Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

If Remain won, the Tories would have morphed fully into de facto UKIP by now and PM Johnson having won a recent election on this mandate, would be doing Brexit Vote #2.

[Sheilbh]

I'm not convinced Johnson is as inevitable as you are

Without Brexit I'm not sure he's leader - I think there'd probably always be enough "stop Johnson" Tory backbenchers to keep him off the final leadership ballot, or something like the 2016 Gove betrayal would happen. The Tories go for Johnson out of desperation after the 2017 election which lost their majority and the chaos of the 2017 parliament - without that context and the fear of losing Brexit all together I'm not sure they go for Johnson. Because at the end of a relatively normal first term, facing Jeremy Corbyn, why would they need him?

Impossible to know but I think it's more likely there was a big fight between, say, Gove, May and Osborne and one of them are PM.

[Sheilbh]

Escalation by the government:

Sam Coates Sky
@SamCoatesSky
EXC

Sky News understands ministers asked Train Operating Companies to report back on the customer / operational impact of banning rest day work & overtime over the strike period

Ministers want to stop strikers topping up salaries to make up for strike days when they aren't paid
This will escalate tensions with the unions going into the second day of strikes.

Sources stress this isn't a permanent overtime ban - trains wouldn't run on Sundays if so - but are expecting backlash

More on @skynews @ 10 shortly

Also really not sure the politics of this works. If your line against the union (and Labour) is that the strike is disrupting people's lives, I'm not sure you can then impact services by banning overtime. It just nullifies your strongest position agains the strike.

Of course given the government's record I'm sure they've thought this through and aren't about to shoot themselves in the foot with an ill-thought out knee-jerk reaction that might get one (1) day of good front pages in the right wing press

[crazy canuck]

I'm not convinced Johnson is as inevitable as you are

Without Brexit I'm not sure he's leader - I think there'd probably always be enough "stop Johnson" Tory backbenchers to keep him off the final leadership ballot, or something like the 2016 Gove betrayal would happen. The Tories go for Johnson out of desperation after the 2017 election which lost their majority and the chaos of the 2017 parliament - without that context and the fear of losing Brexit all together I'm not sure they go for Johnson. Because at the end of a relatively normal first term, facing Jeremy Corbyn, why would they need him?

Impossible to know but I think it's more likely there was a big fight between, say, Gove, May and Osborne and one of them are PM.

Yeah, if remain won the Tories could have pivoted to a narrative that their promise, made by Cameron, to hold a referendum was fulfilled and it was time to now move on.  Corbyn would have been left in the dust without any need to go with the clown.

[Josquius]

I'm not so sure Corbyn would have been left in the dust.
Without brexit a large number may instead grasp for a more positive batch of insanity. Avoid far right populism taking hold and many could go for far left populism instead.
Not to mention the tory splits.

[Tamas]

I'm not so sure Corbyn would have been left in the dust.
Without brexit a large number may instead grasp for a more positive batch of insanity. Avoid far right populism taking hold and many could go for far left populism instead.
Not to mention the tory splits.

I think xenophobia and nationalism are key ingredients to most people's frustration-outlets.

[garbon]

I'm not so sure Corbyn would have been left in the dust.
Without brexit a large number may instead grasp for a more positive batch of insanity. Avoid far right populism taking hold and many could go for far left populism instead.
Not to mention the tory splits.

I think xenophobia and nationalism are key ingredients to most people's frustration-outlets.

[Tamas]

I'm not so sure Corbyn would have been left in the dust.
Without brexit a large number may instead grasp for a more positive batch of insanity. Avoid far right populism taking hold and many could go for far left populism instead.
Not to mention the tory splits.

I think xenophobia and nationalism are key ingredients to most people's frustration-outlets.

What I mean, is that the far left is not a suitable alternative for those voting  UKIP and rallying against immigrants taking their jobs and such. Those people need a certain flair Corbyn just cannot provide.

[Sheilbh]

Also the key moment when public opinion changed about Corbyn was the Salisbury attack - and I don't see his response to that ever changing.

There'd still be a UKIP-ish force as an irritant to the right of the Tories. After all the won 12.5% of the vote in 2015 (but no MPs - or maybe one). I think they'd still be around, unlike now, but probably still as outside Parliament but a risk, increasingly to both main parties.

