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[BREXIT] Farewell Europe, and thanks for all the Fish stocks
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the answer is no I'm pretty sure
The Scottish leverage in that scenario is "we'll get super pissy all the time"
and how will anyone tell the difference
One of those fun murky british constitutional issues where no is particularly sure. Does devolution or the old acts of union include the ability for unilateral succession? Ask a bunch of constitionalists and you'll get a bunch of different answers.
Real answer: it'll come the next time there's a minority government in westminster that needs SNP votes and the SNP feels the mood is for them.
It's kind of been on the news a lot I'm surprised you missed it
May doesn't want another referendum on the Union as she's said multiple times and insinuated even more times. She knows if the SNP scream loudly and legitimately enough about one (and over Brexit, they might) then she sort of has to have one at some point, which she'll probably lose the Union over, and the longer she denies that referendum, the more likely it is that the Union will split up. So I think it's less of a case of Sturgeon getting to pull the cord on the Union bomb, and more a case of May realising that she can't just ignore Sturgeon because she's Scotland's First Minister, she's hugely popular in Scotland, she's done very well recently and indeed is the most stable party leader in the UK at the moment with no small number of votes behind her.
May says, Brexit must go ahead. May then says, Scotland has the right to pull the plug on Brexit. SNP say, fuck you no Brexit. There is a constitutional crisis but EU membership remains and the Union is solidified. I'm not saying it's likely to go that way (I think we will leave) but it seems like a potential scenario.
I wouldn't necessarily say yeah sure I admire it but it wouldn't be the first time a PM decided to pass the heat off someone else by devolving a responsibility and it won't be the last. Although I do think that Brexit is pretty inevitable at this stage.
Also yes I agree with you re. the Union but at the same time, there is such a thing as treating a situation more delicately than constitutionally or legally you have the right to, because if you just put the foot down that could cause a break-up of the Union in the future. I dunno.
A big part of the anti-independence argument was that indyScot would have trouble joining the EU because they wouldn't be grandfathered in, so it's easier to stay.
With that argument now rendered moot, you can see why the circumstances might merit another vote.
I'd say it's fair since the EU was a big part of the Stay argument, that Britain was in the EU and Scotland would have to reapply.
But now Britian's EU member ship is in question. I understand "once in a lifetime" and was a supporter of Stay last time, but things have changed so much I think a second referendum is fair.
All these recent referendums have been shitstorms. They divide people and cause a lot of uncertainty because nobody knows exactly how they will go... there's arguably considerably more economic uncertainty caused by referendums than General Elections, for example.
I don't want a PM to go stomping around pushing their constitutional right to do shit in people's faces at the moment, to be honest.
perhaps May went to speak to Sturgeon because Trident got renewed and the SNP is very anti-Trident
That would make a degree of sense, after all
If the Scottish parliament passes a bill for a second referendum it would would be a very, very brave Prime Minister that rejected it.
Orrrr, voting No and getting taken about by the rest of the UK.
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That was... not the start the PLP needed to take on Corbyn. This has made the challengers look weaker then they already were
I think nothing short of a crushing election defeat to fix this
I voted for Corbyn because I agreed with a lot of what he had to say, and I still do. He'll win this election too, but it's hard to see a postive outcome to any of this. His hardcore supporters are the fucking worst, to the point where I'm almost embarrassed to say I voted for him. They're a disgrace to Labour and the human race in general.
The PLP can still go fuck itself sideways for undermining Corbyn from the moment he became leader, but right now I just want a stable Labour party that opposes the Tory cuts, and one that can actually win a general election. I think the only hope is Corbyn leaving of his own accord sometime before the next election (I'd actually still like the PLP to support him for real, but that's never going to happen). But the PLP have to be smart (ha!). If they keep trying to force him out, they're just going to lose a lot of the working class. Even though UKIP would happily feed them to cattle, a lot of the working class are daft enough to vote for them purely out of anger. If Labour start losing seats here in the north they really are fucked, it'll be hard enough to win a GE without Scotland. There needs to be a nice calm handover of power to a leader that everyone can get behind, sometime next year.
But, I think we'll probably just get years of fighting until the PLP finds a way to change the rules so that they can have a leadership vote where Corbyn isn't an option, and then the new leader will be in charge of a Labour party with no Union support.
