Zompist Bboard Again

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:26 pmAnyway, it could be worse! She could have tried taking the Scottish Conservatives out of the Conservative Party... instead, she's just quitting to spend more time with her family.

Would that actually be worse? It would certainly mean suddenly 13 less members of the government.

On the other hand, she did campaign against the idea in her run for control of the Scottish Tories so it's not keeping her electoral campaign promise if she does so.

As for her ratings, she is fourth most popular Tory behind Johnson, May and Major. So, from that perspective, Johnson's losing support from the people who could have been his most popular allies.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:26 pma gambit to force Parliament to call an election, which Johnson himself can't technically call without the consent of the Opposition...

????

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 7:21 pm

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:26 pmAnyway, it could be worse! She could have tried taking the Scottish Conservatives out of the Conservative Party... instead, she's just quitting to spend more time with her family.

Would that actually be worse? It would certainly mean suddenly 13 less members of the government.

I guess Sal meant "worse from Johnson's perspective".

This nifty map shows which constituencies have the highest percentage of signatories to the petition to stop the prorogation of parliament. If you mouse over, you can see who currently represents each constituency.

Some thoughts: the map does look a bit like the 2016 Brexit map (for reference), but with a few differences. Notice how Sheffield, red as a stop sign in every election, voted for Brexit but has shown up in large numbers for this petition. That would suggest that we're just seeing partisanship: the Leave Labour voters (loyal as a dog, and three halves as smart) are closing ranks against the evil Tory. But the Labour voters in North Yorkshire and Durham seem happy to back Boris' plan. And then there are some Tory areas that light up on the map as well. Northumberland usually votes Conservative, and voted for Brexit, but is supplying plenty of petition votes. And these variations aren't just a Nawthern thing. There are some patches of the south, like Somerset/Dorset, that show strange patterns as well.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:11 am This nifty map shows which constituencies have the highest percentage of signatories to the petition to stop the prorogation of parliament. If you mouse over, you can see who currently represents each constituency.

Some thoughts: the map does look a bit like the 2016 Brexit map (for reference), but with a few differences. Notice how Sheffield, red as a stop sign in every election, voted for Brexit but has shown up in large numbers for this petition. That would suggest that we're just seeing partisanship: the Leave Labour voters (loyal as a dog, and three halves as smart) are closing ranks against the evil Tory. But the Labour voters in North Yorkshire and Durham seem happy to back Boris' plan. And then there are some Tory areas that light up on the map as well. Northumberland usually votes Conservative, and voted for Brexit, but is supplying plenty of petition votes. And these variations aren't just a Nawthern thing. There are some patches of the south, like Somerset/Dorset, that show strange patterns as well.

Northumberland hasn't always been entirely Tory - Berwick (which basically consists of the northern third of the county) was a Lib Dem seat for a long time before 2015. Also the area of Sheffield which is showing the greatest number of petition signatories (Sheffield Hallam) was Nick Clegg's seat, and is noted as a strong student area. Also you have to allow for lag in information dissipation - there are significant parts of the population that likely will never hear about what's happening.

The coming week is a big one.

The Rebel Alliance has put together its short-term plan: pass a law demanding that there be an extension.

Parliament returns on Tuesday. The Rebels hope to wrest control of the timetable an urgently introduce a new bill the same day.
The debates for the bill would then take place on Wednesday, along with Johnson's first PMQs as PM.
If the bill passes the commons, it goes to the Lords on Thursday. It will have a majority in the Lords, but there is then a concern that the Brexiteer minority may filibuster it, dragging the debate on beyond Thursday.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, however, Parliament does not sit. So it then returns on Monday.

But the prorogation begins any day between Monday and Thursday. If it begins Monday, that makes the timetable really tight.

Theoretically, Parliament could sit on Friday. But if the problem is lack of time, it probably won't have time to pass the rules to let it do that.

Meanwhile, in this vote, the government is unofficially (it's been reported from 'senior officials' and nobody has denied it) threatening to withdraw the whip from any Conservative who votes for extension. That is, vote against Johnson this time, and they'll be thrown out of the party. This is very unusual - parties do do that, but very rarely. Withdrawing the whip is usually the result of a scandal, or of openly supporting another party, or admitting to not supporting one's own party. The last time something like this happened was in 1994, when eight Tories lost the whip for voting against the Maastricht Treaty in a bill explicitly recognised as a motion of confidence in the government. Johnson probably thinks that he can get away with this because of the presumed election in the next few months, which he'll hope will let the party replace the rebels in parliament. However, it's not unknown for MPs expelled from their parties to defeat their designated replacements in elections...

In any case, it may not matter what Parliament does. Michael Gove, now a cabinet minister without specific portfolio but charged with dealing with no deal planning and constitutional affairs, has refused to commit to the government actually obeying any law. When asked whether the government would abide by the law, he said instead that it would depend what the law was. Honest, I suppose.

