UK election

Actually, Ruthie not being an MP was a total oversight on my part. No drama - it was buttons of a stake. Market continues to say May is a cert.
 
I've decided to back Gove at 33/1

MP's have gone back home this weekend where they'll face their constituency chairmen, and local associations. Conservative Futures (I think that's the website) have organised an on-line poll of their members and are reporting 66% saying they want May to go. That's brutal. On Monday and Tuesday they return to London and will spend a few evenings hanging round in corridors, Westminster bars, and private members clubs considering the merits of the Macallan 25 year old reserve. Theresa May doesn't work the bars (couldn't resist that) nor is she a member of any of these clubs. She doesn't belong to a natural wing in the party to bid for her either, and has few friends. She's vulnerable in any other language

It requires 15% of MP's to force the issue (48 letters to the 1922 committee). That'll be it. She won't fight on after that. The men in grey suits (or white coats) will be knocking on the door and telling her its time to go, but the only thing preventing this really is the Brexit negotiations. Under normal circumstances she'd be finished by now. It's also becoming increasingly difficult to argue that the 'strong and stable' woman's position to lead these negotiations has been enhanced. I think her stability argument for staying is also likely to begin falling apart. The Eurocrats will be hard pressed not to laugh at her as she walks into the room. Indeed, some of them like Verhofstadt and Tusk are already trolling her, whereas Juncker is probably too pissed but doubtless will do. I think you can argue that the UK's position is weakened sending someone who has just made possibly the biggest electoral miscalculation of all time into this environment. What's her own state of mind going to be like anyway?

Now it becomes a matter of party management, and this is where the whips and the 1922 takeover. A conventional leadership challenge involving, nominations, elimination rounds, final short list, a party membership campaign and a final vote, probably takes into the autumn and the party conference. This is a race against time. The party hierarchy don't want (I think you might argue they can't afford) a protracted process. Ideally they want an unopposed nomination on a similar timescale that led to Theresa May getting the job herself, and John Major and Michael Howard before her (they have form of arranging these settlements).

There is no way an unopposed coronation will happen however if a remainer, or soft Brexiteer is the imposed choice. The hard line Brexiteers will field an alternative (that's inevitable). For this reason I strongly suspect the leader of the party will be a convicted Brexiteer and not one of these Johnnie come latelys to the cause. In any event, the Brexiteers can still claim the legitimacy of the referendum

My next jump concerns the history of conservative leadership challenges. It's rare for the front runner to end up wearing the crown. Politicians tend to over-think these things. The conservatives are no different. William Hague never won a round until the final in 1997. Neither did Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. In fact he came within one vote of being eliminated in the third round. David Cameron only emerged half way through the process after David Davis had hit his ceiling.

I wouldn't be shocked in the process of over-thinking this if they decide they need two leaders, for two different tasks, over two different durations

The immediate priority is Brexit. That leaves David Davis, Michael Gove, and possibly Liam Fox as three confirmed Brexiteers of many years standing who possess high level political experience. Of the three Gove is academically and technically the best in European affairs. He's also likely to be the most dogmatic. Will this appeal to the party? I suspect it will. He's also unelectable amongst the wider public for a host of reasons I won't bother going over. Could they manage a situation where Gove is PM until early 2020 and then another leadership contest takes place to decide on who takes them into the 2022 election? Call it a deal if you want, similar to legendry Blair / Brown, Granita Restaurant pact.

Understanding that some kind of deal has been hatched would likely also have the effect of persuading aspirants such as mad Boris to hold fire and wait for the post Brexit environment. It makes managing an uncontested outcome in 2017 a whole lot easier. In any event, anyone seeking to lead the Brexit negotiations is running an electoral risk of their own. I actually wouldn't have thought Boris would fancy the task that much, anymore than I think he enjoys the party's confidence to do so. Letting an expendable slug like Gove undertake the kamikaze mission has many attractions to it if you believe he's clearing the field for yourself in a couple of years. Gove for his part would leap at the chance for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that he believes in it. He knows its the best chance he'll ever get (perhaps his only chance) and will still believe that if he brings the ship home he can stand in 2020 and seek to win (before he loses a general election)

Now all of this rationale applies equally to David Davis, and he does have the added attraction of possessing a little bit more warmth than Michael Gove, (but then so does a slurry pit). Davis isn't a price though at 9/4. I wouldn't completely discount Liam Fox as a compromise, and am surprised to see him at 100/1. Has he expressly ruled himself out? His skills are in administration. I can see that there might be a case for freeing up Davis and Gove as two of your more informed negotiators and allowing Fox to act as the executive
 
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Is May seriously planning on continuing unabated; as if her manifesto stands, and the election result doesn't actually matter?

When is someone going to put a stop to this madness??


