What the polls are saying!

What the polls are saying!

Some clever person or several has made a page categorising and displaying the results of the various MRPs that have been undertaken. They have posted their results here. I made a chart allowing a comparison of the various forecasts, it makes astonishing reading. The original post allows each British seat to be examined.

Everyone thinks there will be a large Labour Majority, only Electoral Calculus thinks Corbyn will win in Islington North and they i.e. electoral calculus have some other interesting outlier results, inc. that the Libdems beating the Tories. The Reform predictions vary from 19 seats to none and the Greens from four to none.

Labour’s majority is forecast to vary between 382 seats to 214 seats.

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The EU’s politics for the next mandate

The EU’s politics for the next mandate

The European Parliament election results were disappointing for democrats and progressives.

Politico sum up their opinion of the results but while the far right did well, they did not do as well as much of the press were predicting; it seems another case of the press overestimating and maybe causing events and trends.

Although Volt increased its representation, it’s decision to join with the Green/EFA group cannot disguise the disappointing result for the Greens. The Greens and VOLT were the most supportive of CTOE’s democracy manifesto.

Sadly another factor in the Green’s decline will be the voters unwillingness to fund programmes towards net zero. EU budgetary politics have been complicated by Brexit as the UK was a net contributor even after the famous rebate. The transfer of competencies to the EU also

The most shocking results were in France and Germany. The National Rally in France won the most seats and President Macron’s response was to call a snap election, in the hope that once presented with the precipice, the French people would step back. Voting is today. In Germany, the SPD, the senior partner in the Government Coalition came 3rd with 13.9% of the vote. DW present the results [by state] with even Berlin turning against the SPD. I hope Germany is copying us from 2019, where there was a massive UKIP vote which would seem to be the apogee of Faragism and is not acting as a forecast for what happens in the UK when a timid Social Democratic government fails to address the cost of living crisis and promotes public debt management policies before the ending of austerity. It should be noted that the AfD is in a permanent state of crisis and even Marine Le Pen finds them undesirable allies where she organised their exclusion from the European parliamentary ID caucus.

However, it looks like Von der Leyen has won nomination for a continued mandate as President of the Commission together with Antonio Costa (S&D) as Council President and Kaja Kallas (Renew) for External Affairs. Now we’ll have to see if, she can win a majority in the Parliament. There are some quotes in the article about the danger of excluding the right from office and while attempts have been made to increase the transparency and accountability of the institutions’ leadership and its appointment process; with proportional representation systems the coalition is created after the vote once the popular mandate is established and the right is not united nor in a majority. …

The colour of my passport

The colour of my passport

I’m losing hope on my next passport being burgundy.

The only way the UK will rejoin the European Union he’s when it’s ready to be a good citizen.

It is clear that Labour’s leadership despite the opinion polls, have a view that better terms short of membership can be obtained. Firstly, i don’t think it’s desirable, and secondly, I’m not sure it’s available. All the intelligence suggests that the EU has no interest in replicating the Swiss arrangement and that the single market is indivisible.  

Pretending that the Tory deal has failed due to its design and that all it needs is “grown ups in the room”, a view reinforced by numerous academics attempting to prove how clever they are by designing a new relationship, Is unlikely to succeed.

At the moment EU accession requires a unanimous vote on the EU council; this would mean the UK reacquires its political rights and full access to the subsidy programmes. This is unlikely to happen while we have a big bill poster signposts that we proposed to continue to behave as we did before we left.

It looks as if the people are ready to rejoin, but without leadership and a vigorous explanation that the opt-outs have gone and we need to be good citizens within the union I think it unlikely we will persuade the EU that we are suitable candidates.

The EU would almost certainly require a referendum to show that the government mandates is supported. It’s been said many times, that the EU don’t wish to play okie cokie with us.

It is sad that the elections to the European Parliament will have damaged both programmes for reform of the European Union. The Federalist proposition will have been weakened by the losses to the Greens and ALDE (Liberals) in the EP, and the growth of the ECR, who are campaigning to return competencies to the member states, and the alternative, “Sailing the High Seas”, which I characterise as Prix Fixé as opposed to a-la-carte, will have its support weakened by the French and German results where the sponsoring Governments both lost support.

I am of the view that StHS with it flexibility would be a better target to rejoin than the current EU or the Federalist alternative but rejoining the EU is needed to fix our economy and our democracy. People’s sovereignty requires access to human rights courts, and the UK needs an internal subsidiarity agreement, which I hope implementing the Brown Commission proposals will give us although the Labour manifesto promises  the devolution without the funding and structural reform to embed such devolution. …

The GMB & LME

The GMB & LME

At the GMB Congress, my Region, London, organised a fringe meeting on the “The rise of the far right and worker’s rights“. This was jointly organised with the Labour Movement for Europe who had planned to put their President, Stella Creasy, up to speak. I had originally planned to use the meeting and Congress as a last attempt to get better policy on trade and relations with the EU but the announcement of the election obviously changed this, and meant that Stella could not make it. My speech to the fringe, spoke of workers rights, sovereignty and its constraints and looked at the European Parliament results which has occurred on the previous weekend. You will find below my speech notes, although I did not use them all as I was unable to time the speech in practice and had too cut the speech short. …