There's then the question of whether the EU would actuall grant an extension, which they probably wouldn't.

And it's not clear what we'd do with an extension if we got one. Labour continue to rule out (in effect) a referendum, instead demanding a general election. Everyone else rules out a general election and instead demands a referendum.





Meanwhile, in a Scottish court case, a judge refused to immediately order the government to rescind the prorogation. However, a full hearing in court will begin on Tuesday. There are also court cases underway in England and Northern Ireland - the latter will apparently reach court on Friday. The Scottish case, however, is perhaps most interesting, because Scotland has a different legal system from England, and it's seen as potentially less deferential to the executive. Also interesting is that there have been calls to demand the Prime Minister take the stand to state his motivations for the prorogation under oath.


Meanwhile, there are tensions in Cabinet, not just over Brexit. Johnson's chief of staff, Dominic Cummings - the mastermind of the Leave campaign, a man officially condemned as in contempt of Parliament and described by former PM David Cameron as "a career psychopath" - sacked a senior aide to the Chancellor, Sajid Javid. Specifically, he summoned her to No 10, forcefully took her private phone from her, studied its contents, discovered that she had once been in communication with an aide to the former Chancellor Philip Hammond (now persona non grata), told her she was sacked (which he doesn't have the authority to do, only the Chancellor or the PM does), took her work phone from her, and had her escorted from the building and street by armed police. Javid - already bending over backward to not criticise the prorogation despite having loudly condemned the idea a month ago - is reported to have very loudly and directly shared his views on this with the PM. She's the second aide of his that Cummings has removed this week; it appears to be part of a larger purge of suspect aides, specifically all women.

Thank you for the update. Somehow, I've been unable to find out so far whether Brexit is currently scheduled for the start or the end of October 31st.

Didn't Boris look a little desperate? A General Election is surely on the way, even if he claims to not want one.

My impression is that a General Election would probably help Boris - as Salmoneus has pointed out, with the group-of-people-who-are-more-or-less-to-the-left-of-the-Tories being badly split, and the Brexit Party probably being neutralized by Boris's hard-right tack, and the whole system using FPTP, it would probably result in a landslide Tory victory. The current situation in the Commons means that Boris is an unelected PM without any clear mandate. A General Election might well change that.

(Why doesn't my spellcheck recognize "unelected"?)

It's particularly interesting to wonder whether the election would be best for Johnson before or after Brexit. Afterwards, he's got a no deal backlash to worry about, and he may have a more unified Labour; on the other hand, beforehand he's got Brexit on the issue to motivate Remainers (some of whom may give up after Brexit), and he's still got the Brexit Party on his back - Farage will surely argue that the only way to make sure it's clear to the PM that we want "clean" (i.e. no deal) Brexit is to vote for the Brexit Party. It's tricky.

Some in Labour are saying they should refuse the election until after brexit (or after an extension), for this reason. But after a year of calling for an election it'll be tricky to say they don't want one when it's offered to them...

But if there's an election, the PM gets to pick the date. Under the terms of the FTPA, the dissolution period has now been extended to 25 working days - in effect a month - before the elections, during which time MPs aren't even allowed on the premises of the houses of parliament. Johnson could well use this in place of the prorogation, or even to kick MPs out entirely while Brexit is going on.


Bunch of legal and constitutional issues, though. What happens to the prorogation? Presumably he has to get the Queen to rescind that (he can't very well claim it's necessary to have a queen's speech, if he then dissolves parliament for an election and a new queen's speech the week after!), which should be no problem in theory, but which he doesn't have much time to do. The prorogation has to take place next week, and I'm guessing the PM won't dare rescind the prorogation until he's sure he's got an election (in case Labour go "oh, wait, you're letting us spend the next month debating Brexit? Oh, then we won't have the election until afterwards, thank you!"), and I guess he's not going to try to get an election until after it's clear he's lost the No Deal bill, which will probably take most or all of this week, which means next week's going to be pretty hectic!

And if he's compelled by law to request an extension, what does he do? The government is hinting it will just ignore any law it doesn't like, but that will surely open both the government collectively and him personally up to legal action (sadly, I doubt parliament will impose an actual penalty in the law, although it's not inconceivable if he makes them think he'll ignore it otherwise!). Would he resign as PM to prevent himself from having to follow the law? Technnically, does there have to be a Prime Minister? Maybe they'll keep it empty for a while! I suppose that's possible at least through the VONC mechanism, which allows for a period of finding a new PM... but is the old PM still PM until there's a new one? And hence obliged to do anything the law obliges the PM to do?

And the timing... he'd probably like to give Parliament a week or two to wrap up its curent legislation before dissolving it. That would both be a fairly normal thing to do and be a way to screw over the rebels by having parliament dissolved on Brexit Day. But that would give a week or two of Parliament shouting "hey, why aren't you obeying that law we just passed?" and potentially passing who knows what law in response. So maybe he'll dissolve Parliament as soon as possible?

