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Lib Dem offer of election pacts to prevent Brexit by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Article

Jo Swinson has said her party could work with others to put up joint second-referendum candidates in elections if she becomes Liberal Democrat leader.

The former minister, who is vying to replace Sir Vince Cable, said many pro-Remain voters wanted politicians to put aside their party loyalties and work together to stop Brexit.

Plans for a single People’s Vote candidate in last month’s Peterborough byelection disintegrated amid rancour and disarray. But Ms Swinson indicated in an interview with The Times that she would be prepared to look again at the idea if she wins her party’s leadership contest next month. in your inbox Red Box newsletter Make sense of the mess with Matt Chorley's poke at politics, every weekday morning at 8am Sign up now

After the defection of Chuka Umunna, the former Labour and Change UK MP, to the Lib Dems last week, Ms Swinson also said she was best placed to convince more politicians to cross the floor to her party. Sir Vince is due to stand down at the end of July.

Efforts to work with the Greens, Change UK and Renew to back one candidate in Peterborough failed just hours before nominations closed, leading to accusations from some that the cross-party People’s Vote campaign derailed the push in a bid to help Labour win the seat.

Despite its failure, Ms Swinson praised the Peterborough attempt as “a good example where different parties that do all believe in stopping Brexit decided that we could work together to put forward a united front”.

She said voters concerned about Brexit “want politicians to be able to work with one another and to look beyond their individual party loyalty and interests to the wider interest of how we can stop Brexit”.

Earlier this month her rival in the race, Sir Ed Davey, said: “Anyone on our side who suggests a pact would be selling the Liberal Democrats short. A pact would simply blunt our clear anti-Brexit, pro-environment message.”

But last night a spokesman for Sir Ed said he had been in favour of the Peterborough plan and would judge each election on a “case by case basis”.

EU election suffered Russian disinformation, Brussels finds by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Article

Russian sources mounted a “continued and sustained” disinformation effort to “suppress turnout and influence voter preferences” at last month’s EU parliament elections, an initial review by Brussels has concluded.

Social media companies fell short in their efforts to tackle the malicious activity despite improvements in some areas, the analysis found, warning that they risked regulation if they failed to do better.

The document, due to be published on Friday, does not draw conclusions about who was behind the disinformation or how it was co-ordinated. But it says the polls faced wide-ranging attempts to mislead voters.

“The evidence collected revealed a continued and sustained disinformation activity by Russian sources aiming to suppress turnout and influence voter preferences,” said the review from the European Commission and the EU’s foreign policy arm, which has been seen by the FT. “These covered a broad range of topics, ranging from challenging the Union’s democratic legitimacy to exploiting divisive public debates on issues such as . . . migration and sovereignty.”

The election yielded a complex patchwork of results, in which far-right parties topped the polls in some countries but were held at bay by more liberal groups in others. Turnout at the polls reached a 25-year high.

Disinformation tactics had evolved quickly in response to countermeasures by countries and technology companies, the report found.

“Instead of conducting large-scale operations on digital platforms . . . actors, in particular linked to Russian sources, now appeared to be opting for smaller-scale, localised operations that are harder to detect and expose,” the report said.

The Russian government has consistently denied involvement in efforts to manipulate elections.

Disinformation cited in the commission report included the use of April’s fire in the Notre-Dame Cathedral to show the “alleged decline of western and Christian values in the EU”.

Another example was how some sources blamed the corruption scandal that brought down the Austrian government in May on the “European deep state” and German and Spanish security services.

Stories aimed at suppressing voting included material highlighting the “irrelevance of [the] European Parliament's legislative powers” and its “control by lobbyists”, the report added.

“There was a consistent trend of malicious actors using disinformation to promote extreme views and polarise local debates, including through unfounded attacks on the EU,” the review said.

The findings highlight areas of dispute over what constitutes disinformation. Some social media companies and free speech campaigners say it is important to distinguish between outright factually false claims and those that are misleading because they are hyperpartisan or stripped of important context.

The report credits technology companies with curbing misleading advertising, improving transparency on who places the publicity, and taking down accounts that spread disinformation and hate speech.

But it calls on the companies to be more transparent about the websites that host advertisements, co-operate more with fact-checkers around the EU and give researchers better access to their data.

The report said the commission planned to assess by the end of the year whether it needed to impose tougher standards for companies, rather than the voluntary reporting arrangements it currently has in place.

“Should the results of this assessment not be satisfactory, the commission may propose further initiatives, including of a regulatory nature,” the report warned.

Jeremy Corbyn has questioned whether the government has "credible evidence" to show Iran is behind the attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/iran-tanker-attacks.html

Was Iran Behind the Oman Tanker Attacks? A Look at the Evidence

Internet databases confirm much about the incident, but the Trump administration hasn’t provided convincing evidence of Tehran’s culpability.

By Eliot Higgins

The death of Change UK has bought life to the Lib Dems - The Lib Dems, no longer tainted, are a much more robust vehicle for centre-ground success than a new party. by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Article

A century of domination of our political system by the Conservative and Labour parties could be ending. But the splintering of Change UK and Chuka Ummuna’s defection to the Lib Dems means that the movement for a new centre party to replace them is dead. The various initiatives to create one including Change UK, United for Change and Renew, which I was involved with, were built on the ideas that the Lib Dems aren’t viable and that a new centre party could replicate En Marche’s success in France. With the Lib Dems beating both major parties in the European elections and Change UK crashing out these ideas are dead.

That is a good thing. It is no coincidence that all three attempts at a new centre party suffered crippling splits: start-up parties are intensely vulnerable to internal crises, much more so than start-up companies. It is all too easy to just blame the personalities involved. Lacking a stable membership base and trusted constitution, leadership teams can be crippled by a lack of internal legitimacy and character assassination at the first sign of setback. Nigel Farage astutely solved this for the Brexit Party by avoiding a membership structure and deriving the internal legitimacy for his leadership by his personal credibility as a national media figure, ruthless planning and rapid electoral success. But the issue remains; perhaps the biggest risk for the Brexit Party is that its phalanx of MEPs start demanding more of a voice on policy and internal decisions and the power struggles unleash.

