I misread grizys slightly confusing post.

She is effectively this character

If May was a CEO she'd be put on garden leave. She might have won the vote but her authority has taken a battering. More than a third of her own MPs have said they want her gone lol. Some of them undoubtedly also want revenge for reducing their and the government's majorities by calling an unnecessary general election.

And maybe because they know nothing better is coming.

yah, zombie PM, utterly pointless to stay on cos the deal she put so much into and lied to everyone about when trying to sell how good it was won't get through. A leader who is either a liar or totally self-deluded is not a good leader for a democracy. Look at Trump.

may fatally harmed theory dont seem right to me. shes bulletproof from attacks by far right tories for a year imo, only way for them to get at her is by opening the door to corbs, which is happening ~0 times out of 100

only factions that might reasonably be expected to consider bringing down the govt to get rid of her are 'lefty' tories and DUP, and i feel like she can placate both pretty easily. the fact that tons of moderate tory MPs are at serious risk of losing if there's a general election is a big plus here, weakness = strength again

spose there's also the grasping slitherers like gove and boris who are unencumbered by the Grand Old Tory Party fetishism of JRM&co, and who dont really have much ideology other than 'i want to be PM'. they might try something

Biggest shock of the day is bitter not liking Trump.

I really don't think Boris wants to be PM right now. I think he's an opportunist who's just trying to up the variance to see if some kind of opportunity presents itself for him to do... something.

Guess you don't know the discount gets renegotiated every budget but keep calling people idiots.

I struggle to see another referendum. First of all the question to ask is very hard to simplify and asking a question like stay or take the given deal just leads to more moaning about why we should leave the EU from different sides and it's hard to see taking the current deal winning.

Things do undoubtedly get worse in that scenario but with things like the pound dropping, inflation and higher interest rates. Not Sodom and Gomorrah.

I also don't really buy into everyone ****ing themselves over with stupid delays it just makes no sense for anyone. No deal doesn't just happen in a snap decision either so companies have time to adjust for expected issues.

Boris Johnson has played the past few years really well. I also see no reason why he'd do something stupid like try and become PM currently. I'm pretty against a lot of what he thinks but I struggle to see how he isn't better than May for the conservative party.

Comment From Across The Pond

I've been reading an interesting book, (i.e. "All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class"), by Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman. For somebody living here in the United States who is not as cognizant of the nuances and behind-the-scenes maneuvering (back stabbing!) of British politics, Shipman's account is a good recap of how "Brexit" came about and the competing political/personal interests that helped create this debacle. (I hope Mr. Shipman is working on a follow up, as his [first] Brexit book ends in August, 2016 shortly after Theresa May has emerged as Britain's new PM.)

Shortly after President Obama (and the Democrats) managed to get the Affordable Care Act passed into law here in the United States, American journalist Todd Purdam wrote an article, (i.e. "Obama's High Price of Victory"), in which he stated that any broad, sweeping legislation that affects a large proportion of the population - or significantly impacts the economy - must pass with [at least] 70 percent bipartisan support. Lacking that level of support, (and especially some level of support from the minority party), such legislation is doomed to failure. (Purdam's strong contention was that major legislation which passes with a bare majority is on precarious ground.)

I'm certainly no expert on British politics, but I wonder if this is the real problem with Brexit ... a referendum that passed with a measly 2 percent majority was bound to be a disaster. Stated another way, was the biggest "mistake" (with respect to Brexit) Prime Minister Cameron's decision to call the referendum in the first place?

Another question: Like the outbreak of World War I, was Brexit (or something like Brexit) inevitable - would such a referendum have been called sooner or later regardless of who was the PM? Was Cameron calling the referendum analogous to the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand in June of 1914?

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...stay-brexit-eu

A truly vomitous begging letter to EU in today's Guardian. It quite put me off my frosties.

It's like the phrase 'ad nauseam' was invented to describe Remainer dialogue.

No, you don't get the full picture. Companies can adjust for the increase in delays and their variance by ordering earlier and in larger quantities, but these are very costly steps to take and in pushing costs and prices up will make many of them uncompetitive and will put many of them operating on wafer-thin margins out of business.


Because like a lot of politicians he's a psychopath who doesn't care about the impact on other people, only about the greater glorification of Boris Johnson, and when it all goes horribly wrong he'll just pull his usual shtick of laughing, shrugging his shoulders and faking concern.

Remain and May's deal are easy options. i agree the hard bresxit option is harder but it can be done.

The economics certainties of people are mostly ridiculous. What we do know is that a) change has costs and this is huge change, and b) the risks go up a lot.

After that it's far too complicated for even the experts to do much better than guessing. There's no concrete reality being analysed because one of the biggest factors in the outcomes is the adjustments that are made as the situation develops and that's simply too hard a maths problem for them to solve.

Let's not dampen the remainer hyperbole please. It's doing a great job.

there's a weird asymmetry between remainers and leavers hyperbole

Leavers bang on things like the backstop - massive hyperbole but it's effective rhetoric

Remainers bang on about economic doom - hyperbole but it's not effective rhetoric (at best)


It's one of the strangest things that seems to be true of all areas of politics. I don't think it's intentional either

Pedantic, but I think it's worth pointing out that this is a bit of a mis-characterisation that skews the debate for some people.

It implies that a team of super-experts with big enough computers could maybe solve it, whereas economics is an immature 'science' in which the models are known not to fit reality, however extravagant they are.

I think a poker analogy (given we are in this forum) is that an expert statistician is trying to calculate EV of the line, but they can't assess villain' range, aren't sure which form of poker we are playing, and they don't know the hand rankings. So are they an 'expert'?

It's not a hard maths problem like working out the best route for a delivery driver or playing heads up limit poker perfectly.

I'm not disputing the point you make though, responsible experts would admit their models are next to useless when presenting the results. And the better informed part of the electorate would avoid relying on them too much in debate.

I've already posted my opinion earlier in the thread that referendums should require 60% of the vote share to bring such a major change.

As for the referendum itself it wouldn't have been called by any of the other political parties. Cameron only went for it to try to out to bed the endless infighting in the Conservative party over Europe.

My preferred choice now if remain is off the table is a hard Brexit. Let the Brexiteer gammons of England really feel the fallout of their decision.

Nice, that’s nice.

The remain argument 'experts' have been shown to be wrong over and over.

The leave ones haven't been tested.

Remain arguments about the economy dont get tested till we actually leave or hard Brexit.

We are still full members of the EU.

The arguments about a hard brexit are not even close to hyperbole, assuming the brexit is full hard, it will be a cluster **** and anyone denying that is just a fantasist.

It was also a remain prediction that the pound will fall if we vote leave.

100% correct.

Should this happen, those that are to blame will include: remainers, the EU, industry for not being prepared.

Those that will not be to blame will be: People that advocated Brexit, people that voted for it and still think it is the right thing to do despite all the evidence pointing to it being an awful idea.

Exactly, I mean wtf. I preferred it when brexiteers at least admitted that the UK would be in for 10-15 years of hardship whereas now they seem to have moved on to even a hard Brexit wont be a problem man, ****ing project fear man. It’s laughable.