EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

The thinking being that May genuinely needs a larger majority in by U.K. In order to gain negotiating traction with the EU?

And to privatise the NHS.

being racist, thick, in need of education by their intellectual superiors or a cunt.

most leave voters don't yet think that things are going badly and I've seen people who previously wouldn't have contemplated voting for the tories now thinking of doing so to shore up the Leave position.

Well.

If 'Leave' instead of waiting 9 months to deliver the A50 notification, and wasting another 7/8 weeks on a GE campaign, had delivered any of the rainbow-Unicorn promises, there would be no need to 'shore up' any vote.

The shore up the vote thing is pretty confusing.

Some are suggesting that it will prove that May has the backing of the British people and enable a tougher deal to be negotiated.

Others are saying it will dilute the influence of the hardline euro-sceptics and allow a softer Brexit ...

Others still suggest that a bigger majority back home will make it harder to force concessions - if it was very marginal whether something would fly back home, she could have said "you've got to give me more than that, I won't be able to squeeze that through"; you can't do this if you've got a whacking majority.

That's all spurious though, the only reason the election was called was because she thinks (probably correctly) that she'll cement Tory power for the foreseeable future.

Still, it is entertaining when our lords and masters let the mask drop:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/02/aristocrat-in-court-over-allegedly-racist-facebook-posts-rhodri-philipps-gina-miller

Bankrupt three times in under 10 years.

And check his motto out.

what a vile, over privileged little twerp MR st davids is.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/britains-nuclear-future-is-at-risk-because-of-brexit

Who would have thought Nuclear Power could be so complicated???

That's all spurious though, the only reason the election was called was because she thinks (probably correctly) that she'll cement Tory power for the foreseeable future.

I can't believe anyone (other than politicians) are saying anything different.

If the Tory's win by a landslide they will be able to claim they have a mandate to do whatever they want. They will then only face opposition from within their party.

What will be interesting is whether once all the MPs have their seats locked in, if they maintain the same unequivocal allegiance.

This won't come as a surprise to anyone, but the election isn't about 'Brexit' at all, but most likely about the multiplying scandals involving the Conservative Party, including the just breaking HSBC scandal that jaitch just posted about in the election thread.

Yes, OK, so far it's only Labour sources making this allegation, but both in seriousness and the amount involved it would dwarf the constituency-based allegations by quite some multiplier. I think it's fairly likely that May called this to give any investigations no chance to be complete before the election.

Brexit bill has been hiked to 100 billion Euro, payable up-front and then an amount coming back to the UK as loans made to other countries from said fund are paid off. Ouch.

breaking

The loan is 9 years old and the donations 7 years old, and have always been known about, as far as I can tell.

Also, that letter was published under parliamentary privilege, which makes it a lot easier to use highly inflammatory language.

Presented without comment.

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I read that last night. I'm so fed up.

You would say that, have you sown a maple leaf to your jacket yet?

I may be one of the few people not contemplating a move to Canada.

I don't know personally if Canada's Prime Minister is better than ours but I hear it's Trudeau.

#singlehandedly

By convention, the House of Lords doesn't block governments' manifesto commitments. Brexit wasn't in the 2016 Tory manifesto and May is miffed at the HoL giving her a hard time this spring.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39789903

Arguing over EU bill: Popcorn eating /sabre rattling intensifies.

Oh, yeah, bloody EU nationals, coming over here, and even Kippers think the ones here should just get their rights. It's quite enlightening to be used as a bargaining chip, but so far it's not done much good for my views on humanity in general :)

Though in times like this, the Gina Millers and 3 million come out too. So, there's that.

The loan is 9 years old and the donations 7 years old, and have always been known about, as far as I can tell.

Well, there have been considerably longer-burning scandals, haven't there?

Anyway, it doesn't matter how ancient it is for Mr Never-keep-up (me). :)

Also, that letter was published under parliamentary privilege, which makes it a lot easier to use highly inflammatory language.

Do you mean that there's less to it than the letter suggests?

Genuinely curious--illegal party funding was undoubtedly a major factor in Germany in the last couple of decades, and with these things often seeming quite similar across borders, I wonder to what extent such circumstances obtain here, too.

Do you mean that there's less to it than the letter suggests?

I mean that it's possible to make allegations under parliamentary privilege that could not be successfully defended in a defamation action.

Bear in mind that under British law, it's up to the publisher of the allegation to prove that it's true - if it's true but the publisher can't prove it, they still lose the action.

If the narrative in the letter is accurate, you'd expect the media to be all over it - provided that they can clear it with their lawyers. They're not all over it, so I think that the stumbling block here is sufficient corroboration to be able to publish a robust story.

And they all know about the letter. I first heard about it through Peston - he tweeted a photo of it saying something very non-committal about it being 'interesting', which is about all you can do if you can't stand the story up outside of parliamentary privilege.

Edit - here's the tweet. He says 'worth reading'
https://twitter.com/peston/status/859468587332972544

Next edit - here's the Electoral Commission's response
https://twitter.com/electoralcommuk/status/859754641243996160

And Mullin's response to that
https://twitter.com/rogmull/status/859758061912825856

So - I mean, this is the age old dance of trying to stand up a story when you think you're onto something but you haven't quite got it yet. Except we live in an age now where you can see a lot of the inner workings of that process, and you have partisan websites (left and right) with few journalistic scruples and an ideological axe to grind who'll bang on about how the mainstream media is 'hushing up the truth' because they won't rush out a half-baked story.