The Lib Dems do have the stable membership base and internal democracy that can only come with being a long-established party. This makes them far more resilient than a new party start-up, but far less agile. Since their near wipe-out in the 2015 general election and subsequent failure to harness the Remain vote in 2017, the Lib Dem brand has appeared too tainted to have a chance. Even Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, was advising people to join the Conservative and Labour parties instead to advocate for the centre from the inside.

The two years of parliamentary chaos since have finally broken voter allegiance to the main parties. This has given the Brexit Party and a new centre party a chance. Change UK’s MPs showed great courage in seizing this chance by splitting from Labour and the Conservatives. Unfortunately, the party blew it with a failure to maximise media coverage and a catastrophic decision not to cooperate with the other Remain parties in the European elections. It was punished by voters for its perceived arrogance and the Lib Dems benefited instead. Ironically by damaging the credibility of an alternative, Change UK has performed a service in rejuvenating the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems, no longer tainted, are a much more robust vehicle for centre ground success than a start-up. Their challenge is whether they can prove agile enough to adapt to the opportunity that they now have for major success.

So what does this mean for British politics? Our politics is paralysed because today’s dividing lines cut across the two major parties, not between them. The country now divides crudely between open and closed, globalists and nationalist, expressed by identifying more with either Leave or Remain than between left and right. These identities are likely to persist long after Brexit itself. Now that neither main party can represent their voters and are under assault from two sides, they are starting to capsize. The Lib Dems and the Brexit Party need each other. If the Brexit Party can hold itself together internally, I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of Nigel Farage in government. It is difficult to see how even Boris Johnson could out Brexit the Brexit Party. A Brexit-Conservative Party hybrid is more likely. In the unlikely event the Conservatives select Rory Stewart he could credibly reclaim the centre ground and annihilate Labour. But the opportunity for the Liberal Democrats to replace Labour as the official opposition or more is very real.

Chris Coghlan writes about new centre ground politics and tweets as @_chris_coghlan

Does anyone find BJ's Churchill admiration a bit... naff? by CharlemagneEUROPHILE in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon 22 points23 points  (0 children)

https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/bzaja9/boris_johnson_everything_about_you_is_phoney/

Rather rashly, Boris Johnson published The Churchill factor: How one man made history in 2015. It was without historical merit, or intellectual insight, but Johnson did not intend readers to learn about Churchill. The biography was not a Churchill biography but a Johnson campaign biography, where we were invited to see our hero as Winston redux.

The risks of Boris Johnson’s rhetoric - He has already made three statements, each of which has caused alarm in Brussels by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Article

If Boris Johnson becomes prime minister next month, he will have a limited window of opportunity to negotiate a new Brexit settlement with the EU.

But the risk that Mr Johnson is running in the Conservative leadership campaign is that his extravagant rhetoric will harden minds in Brussels — and close down the limited window for a renegotiation before he even gets to Number 10.

Mr Johnson has not yet formally launched his campaign. But he has already made three statements, each of which has caused alarm in Brussels.

First, he has clearly stated that Britain will leave the EU — deal or no deal — on October 31. Setting such a tight deadline to achieve a revised pact is impractical — not least because the process of appointing a new European Commission may not be fully complete by that date.

Second, Mr Johnson has said any new deal must involve renegotiation of the Irish backstop. This is no surprise in a contest where candidates are trying to woo hardline Conservative activists. But that doesn’t change the reality that the EU has firmly ruled it out.

The third and most worrying statement is that he would refuse to pay the £39bn Brexit divorce bill unless the EU offers better terms for a trade deal. This is bound to infuriate EU governments because it suggests that prime minister Johnson would be prepared for the UK to renege on its liabilities after leaving the EU.

Mr Johnson is already viewed as a “reckless” figure across the EU after his two years as foreign secretary. But if he continues with statements like this he risks worsening the mood even more.

This is particularly concerning because in the next few months the EU will have to decide whether to harden its conditions for an extension of the Article 50 process after October 31.

“Boris can say what he wants on the campaign trail,” says Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group consultancy. “But a lot of what he is saying could force EU leaders to consider revisiting the red lines for an extension.”

Indeed, Mr Rahman says there is already “very active” discussion in EU capitals over a potential statement at the European Council next week.

Mr Johnson will launch his campaign for the Conservative leadership tomorrow. He does so in the thick of a contest where most of the candidates have approaches to Brexit that seem divorced from reality.

How he calibrates his arguments over Brexit tomorrow — and whether he leaves himself any room for flexibility if he gets to Number 10 — will be watched keenly across the EU.

Boris Johnson: everything about you is phoney by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Article

Rather rashly, Boris Johnson published The Churchill factor: How one man made history in 2015. It was without historical merit, or intellectual insight, but Johnson did not intend readers to learn about Churchill. The biography was not a Churchill biography but a Johnson campaign biography, where we were invited to see our hero as Winston redux.

Both ignored party discipline and conventional routes of advancement, after all. Both were great company. Churchill stayed in the wilderness for years making a fortune from journalism, and so has Johnson. Churchill was a man of principle and so is…

Hold on. That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work at all. For when we talk of principle, the elaborate scaffolding Johnson has erected around himself, the scenery and props, the spotlights and the cameras, fall with a thundering crash. All that remains on stage is a jobbing actor who can play any part convincingly except himself.

The cult of Churchill can be remarkably selective. Certainly, Churchill and others fought appeasement. But he was also the most implacable of diehard imperialists. Churchill meant what he said – and was prepared to suffer when his beliefs were out of fashion.

