Final say!

Yesterday, I went up to London to take part in the March for a people’s vote.

 

Just down the road, Parliament, at it’s extraordinary meeting decided not to approve Johnson’s new deal with its customs border in the Irish Sea and it’s adverse aspirations for partial single market compliance. i.e. we get to keep the restrictions on state aid but not the benefits of free movement and workers rights. This was done by an alliance of views, perhaps most importantly those who felt the deal needed parliamentary scrutiny. As noted by others, he has achieved the rare feat of uniting all forces in Northern Ireland. This meant that Johnson had to send a letter to the European Union asking for an extension, an act he had promised the Scottish Courts that he would do. He said he wouldn’t but then he did, unsigned with a covering letter and a second (or third letter) saying he didn’t want one. I say,

It’s like making a promise with your fingers crossed behind your back.

The government say, they’ll bring the deal back for a vote on Monday, but Parliament can’t vote on the same thing twice in a session; looks like they prorogued too early. Classic Dom. …

Employment protection & Johnson’s deal

On Johnson’s deal with respect to workers rights, the current withdrawal agreement unlike previous one’s makes no commitment to maintain those rights, i.e. those commitments have been removed. The TUC opposes the agreement, particularly on Worker’s Rights but also on its general crapness.

The current fear from some, is that Johnson will get his deal approved by parliament, thus negating/satisfying the Benn Act and then fail to bring the implementation legislation, written but secret, as are the legal text and impact analyses to Parliament and thus crash out on 31st with no deal. Much of the social protection legislation is implemented by SI and would be jeopardised by this manoeuvre i.e. the Law that mandates these rights is EU law.

Lexiters should also note that the withdrawal agreement maintains the state aid restrictions and there will be no Article 50 escape clause. Even Costas Lapavitsas is pointing at these flaws. Any agreement will be a treaty which to exit, would be under WTO treaty terms or the Treaty of Vienna. So much for bringing back control and freeing the country to pursue a socialist programme. …

Where’d the votes go?

Where’d the votes go?

Within the Labour Party, there is a debate about the position to be taken with respect to Brexit due to electoral considerations.

Here is a chart showing the polling results; what interests me is the change of fortune on the 9th May. On the 1st of May, Labour’s NEC refused to change it’s policy of an election before a referendum on remain. At the time, Labour were first in the Polls, two months later, we lost half our MEPs and slipped to 2nd losing between 10 – 15% of our predicted vote share.

 

How accurate are the polls?

Here are three links which talk about the methodologies used by the polling companies, the “House Effects” even tries to quantify the statistical bias in these methods. Fact is some polls favour Labour, some favour the Tories, but non have recently said that Labour is ahead. Sadly my favourite seat predictor at flavible is currently offline, but provided we stay above 25% and the Brexig Party & LibDems overperform, the most liklely result is a Labour minority govenment.

Others have argued that the methodology biases put the polling houses into two classes, neither are owned by the Tories but the bias is clear. Lets hope that those who say that we can still out campaign the Tories are right, but they won’t be as shit as May and we won’t take them by surprise on social media.

We need to remember how most polls got it wrong in 2017 and ‘House Effects’ examines that.

It’s going to be hard.

ooOOOoo

  1. ‘House effects’ and how to read the polling tea leaves…, at Southampton Politics
  2. Latest voting intention and the difference between the polls, at UK Polling Report
  3. A Journalist’s Guide To Opinion Polls at the British Polling Council.

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Brexit Ground Rush

Brexit Ground Rush

It’s an exciting day about Brexit, Johnson’s announced a deal, and thumbscrews are out in the House of Commons. Jüncker has declared that if the deal is accepted by the UK Parliament, then we move to a transition on 1st Nov. Farage has kicked off, since it’s not Jüncker, nor the Commission’s call. The EU Council, who’s call it is starts meeting today.

We’re on a demo on Saturday to show that we the people still support remaining in the EU, although we need a government to write the next referendum rules to include all citizens impacted inc. those between 16-18. I also have to repeat that while much heat and noise has been focused on the Irish border, the Citizenship clauses of the withdrawal agreement are unacceptable and have not changed. …

A short rough guide to the world

A short rough guide to the world

It’s a terrible world, the forces of repression are growing and act with impunity and as with Spain in the 30’s a Tory Govt fails to act with honour for human rights and democracy. It does not strongly advocate the weak; it does the opposite.