Indeed, I wouldn't be shocked if he does it tomorrow, or at least this week. This means he might be having the election for no reason (because he won't know for certain he'd have lost the extension vote), and in terms of tactics it would mean giving up some of the high ground in the eyes of the electorate. "Parliament tried to overrule my policies, so I need an election to show them who's boss!" is a much more powerful electoral slogan than "I was frightened Parliament might overrule me, so I'm preventing Parliament from having its say by dissolving it!" - on the other hand, usually it's best to avoid the optics of being seen to be defeated (power rests on seeming to have power - looking powerless is the best way to become powerless). And pre-empting the vote would let him sidestep all the legal questions. Then again, he has just under two months to block out Parliament, and doing anything a week earlier than he has to is potentially creating another problem for himself later on. Maybe it would be better to demand an election on Thursday, rather than Tuesday - let the rebels waste two days arguing for a bill he then preempts... then again, that might mean losing in the commons on wednesday. So is he more afraid of the optics of losing (i.e. do it on Wednesday before the final Commons vote) or of the optics of righteousness (i.e. do it on Thursday in response to being defeated on Wednesday)? Or maybe he does it Tuesday to look more decisive and powerful. But since he spoke today, he's probably not planning anything for tomorrow?

Fascinating times.


It's interesting, incidentally, that nobody's talking about overturning the FTPA, which is the biggest culprit (after the refendum) in causing all this mess. Even now - the FTPA extending the period of dissolution from 17 days to 25 working days, making it a much more powerful weapon of delay for the PM.

Just an update on the polling....


The Tories are currently headed for one of their worst results in the last half a century or more, on only 33%. But this still probably translates to a landslide victory and complete control of Parliament with an unchallengable majority.

That's because Labour are languishing on 22. Even as someone who does not support Labour, it's exasperating how shit they are. It's ironic - the Blairites have been proven right about corbyn, but not for the reasons they thought. They thought Corbyn's left-wing policies would be unacceptable to the public. Turns, out, the public loved his left-wing policies. If we were still leaving in the world of sanity where Cameron hadn't called the referendum, Corbyn would probably be the strong favourite to become PM in the regularly scheduled election in 2020, showing his internal enemies what fools they were! But right now, nobody gives a shit about nationalising the railways or capping energy prices or taxing banks or whatever it is. What matters is that 70% of people see Corbyn as weak, indecisive and incompetent, and that's largely because of his farcical ineptitude over Brexit. You want to know how, for example, America's Whigs were destroyed by the issue of slavery, by refusing to take a coherent stance? Look at Labour over Brexit.

And what makes it worse? 12% still say they'll vote Brexit Party. Maybe they will. But UKIP had a terrible record in general elections, and Johnson will be running on a "you need to vote for me to save Brexit!" platform, and I expect that at least half of those BP supporters will actually vote Tory. Which could mean, say, a 17-point, 39-22 obliteration.

The Lib Dems, meanwhile, are an inch behind Labour, in theory, and could well end up beating them into third place for the first time since... what, the 1920s? Problem is, that's been true several times before, and it's never happened. This time, the issue is electoral pacts. The third parties are likely to form pacts and not run candidates against one another, which on the surface will benefit the Lib Dems, particularly due to the 7% Green vote. However, needless to say Labour are ruling out any co-operation, because Labour have different interests (Labour's interest is Jeremy Corbyn, not the country). What this will probably mean is that Lib Dem voters will probably end up voting Labour where Labour lead the Lib Dems, but Labour voters won't vote Lib Dem in seats where the Lib Dems lead Labour, thus handing these seats to the Tories...

The FPTP one-and-a-half party system has always fascinated me. Are there any other mature democracies that use FPTP but stubbornly refuse to form two broad national parties?

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:06 am The FPTP one-and-a-half party system has always fascinated me. Are there any other mature democracies that use FPTP but stubbornly refuse to form two broad national parties?

Canada? Conservatives lost much ground in Quebec.

Yiuel Raumbesrairc wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:36 am

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:06 am The FPTP one-and-a-half party system has always fascinated me. Are there any other mature democracies that use FPTP but stubbornly refuse to form two broad national parties?

Canada? Conservatives lost much ground in Quebec.

I was excluding regional parties in my mind, like in Catalunya and Scotland. I thought it was obvious, but maybe I should have specified.

The closest I've managed to find so far is Mexico, which has FPTP for presidente. In the last few elections, the PRI, PAN, and whatever is the current Social Democratic party, each earned a fair chunk of the vote. But the latest election didn't see a truly competitive 3-way split, so it remains to be seen if the country has settled into a center-right vs center-left situation. India's various regional and niche parties have formed "third fronts" from time to time, but these aren't permanent and they never have a serious chance at beating the main alliances.

