BREXIT thread

Lib Dem coalition I reckon.

With who?

If it’s a Lab/Lib/other coalition, and hopefully it is some combination of such, hello second referendum

The opposition have worked much better together over the last few weeks than I expected

An anti-no deal pact would be beautiful

It’ll have to be. I reckon parliament will be hung after the election and Corbyn might even have to do a deal with the snp to get over the line. It’s their electoral system that makes the whole thing a lottery though

That’s the key really as you said the opposition have been more united than I would thought a few weeks ago. Johnson was banking on an election before October 31 and that is simply not possible now and with that Farages fascists will surely not stand down in an election in November. Either it’s the May deal before October 31 maybe with just an NI backstop as the DUP or an irrelevance now or hopefully some combo of Lab/Lib Dem/SNP after the election in November with more or less the same deal or a second referendum on BINO or stay in.

Labour

Its the most likely

If May couldn’t get her deal through I don’t see how Johnson is going to

He has staked his existence as a politician on being anti-backstop, the “anti-democratic” backstop, remember

He can’t walk that down now, even if he voted against it before voting for it before

Johnson probably was capable of creating this mess for himself all by himself but Cummings has led him up the garden path by going with a Bannon playbook

This could and should end the two of them in politics for good

When The Tories said they wanted a Churchill and so appointed Johnson, they got Churchill alright - the Churchill of Gallipoli

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Johnson will frame it that it was either face imprisonment or ask for the extension, but that if he gets a majority it will be the last time Britain will be forced to surrender to Europe by the remainers. The fact he has expelled the rebels will be held up as some evidence of his determination to deliver. Farages latest piece suggests he is happy to support that, with him and a few of his mates picking up seats from Labour in the midland shit holes but letting the Tories have a clear run elsewhere. Now that most moderate voices in the Tories have been purged Britain could be in for a horrifying few years.

You’re right. I can’t see how a politician can go back on their word…

Angela Smith’s seat, the wonderfully named Penistone and Stocksbridge in rural South Yorkshire, should serve as a warning - Smith won as a Labour candidate in 2017 with a majority of just 1,322 over a Tory - 22k odd to 21k odd

Smith will stand as a Lib Dem next time (though the party appear to already have selected a candidate who presumably will be shafted) but it is almost impossible to see Labour concede the seat and not stand somebody - the Brexiteers have a candidate who probably will step aside

Even if Labour did concede, Smith will prove unpopular with die hard Labour supporters

Net result, a split vote and an almost certain Tory gain

Plus the Lib Dem’s and the Greens could split the Remain vote around the country.

Too stupid to do that. Somebody would need ti have been conditioning them towards it for months

The likes of Steve Baker are true believers and want to leave regardless.

I don’t think this will happen as much as people think. Maybe I’m just being overly optimistic. Could you see an election pact here I wonder?

The right thing to do would be pacts on all sides. But egos will get in the way.

Another big mistake Theresa May made was thinking that the 2017 election would be fought on the issue of Brexit and pretty much sod all else, which is why the Tories decided to run on an unattractive policy agenda. Brexit ended up being a very peripheral issue in that election.

Brexit will be much more of an issue in the coming election, but other issues will inevitably begin to take more and more of the stage as the campaign goes on.

The Tories have given Britain 10 years of austerity, and now they’re making ludicrous spending promises while wanting a no deal which would hugely damage Britain’s economy.

I think they’ll find that a very difficult position to defend as a campaign wears on, especially off the back of all these defections. If the sensible people in the Tory party are abandoning the ship, why should the public vote them back in?

Cummings, if he’s still there, will try desperately to drag the campaign down into the gutter in a way we’ve never seen before in British politics.

There’s a weird sort of urban/rural realignment going on in English politics along the lines of the US. The Tories will struggle to get any urban seats, while they’ll probably clean up in largely rural constituencies. The remaining seats the Tories have in cities will probably go to the Lib Dems.

But the Tories will struggle badly in Scotland and you can probably chalk down pretty much all of their 10 (?) seats there as gone.

Wales is harder to predict but could be another Tory wipeout.

Most of the seats of the defected Tories could well be lost to the Lib Dems or Labour as well - while personal votes aren’t much of a thing in UK politics, they will exist to a certain extent for high profile figures such as Hammond or Stewart or Rudd. So fledgling, parachuted Tory candidates will find it hard enough to win those seats.

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I see the until recently leader of UKIP has been complaining that the BBC showing a documentary about the Nazis gives right-wingers a bad name

Strange hill to die on, why on earth would you complain about a documentary about the Nazis unless you felt a kinship with the Nazis

Or maybe he thought it was “biased” against them

It’s weird how a lot of these English “nationalists” adore Hitler and the Nazis, or perhaps it’s not weird at all

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Just on RTE news, I heard Leo Varadkar described as a straight shooter? :thinking:

https://on.ft.com/315NaEB