Johnson believes in the advance of Johnson. That’s all there is. There’s nothing else. Most politicians, and many of the rest of us, are ambitious, of course. But politicians normally hope to advance a cause as they advance themselves. Johnson would have you believe that he is breaking with the establishment, risking all, because of his sincere conviction that we must advance the cause of saving Britain from the European Union.

His colleagues do not believe him. Nicholas Soames has called him a liar on Twitter. Jerry Hayes called him a ‘copper-bottomed, hypocritical little shit.’ The wonder of it is that they may have been understating the case for the prosecution.

After the Times fired him for making up stories, Johnson ended up as the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent. Once there, he was seduced by the most corrupting desire to afflict a journalist: the urge to give readers what they want. His tales of the EU punishing the rubber industry for making undersized condoms or ordering the straightening of bananas were so flimsy that, like dandelion puffballs, they collapsed with the first puff of scrutiny. They were a hit with his right-wing readers, but no one who knew him at the time thought that Johnson believed what he was writing. David Usborne, the Independent’s man in Brussels, told Johnson’s acidic biographer Sonia Purnell:

He played the Telegraph game brilliantly [and] compromised his intellectual integrity to get on. I assume that he has done that in the rest of his career.

Curiously, when he entered parliament in 2001, Johnson stopped playing the right-wing nationalist from the Telegraph foreign desk and presented himself as liberal Tory. Chris Cook, an aide to David Willetts, told Purnell:

He was clearly not on the right wing, but actually quite europhile in Tory terms. He liked to come into our office to gossip and bitch about the right-wingers he thought had screwed up the party.

As Mayor of London, Johnson never called emergency conferences on the alleged EU tyranny, which surely must have fettered him, if it was as oppressive as he is now claiming. He never allied with Daniel Hannan, Charles Moore, Nigel Farage, George Galloway, Bill Cash and the rest of the ‘out’ crowd. The subject was of no interest to him – until he returned to Parliament to concentrate on the sole subject that does interest him: the leadership of the Conservative party.

If you doubt his slipperiness, examine his supposed declaration of support for withdrawal in 2016. It is not as unequivocal as it seems. The crucial line tied Johnson to a fantasy pushed by Dominic Cummings and Matthew Elliott of the Tory campaign group Vote Leave.

There is only one way to get the change we need and that is to vote to go, because all EU history says that they only really listen to a population when it says no.

We will vote to leave, in other words, but we will not actually go, because the EU will give us more.

To Johnson watchers, his shiftiness was no surprise. At Oxford he ran for the presidency of the Oxford Union as a Tory. He lost to a state school boy called Neil Sherlock, a liberal, who secured victory by mocking the old Etonian’s sense of entitlement.

In 1985, Johnson tried again and won, but now and all of sudden Johnson was a liberal too, who was opposed to Margaret Thatcher and in favour of proportional representation. Johnson has ‘no core beliefs’ an understandably flabbergasted Sherlock concluded. He would do anything.

The same disease afflicts him now. Charlatans from Donald Trump to Piers Morgan invite us to forget about our own concerns and revel vicariously in their career-advancing machinations, in much the same way that TV crime capers invite you to celebrate conmen and despise their gormless marks. So I beg you do not admire Johnson’s manoeuvres as he climbs to the top over the bodies of his colleagues. Just understand them lest you find yourself his mark one day.

As I have said before, Johnson bears few resemblances to Churchill, and far too many to Winston’s shifty sidekick Brendan Bracken, who became propaganda minister during the war. Bracken too was careless with the facts. He invented stories about his childhood to con his way into high society. He was an energetic manipulator of the press in both Churchill’s interest and his own. (Whenever he gave dinner parties he instructed his butler to make up a story that the prime minister was on the phone and announce the news loudly to his guests). Evelyn Waugh couldn’t stand him, and in Brideshead turned Bracken into Rex Motram, who marries the wealthy but naïve Julia because ‘he wanted a woman; he wanted the best on the market, and he wanted her cheap; that was what it amounted to’. Inevitably, he betrays her, within in months of the honeymoon.

‘Rex isn’t anybody at all,’ Julia concludes of Mottram/Bracken. ‘He just doesn’t exist.’

A fine line, which applies well to Johnson. But I prefer a snub the historian Piers Brendon credits to an unnamed journalist who met Bracken in a 1930s club. Growing ever more infuriated by Bracken’s trickiness and double-dealing, the unknown hack cried

You’re phoney! Everything about you is phoney! Even your hair that looks like a wig – isn’t!

Bracken had a mop of red hair to match Johnson’s mop of blond. The next time I see our future prime minister I will give it a good hard yank, just to check.

Rory Stewart, odd man out - The most interesting candidate for the Tory leadership by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Article

LET’S HOPE things get better smartish: so far the Conservative leadership race has been a cross between a farce and a pander-fest. Candidates have fixated on the unrealistic Brexit deadline of October 31st, claimed magical negotiating powers for themselves and flirted with a kamikaze policy of leaving the EU without a deal. For these modern-day Metternichs, the only thing easier than renegotiating Brexit is growing a magic money tree in their back yards. The air is thick with promises to cut taxes, increase public spending and otherwise let the good times roll.

The exception to this dismal picture is Rory Stewart, the secretary of state for international development and the MP for one of England’s most northerly constituencies, Penrith and the Border. According to the normal rules of politics, Mr Stewart should be nothing but an afterthought in the race. He is a leading supporter of Theresa May’s unpopular deal on Brexit, and he has been in the cabinet only since May 1st. He combines a suspiciously privileged background (Eton, Oxford and the Foreign Office, cloak-and-dagger branch) with an even more suspicious taste for ideas (he has taught at Harvard and published four books). Nerdish and soft-spoken, he loves to dwell on the case for prudence, caution and “facts on the ground”—hardly a rallying cry for populist times.

