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If Trump's Climate Change Withdrawal Pushes UK to Labour, can the UK un-Brexit?

 
 
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 09:16 am
Quote:
The atmosphere in Downing Street under Theresa May is "pretty toxic" and its operation "dysfunctional", a former aide of the prime minister has said.
Katie Perrior, who served as director of communications for 10 months, said she and others were not able to "speak freely" and her advice was not heeded.

Ms Perrior said Mrs May was a "good person" who would take personal responsibility for the campaign but suggested the set-up in No 10 was not working.
"Being in the Home Office for such a long time with her top team, she became accustomed to that being it and of course running the Home Office is very different from running the country," she told BBC Radio 4's Today.

"She needed to broaden her circle of advisers and have a few grey hairs in there who had been around the block a bit in politics who could say 'don't do that and don't make enemies when you don't need to'."
She suggested that Mr Timothy and Ms Hill - the PM's "gatekeepers" who worked for her in the Home Office - were too protective of the prime minister and had a negative influence on how No 10 functioned, often "bellowing" at other staff.
"We would be able to speak freely if they weren't around and if they were, you don't speak," she said.
"Sometimes we would sit there and hear Fiona come up with things which, quite frankly, were crazy and say nothing."

Asked if the two aides treated cabinet ministers badly, as has been reported in the newspapers, she replied "There was not enough respect shown to people who had spent 20 years in office. I felt sending people rude text messages was unacceptable.
"What the PM needs when you are going through a tough time like negotiating Brexit is diplomats, not street fighters. They only know one way to operate and that is to have enemies. I am sure I am one of these this morning."
Ms Perrior, a PR specialist who previously worked on Boris Johnson's 2008 mayoral campaign, said she had expressed her concerns before leaving in April about how things were done and "that did not go down very well, as you can imagine".
Although she had never intended to stay in the role for more than two years, she said she concluded that remaining was "pointless" as former journalist Ms Hill had made it "pretty clear" she wanted to be communications director during the campaign.
"If you feel you are actually not being listened to then there is not point you being there... in communications, you don't have a dog and bark yourself. If you don't want to hire someone for their advice, you should not be hiring them."
She suggested the PM could have been better advised during the campaign, in which she declined to take part in the leaders debates, and also in its aftermath.
The PM made a defiant statement outside Downing Street before giving an interview hours later in which expressed regret for the Conservative candidates who had lost and promised to "reflect" on the result.
It has been reported that the second statement came after being told to do so by senior MPs.
Ms Perrior added: "If you are not this great communicator who is on to the phone this morning telling candidates 'I am sorry or I want to work with you in future, come with me' then you hire people who do that for you."
"I am afraid she did not have those qualities herself but she did not hire people who had them either."
Neil Carmichael, one of 13 Tories to lose their seats at the election, said there needed to be a "thorough shake-up" at Downing Street.
"You can't really run a government from an ivory tower situation," he told BBC News. "I do think Theresa May requires a more broadly based set of advisers."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/40232154
0 Replies
 
TheCobbler
 
  3  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 01:51 pm
They are saying a "soft" Brexit but I say Brexit is dead...
centrox
 
  3  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 02:20 pm
@TheCobbler,
TheCobbler wrote:

They are saying a "soft" Brexit but I say Brexit is dead...

It is, if not dead, very sick.
Finn dAbuzz
 
  1  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 02:31 pm
@centrox,
And based on my limited experience, I believe that a lot of the folks who voted Leave only did so because they though Remain would win. To the extent I am right, I don't think they are going to be all up in arms about a reversal, providing it comes from a second referendum and not a fiat.
centrox
 
  3  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 02:36 pm
@TheCobbler,
TheCobbler wrote:

They are saying a "soft" Brexit but I say Brexit is dead...

Dead is the word. The novelist Ian McEwan points out a cheerful thing in the Guardian... in a second referendum, the majority of Leave voters will be eroded as old people croak. He has suggested that the death of many elderly Brexit voters over the next two years would help swing a second referendum in favour of Britain staying in Europe. “By 2019 the country could be in a receptive mood: 2.5 million over-18-year-olds, freshly franchised and mostly remainers; 1.5 million oldsters, mostly Brexiters, freshly in their graves,” he said.

