Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Admiral Yi]

If it's a publicly owned company, then there's probably a monopoly.

How in the world did you come up with this?

[Sheilbh]

If it's a publicly owned company, then there's probably a monopoly.

How in the world did you come up with this?

Sorry. By publicly owned I mean nationalised - not listed.

[Tonitrus]

We are indeed separated by a common language. 

[Tamas]

a hung parliament

You know that's where we are heading. 

[Admiral Yi]

Sorry. By publicly owned I mean nationalised - not listed.

Well that changes everything.

I've got no dog in that fight, but I'm curious how you would pick the consumer representative(s), and how he or she (or hym or they) would go about choosing how to vote on matters before the board.

[Sheilbh]

I've got no dog in that fight, but I'm curious how you would pick the consumer representative(s), and how he or she (or hym or they) would go about choosing how to vote on matters before the board.

Yeah. I've no idea how you make it work without just being captured by activists and fringe issues.

But as I say the issue you have producer capture of an industry. So the consumer has no choice and it ultimately ends up serving the interests of management and/or the workers. I'm not sure the government should be intervening to champion consumers (and they'll be subject to capture too).

I wonder if instead of consumer board representation a sort-of consumer ombudsman might work?

You know that's where we are heading. 

It was my prediction - I may be wildly wrong. But even with the polls indicating a Tory majority I think it'll be a hung parliament

[Barrister]

Putting consumers on the board of publicly owned companies makes sense. The risk is they suffer producer-capture so you need either a market (which can sometimes work) or some form of consumer ownership and representation.

Polls don't seem to be herding. Labour are, depending on your pollster between 31-36% and the Tories are between 41-45%.

Wouldn't the Tories getting 41% of the vote pretty much give them a majority in the house?  I mean, it was kind of an outlier but our Liberals just won a majority with 33.1%.

[Legbiter]

The Tories seem to have a 10 point lead or thereabouts. If that holds will they have a majority?

[Sheilbh]

Wouldn't the Tories getting 41% of the vote pretty much give them a majority in the house?  I mean, it was kind of an outlier but our Liberals just won a majority with 33.1%.

Depends how it falls - you know 35% was enough for Blair, 36% was enough for Cameron. And 41% is less than Theresa May won - and one third of the 2017 Labour vote made up their mind in the last week.

But given the regional variations and FPTP squeezing the minority party votes, the Tories need roughly a 7% lead to win a majority.

My own guess is that they lose seats to the SNP in Scotland, they lose a few in the South to the Lib Dems and they do well in "leavey" areas in the Midlands and North and they win a few seats. But I'm not sure they win anywhere what they need and they end up with historically high second vote tallies in places like Darlington.

I could be wrong and it could be a Tory majority.

Though I'd note that for all of these polls publicly, both the Tory and Labour campaigns are spending their last week in ultra marginals. Neither are campaigning like you'd expect if a party was going for a majority.

[Sheilbh]

The Tories seem to have a 10 point lead or thereabouts. If that holds will they have a majority?

They need +7% roughly. But the range in the polls goes from them being 14% ahead to 5% ahead. Different pollsters are having very different results at the minute

[Josquius]

Thought I'd replied already

ailroad: while the national railroad company DB is still state owned, it is organized as a private stock corporation. That means it has no direct customer representatives on its board, only politicians and some politically appointed experts. And of course the workers council like all German corporations. There are lobby groups representing the customers, but they have no formal role in corporate governance. The state still gives tax money for infrastructure investments, but for railway operations, other companies can apply for the licenses and operate trains on DB's rail network. There are dozens of private operators, mainly for local or regional trains.

I had understood most of these regional operators were jointly ran by various local/state/federal governments rather than being true private railways?

As I had set in the vanished reply... The idea with nationalising the railways isn't some ideological driven stab at private companies. Open access operators will continue to operate and the way in which the main franchises are planned to be nationalised is over time by taking over franchises.