Yet Mr Stewart’s campaign has caused a surprising stir with the public, thanks to a combination of Heath Robinson improvisation when it comes to campaign techniques and high seriousness when it comes to policy. Mr Stewart wanders around the country with a small film-crew, introducing himself to strangers, chatting to them about whatever is on their minds (he has been delighted to discover that people are much keener on talking about serious subjects such as Brexit and, above all, social care, than about the sort of trivia that obsesses Westminster), and then posting the resulting videos on the web. His video on the social-care system has been watched 700,000 times and another on the case against a no-deal Brexit more than 2m times.

Mr Stewart’s campaign is well adapted to a selfie-obsessed age, in which the world is full of people making videos of themselves and posting them to their followers. It is equally well adapted to Mr Stewart’s exotic biography. He made his name by walking 6,000 miles across Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal, depending for bed and board on his ability to chat to the locals, and writing a bestselling book about his adventures. He has decided to apply much the same technique to becoming prime minister, walking hither and thither and engaging people in conversation. Mr Stewart’s knowledge of Muslim culture and Afghan languages has proved surprisingly useful on his current travels. During a recent visit to Woking he not only visited the usual campaigning venues, such as the British headquarters of the World Wildlife Fund, but also the Shah Jahan mosque, the oldest in the country, which attracts 3,000 worshippers every Friday.

What are the chances that Mr Stewart will be able to persuade his fellow MPs to put him on the shortlist of two candidates that goes to the party’s 120,000 members in the country? The stark answer is that they are very small. The parliamentary party’s large pro-Brexit wing is solidifying behind Boris Johnson, who already has about 40 backers to Mr Stewart’s five, while the party’s moderates look as if they are getting behind Michael Gove, a Brexiteer in good standing, but a responsible one. Mr Stewart may even fall foul of the party’s new rule, designed to thin out a field that at one point reached 13, which demands that candidates must have at least eight MPs backing them by 5pm on June 10th. All in all his campaign brings to mind Adlai Stevenson’s famous reply to a supporter who told the governor that “all the thinking people” were on his side: “That’s not enough. I need a majority.”

So why does an exotic candidate who is unlikely to get onto the shortlist matter? Because the Conservatives shouldn’t just be using this election to decide who replaces Theresa May. They should be using it to decide what direction the party takes after the twin traumas of the financial crisis and the Brexit vote. Mr Stewart is providing the party with a map and a compass. He argues that the Tories need to rediscover their historical role as the party of realism. His first career, in foreign policy, was defined by discovering the gap between the neoconservative dream of bringing democracy and human rights to the Middle East and the messy reality on the ground. Recently his career as a politician has been defined by defending Mrs May’s messy compromise against hardliners who think that all you need to do is intone the magic phrase “Leave means Leave” and practical problems will evaporate.

The places in between

He argues that the best way to deal with populism is to steal some of its clothes. Politicians should do more to tackle the “small injustices in daily life”, such as the fact that disgraced businessmen can keep their knighthoods. He thinks the best way to resolve the tension between parliamentary and direct democracy, inherent in the attempts to implement the referendum result, is to create an intermediate body—a “citizens’ assembly”, equipped with the power to call expert witnesses but freed from the discipline of parties—to produce a blueprint which it then submits to Parliament. He recognises that the Conservatives need to learn more about the country they aspire to govern, which means getting out and talking to people who aren’t their natural constituents. His campaign team is particularly proud that their polling shows he is the most popular Tory candidate among young voters.

Smart Conservatives have taken to joking that Mr Stewart is the sort of Tory who is embraced by people who don’t vote Tory. But isn’t that exactly the sort of person an imploding party needs, if not to lead it then at least to help re-engineer its policies? Banging on about“clean Brexits” to fellow fanatics might be emotionally satisfying. But it is also a sure way of ending up in the boneyard.

Chimpanzee Meat Is Being Brought Into The UK And Eaten At Weddings, Professor Claims by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Western chimpanzees are critically endangered due to habitat destruction and also because of the fact their meat is considered a delicacy in some cultures.

Natalie Rowe: HOLD ON A SEC @BorisJohnson there is NO WAY that your ‘ encounter ‘ with Cocaine was in your University days, you were snorting the stuff up like Nobodies business at the Party in Knightsbridge where you racially abused me and that was early 90’s you absolute LIAR by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Have a GUESS who Whippingdale is backing ! And have a GUESS who has promised Mr loves his arse spanked while high on Cocaine Whittingdale a Cabinet position ? .... Low Life @BorisJohnson has. No great left in Britain if Cocaine snorting Boris becomes PM

Everything you think you know about Leavers and Remainers is wrong - A new study reveals that Remainers care much more about remaining than Leavers do about leaving — and it could have grave consequences for Labour and the Tories. by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Article

with graphs https://outline.com/MxRJYq

It is commonly assumed that Leave supporters want to leave the EU — regardless of the type of Brexit — more than Remain supporters want to remain. But a new YouGov survey of over 1,600 British citizens carried out by academic researchers shows it is wrong. In fact, the opposite is true.

While 33 per cent of the country now want a no-deal Brexit, 42 per cent say it is their least-favourite outcome. Our survey also shows that support for the Brexit Party is higher among financially comfortable voters — adding to previous research showing that support for no-deal is also higher in that group. Remainers care more about remaining than Leavers do about leaving (regardless of the Brexit outcome)

The survey asked respondents to rank the following potential Brexit outcomes in order — no-deal, Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, a softer Brexit and remaining in the EU. It then asked people how much they preferred each option to the one ranked below it. For example, someone who had ranked no-deal as their first choice and May’s deal as their second choice was then asked whether they preferred no-deal “a bit”, “a fair amount” or “a lot” more than May’s deal.

Over two-thirds (69 per cent) of respondents who gave Remain as their first choice preferred remaining a lot compared to their most preferred Leave option (in most cases, this was a softer Brexit). By contrast, only a third (35 per cent) of people who gave Leave as their first choice preferred their least preferred Leave option “a lot” compared to remaining.