Also, when is someone going to challenge the notion that we voted for a hard-Brexit, during the Referendum? The vote was solely about leaving the EU - it was not an endorsement of Tory exit policy, and it's about time someone said this out loud.

Edit: Hot off the press is news that the Queens Speech will be delayed for a few days; the implication being that elements of the Tory manifesto will need to be watered-down, before it could pass. This will hopefully lead to some sanity prevailing, though I do suspect that May and elements of her team/Cabinet, are too stupid, hubristic and naive, to amend the Brexit policy. Hopefully they will surprise me.

Whilst it's the pragmatic (indeed the only) thing to do, I anticipate a clumsy compromise that will wind-up sufficient MPs of either view (soft/hard-Brexit, depending on the breaks), to see it shouted-down. Either way, she is in real trouble, imo.
 
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Grasshopper said:
Broadly similar reasons rule-out Michael Gove, plus the fact that Gove is a rubber-faced wanker, whose popularity with the public shares a post-code with genital warts.
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Now now, there is no need to disparage genital warts in such a fashion.

You would have to question her sanity in bringing that little gobshite back into front line politics, particularly at the present moment - hard to imagine anyone worse.
 
To be fair to Wee Nicola, she is banging the drum about how the Brexit process must change, and that a national-unity approach should be adopted for negotiations. Fair play.
 
Queens Speech, due next Monday, delayed for "a few days". That'll be the Monday after then, Queenie won't give up Royal Ascot.
 
Flagship uberalles said:
You would have to question her sanity in bringing that little gobshite back into front line politics, particularly at the present moment - hard to imagine anyone worse.
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It's the familiar ploy of promoting a troublemaker, in order to keep him on-side and schtum. So a fairly sane and wise choice by May really, if one demanded only by the desperate circumstances she's now in

By gum, wouldn't Ian Paisley Snr be relishing this: the deeply unattractive Orangemen holding the balance of power...puke

C'mon Jeb, Nicola, Tim, Caroline you're talking the talk, now walk the feckin walk...
 
It really is beyond the pale David Davis saying that we voted for an end to the single market, the customs union and the ECHJ. His boss has stuck to 'Brexit means Brexit' for the last year so we're surely entitled to interpret that in any way that we see fit.
 
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Grasshopper said:
To be fair to Wee Nicola, she is banging the drum about how the Brexit process must change
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It made me laugh as well. She's telling us that Thursday's result has sent a signal that Theresa May has to take a 'hard Brexit' off the table. On the same logic, doesn't she have to take her own personal referendum off the table then? It's because of her that the Tories are still the government, she's damaged her independence movement, and also ensured that a hard Brexit can still occur. If she hadn't created the conditions to allow a Tory resurgence she'd be in the position that the DUP are today and quite probably be able to finish off Brexit herself
 
Drone said:
It's the familiar ploy of promoting a troublemaker, in order to keep him on-side and schtum. So a fairly sane and wise choice by May really, if one demanded only by the desperate circumstances she's now in

By gum, wouldn't Ian Paisley Snr be relishing this: the deeply unattractive Orangemen holding the balance of power...puke

C'mon Jeb, Nicola, Tim, Caroline you're talking the talk, now walk the feckin walk...
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What do you expect "Jeb, Nicola, Tim, Caroline" to do exactly? They have 310 seats between their four parties, which last time I checked isn't enough for a majority.

I don't know what people find it so hard to understand about this. The conservatives won the election and as the largest party they have the chance to form a government.

The others can bleat all they want but that's the system.
 
It's not quite that straightforward though, is it Ben - otherwise there wouldn't be the current state of almighty panic in the Tory party.

Even with DUP support, there are more than enough Europhile MPs in the Tory Party to comfortably defeat the Government, if it came down to a vote on a hard-Brexit strategy. And they will doubtless have their say on other policy matters too.

May's Government is basically going to be constantly on egg-shells, until the whole thing collapses around her ears (which will be sooner rather than later).
 
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I think a confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP will be more stable than people think. Assuming they play ball on the major issues the working majority is similar to that before the election. My question was what do people expect the other party leaders to do about it? They aren't in a position to form a government.
 
I don't think the real issue is necessarily DUP support, Ben - I think it's Tory support.

They all know May is toast soon-enough. This Government - even if a DUP agreement can be reached (which is no certainty) - can be taken-down in a heart-beat, by a mere handful of disgruntled Tory MPs; none of whom really need to worry about upsetting the current Cabinet, because they know it's built on sand anyway.

Frankly, I care little about the detail of any policy other than Brexit, because every other policy is directly influenced by the manner of our leaving the EU. For me, it is the only issue that really counts, because having open access to the EU market post-Brexit is critical to our economic future. Without it, this country faces a period of economic down-turn the like of which we've never known. The UK will be in intensive-care, long before any of their fabled new trade-deals materialises - which will be on disadvantageous terms anyway, because every other country knows we will need to agree to pretty-much every demand.