It really seems the German model is the way we are going to go, with a lot more local involvement in running them.

I think the competition is lacking because of the strength of Corbyn's support within the party. It might evaporate if he loses but I don't see it.

The soft left challenged him immediately after the referendum (before 2017!) over Brexit and he won two-thirds of the vote, he did better than in 2015.

Ish.
The whole thing felt really half hearted to me. Corbyn screwed up the referendum so there had to be a vote... but nobody decent really put their name forward. It was just Corbyn vs the sacrificial Watson.

On the next leader, I think there's huge demand for a woman to lead Labour. So I don't see any man winning (cue Labour taking another 35 years to elect a female leader ). I think the main difference is between Remainer/London Labour (Thornberry especially) v "Northern" Labour (Pidcock, Long-Bailey, Raynor). I would be astonished if the leader is someone suspected of any disloyalty to Corbyn which rules out Khan and Jarvis.

I dunno, I'm quite liking Jarvis' ex-military credentials to try and win over the nationalist crowd. It does seem the metro mayors are to be a breeding ground for future talent. Burnham is another name in the frame.
It could be a woman, but none of the names are really standing out to me right now.

[The Larch]

EU migrants have been able to "treat the UK as if it's part of their own country" for too long, Boris Johnson said yesterday as he reprised the core message of Vote Leave's 2016 EU referendum campaign.

[Legbiter]

My own guess is that they lose seats to the SNP in Scotland, they lose a few in the South to the Lib Dems and they do well in "leavey" areas in the Midlands and North and they win a few seats.

Midlands? Grimsby is going Tory? 

[Sheilbh]

I dunno, I'm quite liking Jarvis' ex-military credentials to try and win over the nationalist crowd. It does seem the metro mayors are to be a breeding ground for future talent. Burnham is another name in the frame.
It could be a woman, but none of the names are really standing out to me right now.

Yeah. Burnham is yesterday's man I don't see him even trying, plus he's not an MP which is probably still necessary - same with Khan. Jarvis is running as MP and Metro Mayor, but I just don't see the constituency in the Labour party for a former forces, Blairite, Labour Friends of Israel member.

I think there's a lot of desire for it to be a woman, so I think all of the factions will try to nominate a woman. I think there's a really interesting fight on the left between Pidcock, Long-Bailey and Raynor (personally I'd go for Raynor). I imagine the soft left will go for Yvette Cooper - but is she yesterday's woman too? And Jess Philips will run and lose but be the darling candidate of the Twitter class.

To be honest I don't think any of the candidates are particularly impressive, because who the fuck would want to be an MP nowadays. So the talent pool is fairly shallow.

Midlands? Grimsby is going Tory? 

This is one of the other difficult to poll factors. The Brexit Party have stepped down in Tory-held seats. They've not stepped down in the Labour seats the Tories need to win.

So to take Grimsby as an example - last time round the Tories came 2.5k votes short but won 42% of the vote and UKIP (who were collapsing) won 4.5%, down 20% from 2015.

I think the Brexit Party will do better, I don't see the Tories necessarily winning many more votes. This is why I don't fully see what big Leave areas will go Tory that didn't in 2017.

As I say I could be very wrong, but I still don't really see it.

[Josquius]

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the old elites of the labour party. With Khan in particular I really get the feeling he is playing the long game.
Most of them are keeping their heads down, purposefully staying out of the frame for now, hoping to re-emerge when the coast is clear.
As I mentioned the 2017 leadership contest was really very half hearted and lacking in anyone even trying apart from Watson doing his duty.

Much of it I guess depends how smart momentum are.
As things are Corbyns time in charge has done a lot to move the party leftwards towards a manifesto that really represents the labour average.
If it wasn't for Corbyn and his lack of skill in fighting off the smears, I really think labour would be favourites.
A left wing manifesto but with a centre left figure rather than a hard left figure at the head could really do very well.