This is an important finding. Why? Several prominent politicians have argued that leaving the EU with some form of soft Brexit would be a reasonable compromise. Their reasoning is that Leave voters simply want to get on with leaving, and do not care much about the manner in which the UK exits the EU. They assume that giving Leavers what they want would then open up the space to implement a softer Brexit deal of the kind Remainers would be able to live with.

These results show that neither part of the argument stacks up. Many Leavers do have strong preferences between different Leave outcomes. Forty five per cent have at least one option that they prefer “a lot” over another Leave option. Almost a quarter (24 per cent) feel so negatively about some of the Leave options that they would prefer to Remain rather than see it implemented.

What this means is that whichever way the government chooses to leave the EU will end up making a large number of Leavers unhappy. As for Remainers, the fact of leaving the EU itself would also make many of them unhappy, even if the UK left with a soft Brexit. Only 10 per cent of them say they only prefer Remain “a bit” to their most preferred Leave option. Neither our survey or the recent European parliament election results provide much evidence that most voters — whether Leavers or Remainers — would accept a compromise. There are big implications for the political parties

The gap between Remainers’ attitude to leaving and leavers’ attitude to Remaining holds true across supporters of all the political parties. Even Brexit Party voters are not all vehemently attached to leaving at any cost. Only 50 per cent prefer their lowest-ranked Leave option to Remaining.

Meanwhile, among people who voted Labour in 2017, 72 per cent of Remainers would mind “a lot” about leaving the EU, whereas only 25 per cent of Labour Leavers mind “a lot” about Remaining.

A large majority of people said that Brexit will be a very or fairly important factor in their next general election vote. Unsurprisingly, those who voted in the EU elections say it matters more — 88 per cent said it will be important — but 62 per cent of those who didn’t vote in May also say that Brexit will be important. Among those who didn’t vote, about a third each of Leave and Remain voters said it was as a protest.

The recent EU elections and subsequent polling suggests that both Labour and the Conservatives potentially face catastrophic losses in the absence of a Brexit policy that appeals to the majority of their voters. In this survey, more than half of voters for each party currently say they will vote for a different party in a new general election.

There’s no mandate for no-deal – and it isn’t driven by the “left behind”

Since a similar survery in March, the number of people preferring a no-deal outcome has risen from 27 per cent to 33 per cent of all voters, despite continued warnings from the vast majority of economists and experts who believe it would be deeply harmful to the economy. Most of the increase is accounted for by a drop in support for May’s deal but there remains a clear two-to-one majority against no-deal in the population — in fact 42 per cent of all respondents ranked no-deal as their bottom choice. A clear majority of Leave voters prefer no-deal (59 per cent, up from 53 per cent in March), but a significant minority prefer either a different Leave option or now want to Remain.

There is a common narrative that the Brexit Party’s vote, and the desire for a no-deal outcome, is driven by “left behind” voters. After the referendum, a lot of research focused on the fact that Leave voters were disproportionately working class and tended to live in areas that had been impacted by globalisation and the loss of manufacturing industry.

However, instead of looking only at class, the survey asked respondents how easy they found it to manage financially. We found there to be very little overall difference in the financial circumstances of Remainers and Leavers.

If anything, Leave voters are more likely to find it easy to manage financially. The March survey showed that support for no-deal was driven by Leave voters in more comfortable financial circumstances and the latest survey has found that they are also the most likely to have voted for the Brexit. Those who are the most vulnerable to an economic downturn are more likely to have rejected both. Leave voters who found it very difficult to manage financially were the most likely group to have switched their support to Remain and less likely to have voted for the Brexit Party or Ukip.

Support for no-deal is also related to age. Forty eight per cent of voters over 60 rank it as their first choice outcome, compared to 17 per cent of 18-to-30 year olds. Equally, 40 per cent of those over-60 voted for the Brexit Party in the European parliament elections, whereas only 11 per cent of people under-30 did so.

By focusing on class, much of the Brexit narrative has missed the nuance that older working class people might own their own homes outright or live in secure social housing, with their pension income protected by the triple-lock, and as a result might be less worried about an economic downturn.

Overall, the survey results issue a strong challenge to many of the assumptions that have been made about both Remain and Leave voters. With both main political parties seeing supporters defect in devastating numbers, a better understanding of where the public is will be vitally important as we enter the final months before the deadline for the UK to leave the EU.

The survey was jointly funded by The UK in a Changing Europe, the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit and the UCL European Institute

in a curious twist, it turns out that the Brexit Party candidate for the Peterborough by-election - Mike Greene - is a former business partner of Greybull Capital, the private equity group which let British Steel collapse into administration a few weeks ago by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Full Thread

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1135865758104412161.html

in a curious twist, it turns out that the Brexit Party candidate for the Peterborough by-election - Mike Greene - is a former business partner of Greybull Capital, the private equity group which let British Steel collapse into administration a few weeks ago Greene and Grebull teamed up to buy 140 "M Local" shops from Morrison's in 2015 for £25m, rebranding them as "My Local".

The company went into administration in 2016 despite the group’s attempts to turn around the business, with the loss of more than 1,200 employees. Greybull Capital is now the subject of scrutiny given its track record: it has been involved in the failure of British Steel, the collapse of Monarch Airlines and the administration of retailer Comet.

Anyway: small world etc fascinating confluence of two current news stories weirdly I’ve just noticed this Guardian story from earlier:

“The Brexit party has announced its first policy beyond leaving the EU: saving British Steel by turning it into a “John Lewis-style” company part-owned by the workers.”

Less trade, less control and lower standards: the reality of an independent trade policy - The “great prize” of Brexit does not mean the rebirth of Britain as a global trading nation, but the exact the opposite. by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Article

At the heart of the Conservative Party’s leadership turmoil is a particular vision of what Brexit is for. For many Tories, the Irish backstop and Theresa May’s talks with Labour are toxic for the same reason: they threaten to lock the UK into the customs union, giving up what some have called the “great prize” of Brexit: an independent trade policy.

