Sometimes it’s only the long odds that work

Sometimes it’s only the long odds that work

We have got to a position in British politics, where people will say anything to get what they want. One annoying meme doing the rounds is that Remain voters should abjure Labour because it is a Brexit party. It isn’t. But it is the only anti-austerity party, the only Party that will address investment, jobs, and the labour market, housing and education. Remainers must consider Labour, as the likely alternatives to a Labour MEP are a Tory or a Brexit Party MEP.

To non Labour Remainers, it ain’t going to happen without Labour; you should play your hand to maximise the strength of the Remain cause and voting for likely losers only strengthen’s the hand of Farage & the Tories’ brexit extremists.

I used to read Jeremy Flint’s bridge class, I also used to play a bit but not very well. Flint’s bridge class was a comic and the lesson he repeated time after time was that if the obvious odds meant you failed to make your contract you had to bet on longer odds, and because it was a fiction it always came off. I didn’t really get it until a couple of years later. How come he always bets against the odds and wins? The answer is that if he bet with the odds, he was going to lose. …

Consensus?

Theresa May finally reached out to Corbyn to aks for his help in getting Brexit over the line. She wants to apply for another short extension, avoiding the Euro-elections. The good news is that having seen the weight of opinion in Parliament, she’s moving away from catastrophic towards pointless. Here’s what Corbyn said last time, in February about what he thought was acceptable, and I commented on the letter here … and then wrote a small piece about the requirement to be able to keep the European Arrest Warrant.

As I said, the latter is an important demand, since it invokes the justice pillar which brings the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Court into play. Another Tory red line bites the dust.

ooOOOoo

This also is still true, from, my “New Red Lines” article, which still holds true,

My one true fear is that it means Labour accepts the withdrawal agreement which will throws those Brit’s living in the EU under the bus, and the will permit the Tory government to implement another Windrush by placing EU citizens in the UK, having lived here for months or years under the same hostile environment applied to other alien immigrants and subject to uncertainty about their rights to remain. For me this might be a price too high!

 …

Back to the Commons for more on Brexit

Last night the House of Commons voted on four alternatives to No-Deal and May’s Deal Brexit, they were any deal to be confirmed by a confirmatory/final say referendum, aiming for Custom’s Union, aiming for a Customs Union and Single Market membership, and changing the default, currently to leave without a deal to Revoking of article 50. They all failed to win a majority, but the Customs Union only lost by three votes. Here is a graphic from the Institute of Governance showing the votes. I also present the majorities/minorities in bar chart form.

A number of MPs and commentators have argued, partly as a result of the ERG’s stupid game playing, that accepting May’s binding deal in exchange for a promise that the non-binding political declaration becomes better than May’s first draft is unacceptable; much of the problem in compromising in or with Parliament is that it can’t bind itself, so its promises are worthless. It’s one of the reasons I still support remain as Pariament can’t break the accession treaties. This means that “Customs Union” and “Common Market 2.0” have questionable value and the Withdrawal Agreement with it’s sub-standard citizenship guarantees and its failure to underwrite the Good Friday Agreement underwrite them. The vote however is meant to be indicative.

I have previously argued that Brexit is either catastrophic or pointless and I have learned that there are at least two forms of decision making, which either polarise or coalesce foci. Parliaments allow coalescence, compromise and the ability of popular second choices to become a reality. It seems that MPs are not yet ready to make these comprises, as shown by the high number of Labour votes against all these positions and Nick Boles decision to resign the Tory Whip. See below/overleaf for the bar charts, … …

Revoke Article 50, a petition

Revoke Article 50, a petition

After May’s speech last night, someone started a petition on the Government’s e-petitions site calling on the Government to Revoke the Article 50 notice to quit the EU.

The growth in signatures has been explosive, hitting the 100,000 in hours, having a rate of 50 minute at 3:30 am and hitting 2,000 a minute in the early morning (100 TPS) and then it crashed. It was restarted early morning and went down again, but is now up and states over ¾m signatures. …  …

Nigel Farage, 4 more years?

And as the odds that the UK will participate in the European Parliament elections shorten, we come to understand why NIgel Farage has launched a Brexit Party. You can’t stand for the European Parliament as an independent and he’s left UKIP which has fallen into the abyss of xenophobic stupidity, although it wasn’t a long drop from Farage’s leadership position. Watch that space! …

A deal, pining for the Fjords

This [Brexit] deal is not pining for the fjords, it is deceased. “‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!”

 …