[Josquius]

Would Salisbury have happened though?
Brexit was a pretty key event in boosting Putins confidence he could get away with anything and the UK is done.
Not to mention there was still 2017 before that.

I agree Corbyn wouldn't be for everyone. The ukip core aren't going to flip. But that was a minority of the brexit vote. Many are quite floppy in their allegiance and who to blame.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Corbyn sees the USA as being worse than Russia/USSR; just imagine his contortions if he was PM during this war in Ukraine. I could never bring myself to vote for Corbyn even if the alternative was the fat oaf.

[Sheilbh]

Would Salisbury have happened though?
Brexit was a pretty key event in boosting Putins confidence he could get away with anything and the UK is done.
Not to mention there was still 2017 before that.

I mean there was the Litvinenko murder with Polonium in 2006. I don't think Putin deciding to send Novichok to Salisbury has any link to Brexit - I think there's been a couple of suspicious murders of Russian emigres in Berlin as well (though not with nuclear material or chemical weapons).

I don't think Brexit matters to Putin very much. It's better that it happened than that it didn't - but I don't think it's changed or altered his behaviour to the UK or the world in any way.

I agree Corbyn wouldn't be for everyone. The ukip core aren't going to flip. But that was a minority of the brexit vote. Many are quite floppy in their allegiance and who to blame.

Yeah I think 2018 is the key moment with Corbyn. His poll ratings collapse after his response to the Salisbury attack ("we should send a sample to Russia and ask if its theirs" ) and they never show any sign of recovering. I think that would have just persisted to the election in 2020 and I think it would have been similarly awful for Labour as 2019 was. Plus I think without Brexit the Lib Dems would, especially v a Labour party led by Corbyn, be more aligned with the Tories as they were in 2010 and 2015.

In many ways I think that Labour electing Corbyn and then keeping him after Brexit are really key to the last 7 years - including, possibly, the Brexit vote itself. Because I suppose that's the counter-factual of Remain winning, is if it won on the back of a fully committed Labour for Remain campaign led by someone like Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham?

Corbyn sees the USA as being worse than Russia/USSR; just imagine his contortions if he was PM during this war in Ukraine. I could never bring myself to vote for Corbyn even if the alternative was the fat oaf.

Yeah I mean the only policy positions that I think Labour shadow cabinet and union leaders etc were able to force onto Corbyn were staying in the EU and NATO. His comments on Ukraine have been pretty grim. There's zero chance we'd be sending weapons and I think we'd be very much pushing for both sides to talk - I wouldn't be surprised if Corbyn as PM during Ukraine caused a split in the Labour party to be honest.

[Josquius]

TBH I don't think the sending a sample to Russia part on Salisbury was too bad. But holding off on judgement until after that - dumb.

I never hated Labour under Corbyn as much as many did. For all the man himself is a idiot stuck in the past and absolutely wasn't the right man to lead labour for reasons of both competence and positioning, one good thing I will say about him is he tended to be a democrat and follow the Labour average, albeit often half heartedly, rather than pushing his own view.

Obviously not great for a leader. Quite the opposite of what makes a good leader. But a point to bare in mind around him. As much as he was a dinosaur stuck in a 1970s lala land this isn't necessarily what Labour would have delivered.
I don't think a labour government under Corbyn would have been all that bad. Certainly better than what we do have - albeit worse than labour under practically anyone else.

I disagree on Brexit being unimportant to putin. I really do think brexit and trump were key events in the kremlins eyes for boosting their confidence they could get away with anything, that the west was divided and in decline etc.... I'd even say sans brexit the odds of the current war drop a good 10% or so.

[Tamas]

Wanting to send a sample to Russia is at best incredibly naive and dumb, at worst a weak attempt to defend your country's enemy.

[Josquius]

Wanting to send a sample to Russia is at best incredibly naive and dumb, at worst a weak attempt to defend your country's enemy.

I don't see how it hurts. They already have the chemical: They made it afterall.
At worst it maybe helps back up the inevitable lies when they claim clearly its nothing to do with them. But when everyone elses tests say completely different... It really just goes to highlight that they're liars.
Shows them that we know what they're up to - sort of like all the intelligence being laid out about the Ukranian invasion.