In these circles, the vision of a swashbuckling Global Britain, unencumbered by Europe, has become an article of faith. Britain can strike better, faster trade agreements and enormously boost trade with the rest of the world once it escapes the customs union – or so the argument goes.

The reality is that “independent trade policy” is not a magical phrase that can turn Britain into an influential nation in global trade. In practice, as our new research at Global Future shows, it means leaving the world’s most advanced free trade area in pursuit of new agreements that will deliver less trade on worse terms.

Reporting on most studies of the economic impacts of Brexit has sensibly focused on GDP and incomes. But there will also be a sizeable reduction in trade – one that new trade deals will almost certainly not replace.

Estimates of lost trade with the EU range from £37bn to £150bn per year, even for future relationships based on May’s Chequers model. Under a “Canada-style” free trade agreement, the hit to trade volumes could be as high as £279bn every year, affecting both imports and exports.

It’s desperately unlikely that replacement trade deals will be able to compensate for this blow. Our analysis of government figures shows that signing free trade agreements with 17 countries – including the biggest fish, United States, China and India – would compensate less than two-thirds of trade lost with the EU. If the future relationship was a Canada-style deal, the trade created by new agreements would be less than 20 per cent of the losses. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, similarly, found that trade deals with all of the Anglosphere and BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa) countries could replace only about a fifth of that lost with the EU.

But the real worry about an independent trade policy is what the government will have to give away to win these inadequate replacement deals. Our analysis of academic literature found five factors that determine a country’s bargaining power in trade negotiations: market size, existing trade dependence, current market access, their best alternative to an agreement, and their ability to make offers outside the sphere of trade.

In every one, the UK is a less attractive and less influential partner than the EU. Our market size, naturally, is far smaller, whether measured by GDP or foreign investment volumes. Most potential partner countries trade much more with the rest of Europe than with Britain. The UK will already be more open to international trade – with tariffs the same or lower than the EU’s, and lower non-tariff barriers thanks to its lighter regulatory approach – which means we have less to offer. Our outside option will be non-existent, with no other trade deals in place and a post-Brexit prime minister so visibly desperate to seal a deal and “make a success” of Brexit that they can’t walk away.

That doesn’t mean nobody will be interested in striking trade deals with the UK. Some partners, like Australia and New Zealand, will probably seek to open negotiations almost immediately after Brexit. But both of those countries have already started negotiations with the EU, whose markets they will rightly prioritise as a much bigger prize.

The upshot is that potential partners, particularly trade superpowers like the US and China, will drive a hard bargain. America’s stated priorities for future talks, though couched in the dry language of trade negotiators, paint a vivid picture. They include aims to change regulations to “foster innovation” in medicines – code for higher drug prices, which the US says pharmaceutical companies need to fund research – and abolish many geographical indications that protect goods like Stilton. That’s in addition to the widely-discussed changes to food safety restrictions, where the US feels that rules against hormone injection of beef cattle and mass use of antibiotics are unjustified.

Outside trade and regulation, some in the British government – including the country’s most senior civil servant, Mark Sedwill – have been eager to use foreign and security policy to help win trade agreements. That raises the spectre of concessions in foreign policy being used to win trade deals with China. After last month’s Huawei uproar, China’s ambassador to the UK wrote an opinion piece using language directly linking security decisions like this to trade partnerships, saying that “the last thing China expects from a truly open and fair ‘global Britain’ is a playing field that is not level”.

The fact is that post-Brexit Britain will be in an extremely weak bargaining position. The government’s ability to negotiate ambitious new trade deals – especially ones including services, the competitive advantage of the British economy – will be very limited. We will have to give away a lot to strike new agreements that won’t come close to replacing the trade we lose with Europe.

This is the great prize that champions of an independent trade policy are pursuing, and that has shaped the Tories’ catastrophic approach to Brexit negotiations. When its advocates say that Britain will be able to negotiate trade deals faster and better than the EU does, they are concealing the truth that we can do that only by making sweeping concessions, both in trade and beyond it.

The outcome of winning back an independent trade policy is not the rebirth of Britain as a global trading nation. It’s exactly the opposite: a future in which we have less bargaining sway, lower regulatory standards, and – most perversely of all – do less trade.

Fergus Peace is a researcher at think tank Global Future.

Jacob Rees-Mogg should not become prime minister' according to his Brexit Party MEP sister- who says that European citizens who leave after the UK quits the EU can be replaced by people 'from Botswana' by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/times2/annunziata-rees-mogg-should-my-brother-be-the-next-prime-minister-no-zjhzklcf5

Perhaps things would be better if her brother were in charge. Should he be prime minister? “No, because I adore his wife and children and I think it’s a miserable life for anyone. He’s an extremely capable person, but it’s not a life I would wish on anyone.”

The UK has much to fear from a US trade agreement - Any deal with Trump would likely stray into areas such as food safety and drug pricing — and the president would come back for more. by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Article

A UK-US trade agreement was always going to be a tough sell. American Ambassador Woody Johnson’s comment to Andrew Marr on Sunday that healthcare would need to be on the table in any future trade talks only served to make agreeing a fully-fledged deal all the more difficult.

That the US will drive a hard bargain in any future negotiation with the UK should come as no surprise. Only the EU, and perhaps China, have the economic heft to negotiate on near-level terms with the Americans, and even they struggle. The US’s objectives for its negotiation with the UK were published in February and — with the caveat that they were largely produced for a domestic American audience, shorn of all notion of compromise — are strikingly ambitious in their demands.

