EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Cunning. Given her previous list of lows, I wouldn't even put that past her ...

Right now, I still think her 'deal' will go through.

I don't. I can't see how the numbers could work out in her favour. The DUP will never, ever vote for it - it's an existential issue for them. The majority of the ERG would rather barbeque their first-born than vote for it. I think we can safely assume that the SNP aren't going to vote for it. That means that you'd have to have a whole raft of Labour MPs voting in favour, something which seems incredibly unlikely as their main aim is to get the Tories out of power, and giving them that 'victory' is not going to achieve that.

Basically, I just can't see where May can get the votes from. And as the referendum showed, it's much easier to say 'No' to something than to vote positively for something.

^She'd lose the vote on her deal by around 200 I think.

She can't go forward, she can't go backward. She has to do something different, and that's either resign or call an election, or a referendum.

Given recent polling she should be confident that she'd beat Corbyn, who won't have the floating-voter remainers this time (although fuck knows who they vote for).

Is the argument for her: call an election, stand on "her deal", hope she wins and therefore argues there is a public mandate for her deal, even though no one really had a choice of anything else?

How many conservatives would be happy to stand on a manifesto that included the deal?

GE would be an absolute mess to add to the complete mess we have already.

Calling a snap GE didn't work so well for her last time. I doubt she'll try it again. Frankly, I'm not sure she actually has a plan.

Then what's the campaigning about? I suppose it's possible that she has no idea what to do, so is giving speeches as filler.

I have the same problem, dunno, it doesn't really work for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V35jvY0u7I

This is SNL and I did lol, so there's that... The May sketch, emno

There is pressure building again in Labour for a second referendum.

Still absurd that a party with remain voters with just 2 leave constituencies (the others changed their minds) is in this mess, at some point they have to get off the fence.

Perhaps May is just trying to delay so much that the fence has broken off and falling on all of us :/

I think there's definitely something to the theory that she's running down the clock - the idea being that the closer to disaster the more focussed the MP's will be on how to avoid it, but that risks spilling over into "just pull A50", so she has to judge that finely. Not that she's shown a great deal of judgement so far, that said.

She's still need to get a decent chunk of Labour MP's to vote yes on her deal, and I don't see that at the moment, so round in circles we go.

"just pull A50"

Seems the only immediate action anyone can do to give time to consider any of the other options.

Yeah, I don't think it's a good plan...she didn't rule out standing in another election except if she made it to 2021. She must have made that commitment thinking calling a snap GE was still a possible option for her though, which is worrying.

It has to be done in good faith, not to give extra time.

From The Economist

Still absurd that a party with remain voters with just 2 leave constituencies (the others changed their minds)

Do you mean the labour party here? I'd be very surprised if only 2 of their constituencies were still leave given that there were plenty with 65-70% leave at the referendum.

https://fullfact.org/europe/did-majority-conservative-and-labour-constituencies-vote-leave-eu-referendum/

I think this suggests that about 60% of labour constituencies voted to leave, but there's a number of assumptions

Genuine question: are the EU rules on State intervention the key red-line for Corbyn? I really do not understand his overall ambivalence on the EU at all.

The rules on state aid. Also the fiscal spending limits on member states, plus the general capture by corporate interests and the cheerleading of austerity over the last decade.

I'm guessing.

What do the party leaders/main parties campaign for in the event of a 2nd referendum, then? Champions of the previous 'will of the people' then trying to change the new will of the people?

It's not really changing the will of the people is it? It's checking that the people want the same outcome now that more information is available.

Ah no, I meant that in a number of leave constituencies the leave vote was at 65-70% so it would be surprising if all but two had switched to remain.

But it wasn't Labour voters that swung the vote in those areas...

http://ukandeu.ac.uk/is-labours-brexit-dilemma-being-misunderstood/

The winner takes it all, if you have 51% pro-labour votes, Labour gets the seat. But if the other 49% are all Leave (I am simplifying here) and just 2% of the 51% Labour votes are Leave, you end up with a Leave vote.

Also

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/02/majority-in-all-labour-seats-back-second-referendum-study-says

There should be a ban on campaigning in the event of a second referendum. We all saw what a shit show the campaigns were last time. There has been enough stuff in the news over the last 2 years for people to decide whether the their own wills remain the same, have changed, have died with their own souls or can now finally vote.

This way, it can be done nice and quick. No one should need to be told what their will should be. We've had enough of experts now anyway.

This is the kind of situation I wondered might happen. It's going to be really odd if it happens.

My biggest issue with that is that there seem to be a number of people who think that no deal means that nothing changes, rather than that we crash out.