UK input into those laws and regulations.

Given that most Vote Leavers appeared to be inspired by a toxic mix of xenophobia and imperialism, I do not imagine that – if Leave gets the majority – the price of access to the EU common market would be acceptable to them. But it would most likely be what they’d get. And having left the EU, now poorer and seeing their services failing still further without any EU financial support, but with EU immigrants continuing to enter the UK freely and EU regulations still paramount, wouldn’t that make UKIP stil more successful?

But I think that today, the majority will vote to Remain.

I hope.

24th June: I despair.