Wednesday 21 June 2017

We Can't Have Our Cake And Eat It - But We Have Neither


The press were always going to frame the Brexit talks as a battle.  We all find struggle compelling. When you listen to a debate you want to know who is the winner.  When there is war on the victor is the one who claims the spoils.  In sport, the excitement comes from the tension over who is going to come out on top (except golf).  So a negotiation can be, and will be, seen as a battle of wills with one or other party winning and the other necessarily losing.

Monday 19 June 2017

The Brexit Negotiations Might Change My Mind

Greece is not a good precedent for the Brexit Talks


Interesting to think that if there had been someone with a plan in place we could be well into the negotiation phase already.  There was no reason that Article 50 couldn’t have been invoked the day after the referendum.  In which case Britain could have arrived in Brussels with an agenda worked out and caught the Europeans by surprise.  That would have been the best way of getting the optimum from Brexit.   Like the German’s Von Schliefen plan in the first world war, they could have overcome the disadvantage of scale by planning and surprise.

Sunday 18 June 2017

Support for Brexit wanes - it might not happen


I have been surprised by the way opinion has stayed pretty much where it was on the day of the referendum so far.  If you look back on polling about the EU since we joined, opposition to it has generally been at just about the 50% of the population reasonably often, but it has been quite a bit lower for long periods of time.  My guess was that once the vote had been taken support for leaving would begin to fall back to its more normal level of around 40%.  I wasn’t sure though.  It was equally possible that it would become more popular as people found out more about it.   Basically, if there was a backlash against the ludicrous Project Fear projections it was possible that there would be post vote Brexit boost.  Neither of those eventualities seemed unlikely and both would have been easy to explain.

Saturday 17 June 2017

Did The Daily Express Cause The Grenfel Tower Fire?


I did wonder whether anybody would try to link the current big news story with the ongoing big news story.  Does the fire at Grenfel Tower have anything to do with the EU?  Well obviously it doesn’t.  Whatever were the immediate causes, and whatever the underlying reasons behind the tragedy, this is very much a British built tragedy.

Wednesday 14 June 2017

Why Do We Still Not Know What We Want From Brexit?



Incredible as it will seem in the future, the week before the Brexit negotiations are about to start there still is no clear idea of exactly what Britain will be seeking to get out of them.  The debate is being polarised around the terms hard and soft brexit, but the reality is that there are a multitude of ways we could leave.  My personal opinion is that if common sense prevailed we’d go for the mildest option available.  We can always shift our stance to get further out later if we choose.

Tuesday 13 June 2017

Should We Even Be Talking About Brexit



Everyone has an opinion on Brexit and it is inevitable that some of the people who hold those opinions must be wrong.  For example it is my opinion that leaving the European Union will leave Britain weaker and poorer.  But to be frank, I didn’t decide which way to vote on that basis.  My feeling was that I was a European and that I want to live in peaceful co-operation with other Europeans.  It might well be the case that we would be better off financially if Britain joined up as a state of the US.  It would definitely give us more influence in the world.  And yet I would definitely vote against any such proposal.  I don’t feel American in the way I feel European.

Sunday 11 June 2017

Brexit Now A Damp Squib



Well what a difference an election makes.  The last time I wrote a blog post it looked like the Tories were cruising for at least a comfortable victory and probably a big one.  This would have both given the hard Brexit  they were pursuing a mandate and given them the votes in the Commons to deliver it easily.  I was looking at descending into complete despair.

Thursday 8 June 2017

Eve of Poll Thoughts



My eve of poll reflections are that Labour has already won. I don’t mean in seats, which they are going to lose a lot of. But the campaign has unfolded in a way that leaves them much better off than when they started. The main thing is that the left in politics has united behind them. The biggest danger was that the ant-Tory vote and the anti-Brexit vote would split between the Lib Dems, the Greens and Labour. Two party politics is not much fun but it is certainly to Labour’s great advantage.

Wednesday 7 June 2017

Why Don't People Put Political Posters In Their Window Any More?



Two days from the election I found myself driving along the south coast between Worthing and Hastings. I saw very few houses displaying political posters. If you are interested, I think on actual dwellings it was about even between the three main English parties. There were no Greens. The Conservatives as usual did very well on fields. But while I wasn’t too bothered by counting up the tally, it did make we wonder why the tradition of putting your political persuasion in your window is dying out.

Tuesday 6 June 2017

Traditional Political Campaigning Still Packs A Punch



Retro stuff is very popular at the moment.  To my surprise long playing vinyl albums have appeared in my local supermarket.  The format is antique, and so are the acts that featured.  The Beatles, Miles Davis etc.   It was like stepping back into the seventies.  Being old enough to remember the seventies, that has a certain resonance.  But much as I like to remember a time when I had less stomach and more hair, it can’t be entirely down to nostalgia.  Some people must be buying these things who weren’t around when they came out.

Sunday 4 June 2017

May Will Get A Big Majority Which Will Legitimise Brexit

One of the things about general elections is that once they are over, suddenly everything that happened during the campaign seems a long time ago and it is almost impossible to think yourself back to how things seemed before. The biggest example was 1997.  The day before the poll it was far from obvious to anyone who wasn’t looking for it that anything was happening.  There were I think more canvassers out than usual, but not a huge number.  It wasn’t at all obvious despite the long lasting and clear Labour lead in the polls that Labour was even actually going to win.  The Tories had bashed Labour’s hopes down so often over the previous decades that it seemed hard to imagine it was really going to be a Labour politician that was heading towards the palace.

Saturday 3 June 2017

How I Have Changed My Mind About Corbyn Despite Brexit



Jeremy Corbyn has had plenty of problems. I have a feeling that people like me were one of them. I’d sort of supported him when he became Labour leader. But my grounds were simply that while he had a rubbish plan to win back power and appealed to a small minority of people, his opponents in his party had no plan and appealed to nobody at all. It was hardly a ringing endorsement. I was sort of hoping that something better would come along. But as we all know, it didn’t.

Friday 2 June 2017

Brexit Finally Gets A Look In During The Brexit Election

Timmy NoVotes grilled by Andy NoQualms


Brexit finally got to the centre of the stage in the election campaign yesterday.  Theresa May gave a speech on it, which sort of confirmed the impression she has been giving that she is firmly in the hard brexit camp.  While short on detail it was long on the kind of rhetoric that I assume leavers like.  Given that she now heads a coalition that includes former voters that makes sense.  I don’t think it was interesting or surprising enough to have any big impact on the course of the election, but given that the Conservatives seem to be solidly in at the very least the low forties and probably in the mid forties in the opinion polls not rocking the boat is pretty much what she needs to do.

I Don't Think Things Are So Bad

Weirdly I feel very optimistic.  I was expecting the Tories to win big.  Well they won a lot bigger than I expected.  Their losses in th...