He compared the country to a teenage self-harmer: "This country ... takes out a razor to scour a forearm and now contemplates its own throat.”


centrox
 
  3  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 02:37 pm
@Finn dAbuzz,
Finn dAbuzz wrote:
I believe that a lot of the folks who voted Leave only did so because they though Remain would win.

This was Cameron's gamble. He lost that, and now May has lost hers.
Finn dAbuzz
 
  1  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 02:48 pm
@centrox,
Absolutely true relative to Cameron
0 Replies
 
Blickers
 
  0  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 07:29 pm
@centrox,
Ian McEwan said:
Quote:
“By 2019 the country could be in a receptive mood: 2.5 million over-18-year-olds, freshly franchised and mostly remainers; 1.5 million oldsters, mostly Brexiters, freshly in their graves,” he said.

In that case, the difference in ages of the electorate alone won't put Remain over the top.

The difference in votes for the referendum is 1.3 Million votes for Leave.

If there are going to be 2.5 Million additional over 18 year olds, and they vote 60%-40% for Remain, that's 1.5 Million new Remain votes. However, it also means 1 Million new Leave votes, for a total gain of 0.5 Million net new Remain votes.

On the other side of the age spectrum, if there will be 1.5 fewer older voters who would have voted except for their passing away, that would be 0.9 Million fewer Leave votes but also 0.6 Million fewer Remain votes, for a net loss of the Leave side of 0.3 Million votes.

Add the two together, and it comes to a net gain of 0.8 Million Remain votes, which will cut the Leave margin down to 500,000 votes still. Which doesn't mean Leave would win again, only that there has to be other factors besides all the older mostly Leave voters passing on.

I believe there will be these other factors present, and that unless there is some drastic turn of events, Remain would win a second referendum, if only because how much the UK would lose economically would be brought out in such detail to the public during two years of negotiations.
Walter Hinteler
 
  4  
Reply Sat 10 Jun, 2017 11:08 pm
An interesting analysis in today's Observer by Robert Ford (professor of political science at the University of Manchester):
The new electoral map of Britain: from the revenge of Remainers to the upending of class politics

Regarding Brexit:
Quote:
BREXIT DIVIDES THE NATION
After a year in which Brexiters dominated the political agenda, it was the Remainers who struck back last week. While there was a small swing to the Conservatives in the seats with the largest Leave votes, Labour ran rampant in the Remain strongholds. Labour’s vote share increased by 12 points in the strongest Remain-voting areas, while the Conservatives fell back by two points. The Liberal Democrats also benefited from the Remain resurgence – four of the five seats they gained from the Tories voted Remain, and the Lib Dem vote was up by double digits in all of these.

t was a different story in the Leave strongholds, with a strong and stable Conservative vote, propped up by an influx from the wreck of Ukip. Seats in England and Wales with 60%-plus votes for Leave showed a swing to the Conservatives, while the rest swung to Labour. Yet the “purple bonus” for the Conservatives in such areas proved far smaller than expected – while the Conservatives did see larger gains in the seats where Ukip did best last time, Labour did no worse in such areas than elsewhere, limiting the impact of Ukip to Conservative switching. The national surge in Labour support neutralised the Conservative advance in Labour’s northern and Midlands heartland seats, enabling the party to hold on (though often with reduced majorities) in places such as Great Grimsby, Ashfield and Dudley North.
0 Replies
 
centrox
 
  4  
Reply Sun 11 Jun, 2017 06:53 am
@Blickers,
Blickers wrote:

If there are going to be 2.5 Million additional over 18 year olds, and they vote 60%-40% for Remain, that's 1.5 Million new Remain votes.

A number of sources put the percentages as 70% to 75% for Remain, which would make more difference.

0 Replies
 
centrox
 
  4  
Reply Sun 11 Jun, 2017 07:05 am
Labour has seen 150,000 people join the party in a space of three days since the election.
0 Replies
 
 

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