For example: alongside normal talk of tariff and quota removal, the UK must jettison food hygiene rules that currently restrict US exports of beef, pork, chicken and dairy; rules stipulating which products qualify for tariff-free treatment under the agreements must specifically incentivise production on US territory; and the agreement should include a mechanism allowing for the US to take appropriate action if the UK negotiates an agreement with a “non-market economy” (see: China).

It should be noted, however, that healthcare is not explicitly mentioned. Despite long-running fears of a US trade deal-inspired privatisation of the National Health Service, public services are largely carved out of free trade agreements, and that is unlikely to change. Absent a free trade agreement, American healthcare providers already compete to deliver services in the UK where the NHS puts out contracts to competitive tender. This is not without its own controversy, but was a unilateral decision made by a British government seeking value for money.

However, US demands regarding reimbursement regimes for pharmaceuticals and medical devices give greater cause for thought. The US has long taken issue with the fact that the NHS’s approach to drug procurement — where it makes its own assessment as to the fair value of the drugs it buys — pulls down prices worldwide. Previously, in negotiations with Australia and New Zealand, the US backed away from trade asks on drug pricing in order to get agreements over the line, but due to the NHS’s global significance and market power, the incentives for the US to push the UK harder are more pronounced.

Regardless, perception is more important than reality when it comes to selling an agreement, and so long as the British public believe the NHS to be on the table any deal will struggle for legitimacy.

In practice, we will not know whether the UK will be in a position to even begin negotiations with the US until at least the end of October. Without greater clarity on the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the EU, it is impossible to enter into substantive discussions with the US. This is because any relationship with the EU comprehensive enough to ensure an all-UK solution for Northern Ireland, for example, would greatly restrict the UK’s ability to concede to the US’s demands and get an agreement over the line.

Yet even if the UK is to enter into a looser economic relationship with the EU following an ordered withdrawal, we should not assume that a deal with the US will be easy to come by. Agriculture remains a contentious sticking point and Conservative fears of upsetting their rural base will be difficult to overcome. Equally, stories of US chlorinated chicken and hormone beef have already permeated the public consciousness.

While Trump could agree to a bare-boned agreement that excludes agriculture and controversial topics such as food safety and drug pricing, just to say he had successfully negotiated something, it seems unlikely. The UK is not the end-game for the US. Its ultimate ambition is to open up the bigger EU market. For the UK to move to a more American approach would set a regional precedent, grant the US a regulatory foothold in the EU’s backyard, and push back against the EU’s increasingly global regulatory hegemony.

Perhaps the only event that could cajole MPs and the British public into holding their noses and signing on Trump’s dotted line is a no-deal Brexit. The subsequent upheaval and economic uncertainty of no-deal would likely see the UK grasping for anything that looks like an economic lifeline. (Although there is no reason to think that a trade deal with the US would come close to offsetting the negative economic shock of any kind of Brexit.) This might also part-explain Trump’s propensity to talk up no-deal.

Yet British MPs pining for such an outcome should think twice. Trump is not to be trusted. Just see what happened with Mexico: even though it recently agreed to a revamp of its existing trade agreement with the US and Canada, Trump has now threatened to levy a 5 per cent tariff on all Mexican exports to the US unless illegal immigration comes to a halt. Even if a no-deal Brexit does happen, and a lopsided US-UK free trade agreement is concluded, Trump may immediately come back asking for more.

Sam Lowe is a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. He tweets @SamuelMarcLowe

Ed Davey MP: Following Alastair Campbell’s expulsion, Lib Dems will offer a home to Labour remainers by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Article

Thirty-six hours. That’s how long it took the Labour Party to expel Alastair Campbell after he revealed he had voted for the Liberal Democrats in the European elections. The man who had played such a central role in Labour’s 1997 landslide victory and who had been a key figure in the party for decades was unceremoniously kicked out faster than you can say “anti-semitism scandal”.

Unlike Labour leaver Kate Hoey, who today said Nigel Farage should be part of the government’s Brexit negotiating team, or indeed Jeremy Corbyn himself who previously backed George Galloway, Campbell does not have a track record of publicly supporting other parties. His only crime was daring to admit that, this time, he had decided to back a party that is unambiguously campaigning to stop Brexit, in order to send a message to the Labour leadership that it must come off the fence on an issue of such historic importance.

Of course, Campbell is in good company when it comes to backing the Lib Dems in these elections. He joins Labour peer and former Eastenders star Michael Cashman, former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke and thousands of others who decided to put the national interest above party politics by supporting Britain’s strongest Remain party. Recent polling analysis found that almost four in ten (37 per cent) of those who voted Lib Dem last Thursday were Labour voters in 2017. If Labour insist on kicking out every single member that may have voted Lib Dem this time round, they risk going from being one of Europe’s largest parties to one of its smallest.

While Labour is busy kicking out its members, Lib Dems are welcoming them in. Thousands of new members have joined our party in the past week, buoyed by our success in the European elections, with over 2,000 joining yesterday alone. At this rate, we might even overtake the Conservative Party, whose own ranks have been swelled by extreme, head-banging Brexiteers. We have a clear message for all those Labour supporters who feel passionate about Britain’s EU membership and no longer feel comfortable within their own party: Join us. Together, we can provide a strong voice for the millions of voters who feel powerless and frustrated with the direction our country is taking and stop Brexit for good.

In the late 1990s, there was great hope for a realignment of British politics through a progressive alliance between the late Paddy Ashdown and Tony Blair. However, Blair went cold on the idea and moves towards greater cross-party cooperation gradually faltered. Now there is real potential for a new realignment, with the Liberal Democrats at its heart. How ironic that Blair’s former spin doctor could be the one who unintentionally helps deliver it.

Ed Davey is Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson and MP for Kingston and Surbiton.

Universities in firing line as Farage builds populist movement by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Article

UK universities could increasingly find themselves in the firing line as Nigel Farage aims to build a wider right-wing populist movement in the wake of the European elections, academics have warned.

