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Category: Article 50

What’s next over Brexit? The question that no one is asking

What’s next over Brexit? The question that no one is asking

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  In their seminal anthem, Busted reported back from the year 3000 that not much had changed (but we live underwater). I don’t propose to look that far into the future but let’s borrow a souped-up De Lorean and head for 2030. By then the current crop of politicians will have written their memoirs or be editing newspapers. Given geological timescales, we can expect the island of Britain still to be sitting off the mainland of Europe. With current rates…

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The UKIP leadership race – Alastair Meeks marks your card

The UKIP leadership race – Alastair Meeks marks your card

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As Mike Smithson pointed out last week, these are fallow days for political betting. We have been spoiled in recent years with a nonstop cavalcade of elections, referendums and leadership contests. We are suffering withdrawal pangs. So far this summer, only UKIP have given us a full-blown leadership election. (The Lib Dems let us down by having a walkover.) Interest in this election, as in the party itself this year, has been minimal. With UKIP leadership elections being so frequent,…

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Brace yourselves for the impending train wreck of the Brexit negotiations

Brace yourselves for the impending train wreck of the Brexit negotiations

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Alastair Meeks on the similarities with 1914 The biggest avoidable catastrophe of the twentieth century was the outbreak of the First World War.  A single act of terrorism emanating from a small pre-modern state was allowed by mishandling by several different nations to escalate into a war that devastated a continent.  Historians continue to argue to this day about the causes.  It is often observed that the Russian mobilisation plans entailed rigid planning.  The steps that the Russians took that…

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Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment

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Embed from Getty Images   “Tain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It) sang Ella.  “That’s what gets results.”  A lesson the EU and the British government might usefully tattoo on their respective foreheads as they embark on post-Article 50 negotiations.  Or try to.  Nine months on from the referendum and two months since Article 50 was formally triggered, both the EU and Britain are still shouting at each other in a way familiar to divorce lawyers…

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Voters want May to negotiate Brexit and not Corbyn and that’s all you need to know

Voters want May to negotiate Brexit and not Corbyn and that’s all you need to know

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A new poll shows that UK adults overwhelmingly trust Theresa May rather than Jeremy Corbyn to negotiate Brexit by a margin of 51% to 13%. All else is secondary writes Keiran Pedley. On this week’s PB/Polling Matters podcast (see below) I spoke to Chris Hanretty from the University of East Anglia about events in France and the prospect of a Tory landslide in June. As part of the show, I also unveiled some new polling from our Polling Matters /…

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PB/Polling Matters podcast: Is a Tory landslide inevitable? And Vive le pollsters!

PB/Polling Matters podcast: Is a Tory landslide inevitable? And Vive le pollsters!

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  On this week’s podcast Keiran returns and is joined by Chris Hanretty from the University of East Anglia. Keiran and Chris celebrate the excellent performance of French pollsters last weekend and discuss the implications of Macron and Le Pen making the second round. Is a Macron victory now inevitable? What happens next and would a British version of ‘En Marche’ be successful? Keiran and Chris also discuss the seeming inevitability of a Conservative landslide in June and what might…

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Theresa May breaks her word and calls an early general election for June 8th of this year

Theresa May breaks her word and calls an early general election for June 8th of this year

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Can she satisfy or circumvent The Fixed-term Parliament Act? pic.twitter.com/pkKaBrVPuF — TSE (@TSEofPB) April 18, 2017 https://twitter.com/NinaDSchick/status/854275303753043968 Will Labour agree to an early election? Given the polls I can understand why Mrs May is calling a general election, but there’s a few major issues to sort out Can she satisfy the fixed-term parliament act in the vote tomorrow? Will Mrs May receive any backlash, like Gordon Brown, for going back on her word on holding an early election If she…

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Richard Nabavi on the Brexit Blame Game

Richard Nabavi on the Brexit Blame Game

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Now that the trigger has been pulled, the EU27 and the United Kingdom have begun the public posturing over the Brexit negotiations. So far this is not looking encouraging. Theresa May’s warm words about wanting a ”deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU” to include ”both economic and security cooperation” seem to have been, bizarrely, interpreted as a threat. The EU continues to insist that we have to settle the outline of the ‘exit deal’ before we…

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