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UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

theguardian.com

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Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#251

Post by [deleted] »

Silhouette wrote: post #240
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is quite a wide range of opinions on the desired outcome of the negotiations, often referred to as either a soft or hard brexit.

It's possibly worth mentioning for those not closely following UK news that "soft Brexit" now usually seems to mean "remaining a member of the Single Market", and "hard Brexit" usually seems to mean "anything less than that". I don't personally think this is a very useful distinction. By this definition, a soft Brexit is what for example the Lib Dems are advocating at the moment. However, I think it is also highly un…

[deleted]

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#252

Post by makomk »

tomp wrote: post #206
makomk wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also an incredibly cynical ploy that'll probably damage belief in democracy more than anything. It's not a vote on whether Brexit happens because she called it after she'd already irrevocably started the countdown on that by triggering Article 50. It's not a vote on how Brexit happens because, as far as I can tell, she's consistently refused to be specific about that and no real negotiation with the EU has happe…

(1) It's not whether to Brexit or not because that has already been democratically decided by the voters. (2) If there are any counterproposals (i.e. another party saying "we'll do Brexit this way") then she'll have to clarify her strategy. If not, it doesn't matter anyways (the democratical choice of a single option is that single option). The only problem I see with this is that the election is only 6 weeks away, t…

If there are any counterproposals, they can just attack them as unrealistic, harmful to the UK, etc without offering any proposal of their own.

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#253

Post by pjc50 »

talktime wrote: post #21
s_kilk wrote: post #5

May's reasoning is basically that there is an opposition now, and that there should not be. The thought of indefinite unopposed Tory rule is sickening.

The majority of the English like strong, essentially unopposed governance. They like be to be able to choose the g'vner occasionally, but they don't want multiple powerful factions.

English maybe, but the rest of the UK has different electoral systems and different popular parties.

And I'm not even sure it's the English public asking for this. Are people really going to say they'd rather a strong government they disagree with than a marginal one that's forced to negotiate for support? No, I think it's English conservatives who have trouble with the concept of loyal opposition and the English press in particular who hate anything that would make politics less of a binary choice.

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#254

Post by pjc50 »

smcl wrote: post #185
tehwalrus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote Lib Dem. Seriously. I am a candidate in very north london, we're all organised for this possibility.

Why vote Lib Dem? If the last election turned out slightly differently and the Conservatives still needed the coalition, I bet they'd be out happily singing the praises of Brexit to us all, and walking back their campaign promises. They previously always had a "were not like Labour/Con" cred, but the coalition showed that this simply is not true

I'm afraid this is a "but her emails!" position. I'm not a fan of the way the Lib Dems handled the tuition fees fiasco - straightforward breach of promise - but they seem to be the only remaining viable anti-brexit option in England.

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#255

Post by pjc50 »

Angostura wrote: post #223
smcl wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why vote Lib Dem? If the last election turned out slightly differently and the Conservatives still needed the coalition, I bet they'd be out happily singing the praises of Brexit to us all, and walking back their campaign promises. They previously always had a "were not like Labour/Con" cred, but the coalition showed that this simply is not true

> but the coalition showed that this simply is not true Actually, their behaviour in the coalition was the fact or that made me respect the LibDems tremendously. In my opinion they actually set aside party advantage in order to give the UK a working government. I believe that without their moderating influence the last government would have been a lot worse - hats off to them. And I speak as a (probably former) Labou…

> set aside party advantage in order to give the UK a working government

Working government is overrated; Belgium took over a year to form a government and therefore ended up handling the financial crisis slightly better as there was no opportunity to do anything dramatically stupid.

The Lib Dems should have fought a lot harder and longer before agreeing to that coalition.

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#256

Post by verbify »

lordnacho wrote: post #35

"Simple" explanation is this: - May isn't going to lose to Corbyn - May has a slim majority, meaning she has to negotiate with people within the Conservative Party who might not agree with her on the Brexit terms. - She'll likely get a larger majority, so it makes it easier to deal with the rebels. - For Corbyn, it's interesting. He might be facing another leadership challenge if polls keep looking crap. - He wants t…

There's no unseating Corbyn before the election. He's already faced a leadership election just last year, and there is simply not enough time. It would be political suicide for whoever challenged him. The best hope for Labour is in 2022.

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#257

Post by pjc50 »

makomk wrote: post #222
rbehrends wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really seen the "punishment" rhetoric outside the British press; among the EU-27, the assumption seems to be that the consequences of a hard Brexit will be bad enough. The problem with a hard Brexit is all the non-tariff barriers [1] that will kick in. This is unavoidable: lack of tariffs was never that big a benefit of EU membership, because the EU has few tariffs as is and one of the lowest weighted mean…

Probably because the EU 27's rhetorical tactic is to claim all the ways they come up with to punish Britain over Brexit are simply inevitable consequences of Brexit, regardless how obvious it is that they're just things they've pulled out their ass for naked political reasons. For example, their bizarre interpretation of a rule forbidding countries from negotiating trade agreements unilaterally to mean the EU couldn'…

All the EU27 get a veto on the deal. Spain just got a sentence inserted in the official reply.

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#258

Post by IshKebab »

pluma wrote: post #196

Conspiracy theory: May expects the Art 50 talks to not go well and having the election after Brexit has fully played out over the next two years will damage her approval rate. Having the election now means she doesn't have to worry about her approval throughout the negotiations and won't have to face an election right at the time the consequences of Brexit are felt by most voters.

That's less of a conspiracy and more of an obvious observation.

Re: UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election

#260

Post by pjc50 »

aembleton wrote: post #116
wsc981 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the UK will be fine, post Brexit, as the UK is a very important trading partner for The Netherlands, Denmark & Ireland. These countries don't want harsh punishments for the UK (as Brussels seems intent on) and they want little trade barriers: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/792782/EU-rebellion-Bloc...

Doesn't really matter what three countries want. You'd need to get agreement from 27 countries. That is why trade deals are so hard for the EU to do. I really doubt we'll be getting a deal in the next two years. A more likely outcome is a French Exit or the collapse of a large Italian bank causing the end of the EU as we know it. Then we can make trade deals with individual countries.

If this was going to happen, it would have happened during the peak of "Grexit" talk about Greece. Greece were doing incredibly badly out of the EU at that point, far worse than the UK could ever be said to be experiencing, and decided not to leave. That's why I don't think further fragmentation is likely, and the banking system has been shored up.

French exit would kill the EU, but I think we'll see another narrow defeat for Le Pen. But I could be wrong there, it's volatile.

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