It's the right thing to do. It shows unity, and she had zero chance
Oh yes, undoubtedly this is the best way to navigate out of the situation. Deciding who the candidate was before they both declared would have been a better challenge, but maybe she was rolled out first to take the majority of the heat?
The problem is that the base want Corbyn, so dramatically that he'll definitely win. Nobody can contest him.
The PLP want to win elections which they don't think Corbyn can do (and hey, they may very well be right. I think they're right, anyway). And let's not be uncharitable here. The PLP is made up of a lot of very hard working people who have strong ideals, but it's also made up of career politicians who encounter their constituents on a regular basis and are extremely aware of the necessities of winning the election to actually get some stuff done.
So the PLP want rid as they fear walking into a third consecutive defeat, but have the problem where the base will vote for him anyway.
It is, essentially, the Donald Trump situation. Corbyn bears far more resemblence to him in terms of the party's more extremist base dominating the leadership election to potentially choose an unelectable candidate in the General. Momentum hate Blair because he's too rightist in the same way that, I dunno, the Republican base hate some past Republican leaders because they're not extreme enough.
And hey, you know, I don't think he did a good one myself.
Like, that's another reason why the vote of no confidence took place. There was a crisis point following the referendum loss where the PLP actually mostly lacked confidence in Corbyn.
I dunno. I think that the PLP have fucked this one up, to be honest. But then I also think Corbyn hasn't been a good leader, and also that the party membership bears it's share of the responsibility too. Fuck, man, some people in Momentum would rather an unelectable Corbyn than an electable Labour candidate anywhere to the left of him. They'd rather lose than compromise at all. Which is despicable, IMO, but whatever.
They did fine in the council elections but fine isn't enough. As opposition you need to be crushing it in the council elections to stand a chance at the general.
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They haven't had a real, Ed Milliband level schmuck in my whole lifetime, they were just generally running against the unstoppable electoral juggernaut that was Tony Blair. May is, once again, a good candidate who has every chance of routing them at the next general. Admittedly, the Tories have fielded way more candidates in that time, but still. Since Blair they've fielded three candidates and two of them have been absolute fucking disasters. Maybe they need to look at the Tory selection process and steal some shit.
Corbyn's historically been really skeptical of the EU, no? I don't think he's shedding any tears that Leave won. The PLP attempted coup against him was partly because there's the widespread belief that he and some of his supporters were, at the very least, unenthusiastic about campaigning for Remain, and may have have actually sabotaged the Labor pro-Remain effort.
And the PLP probably fucked up, but it's hard to see how Labor as it's currently constituted will ever win again given that the SNP has taken all their Scottish parliamentary seats. Corbyn seems like he's going to be the captain of the Titanic.
I'm surprised that you believe that Scotland does not have the ability to leave the UK, especially since the first significant political event after the Scottish referendum was a violent stabbing in the front by a motley crew of arsonists and racists
"what I reckon" is the new status quo, and I'd definitely not be discarding the possibility of a second Scottish referendum in 10, perhaps even 5 years' time, especially if Brexit turns out to be an absolute shitshow
I mean, John Major won an election. That's more than any Labour candidate other than Blair since 1974. And you know what Harold Wilson was? A centrist! He was a centrist! Momentum would throw bricks through his window, he'd never win the candidacy in modern Labour.
The Tory candidates between losing in 1997 and Cameron were pretty poor. IDS, William Hague and Michael Howard? Pretty poor. But then, they were all facing, you guessed it, Tony Blair. And say what you like about Blair, as you say, the man never lost a General Election.
But you are right. There's a Prime Ministerial look about some candidates that Labour just seem to lack. I mean, can you imagine if The Eagle had run against Theresa May? It'd be like watching one of those wildlife videos where David Attenborough narrates a ferocious savannah beast tearing some herbivore to bits.
(You know what is the worst thing though? I reckon that there was someone who looked Prime Ministerial in Labour, given some more years as an MP and with some experience; Jo Cox. She was a good speaker (not incredible, but her inaugural commons speech was pretty good), she looked authoritative and confident, and she wasn't a gaffe-generating weirdo.)
Angela Eagle's performances after putting herself up as a candidate were so awful that I knew she'd never get anywhere.
No it's fine
We'll refuse to budge
They need us
May has positioned herself to be covered, whichever way the deal pans out.