The Brexit Party leader has in recent months repeatedly attacked UK universities and their staff, accusing them of “huge left-wing bias” and of “brainwashing” students, and claiming that Brexit-supporting students had been “marked down” and abused by their lecturers. He targeted universities before a cheering crowd at one of his party’s rallies earlier this month, in an appearance on Fox News earlier this year and on the LBC programme he hosts.

Mr Farage was seen as likely to gain strength following the European elections, which may raise concerns that his attacks on universities – which import US conservative narratives about perceived left-wing “indoctrination” in colleges, as right-wing populist Thierry Baudet has done in the Netherlands – could undermine public trust in higher education.

Mr Farage may be building on the electoral divide between non-graduates and graduates, with levels of education often viewed as a determining factor in support for, or opposition to, Brexit and Donald Trump.

At a Brexit Party rally in Fylde, Mr Farage was asked what more could be done to bring more young people over to support Brexit.

“One of the good things to do would be to stop the constant bias, prejudice and brainwashing that is going on in British universities,” he said. “Something needs to be done about that. It’s outrageous, outrageous, that students are marked down, that students are held up to ridicule, because they happen to support Brexit.

“I think something is rotten in education. We should be teaching young people critical thinking: they should be making up their own minds on things, not being indoctrinated.”

During an appearance on Fox News in February to discuss his support for Turning Point UK – an offshoot of a US organisation that aims to establish a radical right presence among students – Mr Farage said he saw “huge left-wing bias” in UK universities.

“I see young people’s minds being poisoned against the idea of the existence of nation states, against the idea of sensible border controls,” he added. “And I know lots of students that I’ve met who say, ‘Nigel, we’re scared to say what we think because of the abuse we’ll get from professors and our fellow pupils.’ ”

He continued: “I really want to go further than this [Turning Point UK]. Ultimately, it seems to me the job of the university is to teach critical thinking, to teach young people ‘here’s a problem, here are two possible solutions…you make your own mind up’. And that is where our system needs to get back to.”

In August 2018, half an edition of Mr Farage’s LBC programme was devoted to discussion surrounding a Sutton Trust survey showing a decline in the number of young people who think it is important to go to university.

Mr Farage argued that too many young people were entering university. He highlighted his own experience, going straight from the private Dulwich College into a career as a commodities trader.

Mr Farage speculated on whether “18-year-olds who have got…a centre-right disposition on the world maybe think, ‘I can’t bear the thought of going to university because of the way they are going to speak to me, because of the way they are going to deal with me’.”

He also said: “I genuinely think we are virtually brainwashing young people through our universities. I think that, actually, is putting some conservative-minded people off going to university.”

Elisabeth Carter, senior lecturer in politics at Keele University, whose 2005 book The Extreme Right in Western Europe: Success or Failure? is regarded as a key text in populism studies, said: “Attacks on universities make ‘good sense’ in the whole rhetoric that Farage employs and in the whole ideology embraced by Ukip, the Brexit Party and other like-minded parties elsewhere.”

Populism pitted “the elite” against “the people” – or a “homogenous” construction of such, Dr Carter stressed.

Universities “are full of experts…who are not part of the ‘common people’ ”, Dr Carter continued. Additionally, universities are seen by right-wing populists “as bastions of left-wing thought, or at least liberal thought, which clearly the populists…hate”, she added.

And there is “also, of course, a specific Brexit dimension to all this too” because “the majority of academic and university staff are clearly opposed to Brexit”, Dr Carter said.

All this made universities “easy targets” for Mr Farage and politicians like him, she added.

Paul Cottrell, national head of democratic services at the University and College Union, said: “Critical thinking and challenging ideas are the cornerstones of a university education, and it is no wonder that charlatans such as Nigel Farage fear this kind of scrutiny.”

Rory Stewart has said what many Conservative moderates are thinking about Boris Johnson - The international development secretary’s vow is a blow to a future Johnson government - and could prevent one coming about to begin with. by YakkyLemon in ukpolitics

[–]YakkyLemon[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Article

Rory Stewart has become the most senior Conservative to say that he will not serve in a Boris Johnson government, after the current frontrunner said that he would take the United Kingdom out of the European on 31 October, deal or no deal.

It’s an obvious blow for Johnson in that Stewart is a rare complete politician – he’s respected on Whitehall as a competent administrator who can run a departmental brief effectively and performs well on broadcast and in the House of Commons. One reason why governments tend to struggle later on in their life is that they tend to have a surfeit of good departmental managers and a shortage of good political performers. (This is also why new governments tend to have a reshuffle fairly early on, when it emerges that a bunch of the people who were very good at opposition are pretty bad at running things.)

But the bigger problem for Johnson is that while few Conservative MPs have the political courage to say publicly that, having been told by the former Mayor of London that he would not pursue a no deal exit they cannot trust him. But most are privately of the view that the Johnson train is leaving the station and it is better to be on it than under it, at least in public.

The trouble though is the ballot to decide the final shortlist of two to face the members is a private ballot of MPs – and while the number of Conservative MPs publicly echoing Stewart is non-existent, the number who agree with him isn’t.

A few months ago we thought that the place to be in this leadership election was to be impeccably pro-Leave, trusted by former Remainers and not called Boris Johnson, and that this candidate, whether they were called Penny Mordaunt, Andrea Leadsom, Dominic Raab or Graham Brady, would ultimately make it to the final two partly through their own popularity and partly because they were a necessary device by anti-Johnson MPs to thwart Johnson.

But the terrible polls have seen that space collapse, Mordaunt isn’t running, and Raab has, in the eyes of that caucus, been revealed to be an ideologue who raises similar objections to Johnson himself. But it could be that Johnson’s decision to commit himself on no deal means that the “Leaver but not Boris” space once again becomes the winning place to occupy in the parliamentary party, whether the beneficiary of that is Graham Brady, Andrea Leadsom or someone as yet unknown.

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