Solidarity with the Uighers in China, the citizens of Jammu/Kashmir, the citizens of the West Bank & Gaza, the Kurds in North Syria, the independence movement in Catalunya, and the protesters in Hong Kong.

And the United Nations show’s its weakness, my list could be longer, perhaps it’s time to refresh my membership of Amnesty International. …

Which Union

Which Union

A number of people are becoming active in politics and are asking which Union should they join because if a LP member, you must join a Union if eligible and must pay the political levy if the Union has a political fund. Anyway, if at work, it’s a good thing to do, for yourself and for others.

People join Unions because of where they work and who they work for; the principle is that as socialists and trade union militants, we should/must defend industrial unionism. In much of Europe, the Unions are even closer adjuncts of the political parties than in the UK and this is not a good thing.

I describe my rules and offer a web site URL below/overleaf. …

Can’t hear you

Hard to say how I got there, but I was considering the usefulness and representative nature of the student movement and Youth Parliament and segued onto Lewisham’s Young Mayor, which seems to be a bit shit due to its narrow focus. I know that in other boroughs they have a young council and so more than one person can get engaged with the politics of change but I recognise that part of the value is the election, engaging people through voting although there needs to be some accountability otherwise the lesson is that politicians don’t listen. …

Snowflake SQL & Big Data

Snowflake SQL & Big Data

Yesterday, I attended Snowflake's World Summit yesterday. My experience of working for US companies has taught me some cynicism about the naming of such events, but both the CTO and business founder are both French and ex-Oracle employees. They have obviously caught a mind share, the meeting was heaving and very heavily overbooked. I attended the plenary sessions, which consisted of a reference story and during the break spoke to one of their pre-sales engineers who was very helpful. This article looks at the architecture, examines its scalability design, the hardware solutions underpinning the solution and comments on the accuracy of Stonebraker's predictions. For more, use the "Read More" button ...

More from Meadway

More from Meadway

I went to one of the local labour political education workshops at which James Meadway was speaking. Odd, since I had been reading of his views, in particular with respect to his contention with MMT; I wrote them up on this blog. but it was good to hear him in person.

I have written about MMT and its contention with the Labour front bench a couple of times and summarised my understanding of the MMT position on International Trade. A couple of years ago I wrote on their views on Monetary vs. Fiscal policy, this latter article also summarises and links to articles critical of MMT.

Meadway emphasised two things, “Not all Currencies are equal”, the dollar is still the international trade denominator. The second point is that making debt default the policy tool to deal with private sector foreign exchange debt is not wise as the biggest FX debt holders are probably HSBC and Barclays. While the UK public sector FX debt is tiny, this private sector debt is not and it’s questionable if we could bail the banks out a second time which since the ring fencing of retail and investment banks is mired in the swamp would jeopardise the people’s savings.

He also emphasised the importance of ownership, investment and universal services as socialist agenda items and thus the creation of an irreversible shift in power; not so sure my memories of Thatcher selling off the Mutuals is evidence that this will work but it will be a powerful manifesto. …

And back home

And back home

I have been told of resignations over this in my own CLP. Our delegation voted in accordance with the mandate issued, in favour of the NEC statement, against the Remain & Transform (C13) motion and for the Stop Tory Brexit (C14) motion. I accept that this is a reasonable interpretation of the mandate as those of us arguing for Remain & Transform lost the vote by 4 votes at a barely quorate General Committee meeting. I am sure that the timing of the meeting, i.e. a week before we undertook our trigger ballot meetings and the state of exhaustion from the faction fighting were part of the problem.

If you are a member of Lewisham Deptford Labour Party and not a member of the General Committee, ask your delegates why they weren’t there and let them know what you think, attend your branch AGMs coming in Oct. and elect pro-remain delegates who will turn up. This is critically important as should we win the coming General Election, Labour will call a special conference to determine its position between its new deal and a remain position. I will be seeking, with allies to establish a remain position and nsure we elect a delegation that will support the mandate.

My experience from canvassing is that many Labour voters are deeply concerned about, by which I mean vehemently opposed to, Labour’s ambiguous position despite our local MP‘s vigorous & courageous pursuit of a remain.

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