It's on this matter that I hope to see rebel Tories standing-up and being counted, because they understand the economic Armageddon that faces us, if we default to WTO trading rules. They will also hopefully appreciate that the country didn't vote for a hard-Brexit in the Referendum, and it didn't vote for it in this General Election either. There are a few saner Tory voices (such as Hammond's) in the Cabinet, that will hopefully put the brakes on the notion of a hard-Exit, at its source. If not, then the DUPs demand for a frictionless border with the Republic, should hopefully see the current Tory proposals significantly watered-down. If that doesn't go far enough, then the rebel Tories hopefully come into play. Whatever happens, I believe it's a national imperative, to retain access to the EU market. Without it, the country could be in meltdown in 5 years time.

I'm by nature an optimist, but appreciate it may not play-out as I've predicted. But the notion of a hard-Brexit is so obviously not in our interests, I have to believe that enough wise-heads will prevail, to ensure a change of course. That said, Tory MPs developing spines and challenging the authority of the Party don't exactly grow on trees, and the DUP might sign-up to anything, if it means they get free boxes of Duraglit for their flutes - there's a lot that can still go wrong.
 
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I think there's a certain intellectual honesty about the version of Brexit that Theresa May adopted.

It's fair to say that the three main bugbears for Leavers were absence of control over migration from other parts of the EU, having to accept decisions from the European Court of Justice (and for some people the European Court of Human Rights to boot), and being substantial net contributors to a project that they've always disliked or at best never warmed to. Plenty of Remain voters have sympathy with Leavers on all of these points.

May has concluded correctly that the only version of Brexit consistent with these positions is one that takes the UK out of the single market.

The DUP were highly irresponsible to give in to atavistic impulses and vote Leave in the first place, because whatever happens to the rest of the UK the consequences of Brexit in Northern Ireland will be economically and politically dire. They say in their manifesto they don't want a hard border with the south but they have also said the main condition of their support for the Conservative government is that nothing happens to give NI some kind of special status that detaches it further from the rest of the UK. They're terrified of a nationalist takeover in the North following the Assembly election a few months ago that gave SF + SDLP near parity with the unionist parties, and they will not be letting go easily of the lifebelt that this election result has thrown their way.

I wouldn't be counting on the DUP to save you from a hard Brexit, Nick, and I think the UK government will be a stable one. Ken Clark can still vote against them on the big issues but who will join him from the Tory benches?
 
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Like I said, Art - it's Tory MPs rather than the DUP, I'm relying on.

It's not just Ken Clarke. A total of 185 Tory MPs voted Remain in the Referendum. OK, those numbers will have shimmied-about a bit since the GE, but there will still be a substantial amount of them. Given how few of them it would take to beat any hard-Brexit legislation brought forward by the Government, I retain a degree of optimism that a less-catastrophic approach will be adopted.
 
Grey said:
I think there's a certain intellectual honesty about the version of Brexit that Theresa May adopted.

It's fair to say that the three main bugbears for Leavers were absence of control over migration from other parts of the EU, having to accept decisions from the European Court of Justice (and for some people the European Court of Human Rights to boot), and being substantial net contributors to a project that they've always disliked or at best never warmed to. Plenty of Remain voters have sympathy with Leavers on all of these points.

May has concluded correctly that the only version of Brexit consistent with these positions is one that takes the UK out of the single market.

The DUP were highly irresponsible to give in to atavistic impulses and vote Leave in the first place, because whatever happens to the rest of the UK the consequences of Brexit in Northern Ireland will be economically and politically dire. They say in their manifesto they don't want a hard border with the south but they have also said the main condition of their support for the Conservative government is that nothing happens to give NI some kind of special status that detaches it further from the rest of the UK. They're terrified of a nationalist takeover in the North following the Assembly election a few months ago that gave SF + SDLP near parity with the unionist parties, and they will not be letting go easily of the lifebelt that this election result has thrown their way.

I wouldn't be counting on the DUP to save you from a hard Brexit, Nick, and I think the UK government will be a stable one. Ken Clark can still vote against them on the big issues but who will join him from the Tory benches?
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I think you have pretty much summed it up Art. The DUP have to demand a soft border to appease their farming friends ,otherwise they will back every single thing the cons wish for. Looking forward I think the DUP are getting into bed with a sinking ship and this (hopefully) will completely back fire on them. For the moment the power and money greedy bar stewards will hog the limelight.
 
A hopefully accurate article, Archie.........though the Indy is very-much an advocate of a soft-Brexit, and might be boosting things a little.
 
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