The Lib Dems really do seem to be unique. I can't find another example anywhere of a third party which
a) ...exists under FPTP.
b) ...is permanent. Except for the last disastrous election, they've gotten at least 10-20% of the popular vote in every election for generations. Their current leader probably doesn't even remember their predecessors the Liberal Party and the SDP.
c) ...isn't regional. Obviously they have their strongholds like everyone else. But the party isn't expected to serve the interests of a particular region.
d) ...is viable. They haven't won an election since long before they became the Lib Dems. But there have been years where they have a chance of coming in second, which in my opinion is the difference between a 2 and 2+ party system.

Hazy memories of comparative government classes tell me that things like the Lib Dems do indeed exist in other places, but they are indeed very rare, and each case is different.

There are generally three exceptions to Duverger's Law (the law that simple plurality elections deliver two-party systems): regionalism (Canada); party system turnover (UK in the 1920s); and partial party fusion (Australia), in which more than two parties exist, but only because two of them are more or less entirely fused together into permanent coalition (the UK has this with the Cooperative Party, which is so fused to Labour that most people don't know it exists) - though these parties can still be important to consider as highly-organised blocs within coalitions.


Long-lasting, non-regional and functionally independent parties? As I say, I seem to remember they exist, somewhere, but I can't off-hand think of examples.

[on the other hand, I know Malta was always the classic example of a country without SP that somehow had a pure two-party system anyway]


It's worth pointing out that the Liberals themselves very nearly went extinct on the national level - down to 5 MPs and under 3% of the vote by the 1950s. They basically only survived as a regional party for celtic nationalists, before the celtic nationalist parties themselves had fully emerged.
A sober comparative party systems theorist might well judge that the UK has been in a prolonged party realignment since the 1970s, in which things have never settled long enough for the normal probabilities to assert themselves: the rise of a new middle class, the leftward shift of labour, the realignment of the conservative party, the schism of the SDP away from Labour, the rise of New Labour, the struggle for relevance of the conservatives after 1997, the Iraq War, the rise of nationalism centred on the question of euroskepticism, the effect of the coalition, Corbyn, the referendum, brexit... we've been flopping around between status quos, some of which seemed to imply either Labour or the Tories imploding and the Liberals/Lib Dems taking over, but others of which seemed to imply the Liberals/Lib Dems being eradicated, and we've not stuck in any one mode long enough for any of these results to actually happen...

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 6:24 am It's worth pointing out that the Liberals themselves very nearly went extinct on the national level - down to 5 MPs and under 3% of the vote by the 1950s. They basically only survived as a regional party for celtic nationalists, before the celtic nationalist parties themselves had fully emerged.
A sober comparative party systems theorist might well judge that the UK has been in a prolonged party realignment since the 1970s, in which things have never settled long enough for the normal probabilities to assert themselves: the rise of a new middle class, the leftward shift of labour, the realignment of the conservative party, the schism of the SDP away from Labour, the rise of New Labour, the struggle for relevance of the conservatives after 1997, the Iraq War, the rise of nationalism centred on the question of euroskepticism, the effect of the coalition, Corbyn, the referendum, brexit... we've been flopping around between status quos, some of which seemed to imply either Labour or the Tories imploding and the Liberals/Lib Dems taking over, but others of which seemed to imply the Liberals/Lib Dems being eradicated, and we've not stuck in any one mode long enough for any of these results to actually happen...

I guess at almost any given time, in almost any given country with a multiparty system, you could point to some things as evidence that the country is currently undergoing a realignment.

A Tory MP, a certain Phillip Lee, just switched to the Lib Dems. Johnson no longer has a majority.

Watching parts of the debate, I've got the impression that whenever Johnson stands up, about half the Tory MPs behind him stand up with him, and the other half remain seated. Does that have any relevance?

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 6:24 amHazy memories of comparative government classes tell me that things like the Lib Dems do indeed exist in other places, but they are indeed very rare, and each case is different.

The FDP in Germany comes immediately to mind.

I think I have to look away from the real-time updates on today's parliamentary debate. It's too nerve-wracking.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:58 am

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 6:24 amHazy memories of comparative government classes tell me that things like the Lib Dems do indeed exist in other places, but they are indeed very rare, and each case is different.

The FDP in Germany comes immediately to mind.

Sal was talking in the context of Duverger's Law, which is about FPTP systems, so it doesn't apply to Germany.

I think I have to look away from the real-time updates on today's parliamentary debate. It's too nerve-wracking.

My Chernobyl DVDs arrived in the mail today, so now I have to decide whether a horrific nuclear disaster spectacularly mishandled by the authorities or Brexit is more depressing to watch...

(Ok, right now I have to do dishes, but you get my point.)