Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis part 2 - Ireland

[Drifterwood]

Yes. It's easy to say who shouldn't do the job. The challenge is to find someone who should. Pritti Patel seems to have real ability and an absence of all the problems above. Could we have our first Asian PM?

The only reason May is in post is because no-one can see an alternative. Maybe she does have to just stay in post until Brexit. However there are doubts about whether she can soldier on.

Chris Grayling?

He's tall.

 

[Jason]

The conservatives are trying to stop Brexit.

You are a fantasist.

 

[Jason]

Chris Grayling?

He's tall.

And that's about all the level of endorsement that is needed right now.

If we could wave a wand and instantly have Grayling as PM with a united cabinet behind him I would say lets go for him. However we're not in that position. In theory an inauguration is possible (where there is a single candidate) but in practice that won't happen. If Boris stands there will also be a stop-Boris candidate. If Boris doesn't stand then there will be at least two candidates. The result will be months of uncertainty. I think, following the farce of the PM's speech, there are two possibilities:

1) The PM is unable to continue because of health issues. The leaks around mental health immediately following the election are credible. If such a problem still exists then of course she has to stand down, and there is no possible alternative. As a replacement Boris Johnson is divisive. The possible compromise candidate is Michael Gove. Faced with ill health from the PM and the national need to have a PM for the next few months of Brexit negotiations then I think the 1922 Committee would have pushed for Gove. Gove has gone out of his way to say May's speech was the best he's ever heard (I'm serious). I think this is his way of saying he's not in contention. I'm aware it could mean that he wants to be the reluctant person dragged into office to serve his country. However I think (1) is off the table.

2) Resilience. The PM stays in office until spring 2019. This does give continuity for Brexit negotiations, though not strong and stable. None of us know what the political scene is going to be like in spring 2019. I think a coalition with LibDems is suddenly possible (if Brexit has happened there's no sense in opposing it). I think the pact with DUP could turn into a coalition. (Ian Paisley for PM?) I think a new Conservative leader (Rees-Mogg?) might mean an autumn 2019 election.

Right now I think (2) is more likely, though last night I thought (1). This is all up in the air!

 

[dandelion]

You are a fantasist.

No, a strategist. Of course they are trying to stop Brexit, because they want a future where they are still electable.

I considered your scenario where for some reason May is unable or unwilling to continue. I do think there is a possibility she might say she has had enough of trying to do the impossible. But if she simply died, I think they might embalm her and keep her as PM because she would still be the best candidate. Maybe even better.

Boris and Gove have exactly the same reasons why they cannot be PM. Because they are hard Leave. If they got it, because the party members overruled the MPs, what would happen would be immediate revolt of a number of MPs and some more becoming higly unreliable. May was chosen as ringmaster to keep the two sides at least talking to each other. To try to find a way for the party as a whole to survive Brexit. And the best way to do that is for it not to happen.

 

[Jason]

But if she simply died, I think they might embalm her and keep her as PM because she would still be the best candidate. Maybe even better.

Well it seems the plan is to freeze her (Osborne)not embalm her but with this modification I think you may be right.

A headline of the 2010 election and a subsequent book title was "Hung together". The election gave a result where Con and LIbDem had to go into coalition. The 2017 election has created a comparable outcome where the arithmetic requires no change. A new leader would have to work for 100% of the Conservative MPs and for the DUP.

The situation breaks down if May is absolutely unable to continue. I suppose we are not at that stage. I suppose events will provide a way forward.

 

[dandelion]

Interesting debate on 'this week' yesterday. The panelists discussed whether the conservative party is moribund and risks disappearing completely. Aside from the likelihood the party will suffer a loss of support after brexit because it will not meet people's expectations, either soft, hard or remain, it simply does not have any young members. It isnt that people change and become conservatives as they age, but that the reasons people became conservatives in the past no longer exist.

Margaret Thatcher bribed people to vote conservative by giving away state owned houses or company shares. She even gave away things the state didnt own, by winding up private sector 'mutual' organisations like building societies which had belonged to their members. Unfortunately for ideological reasons the conservatives do not believe in building houses, so they never replaced the ones they gave away, and now there are none left. Councils were forbidden to build new ones, even when they were sitting on big receipts from the sales of the old ones. Homelessness is now rising, and local authorities have no homes to put anyone in. For years they have been renting private sector homes for such people, but it is reaching the state where they cannot even get these now. Private landlords are refusing to accept council funded tenants, and can do so because of the massive demand for housing.

The deliberate shortage of housing has hamstrung the Uk economy for years, as the cost of housing has massively shrunk peoples available income. Brits cannot afford to take low paid jobs, because they simply could not afford a home on those wages. State payments for housing benefits towards peoples rent have soared because the rents have soared. Instead of building more houses to reduce the shortage, conservatives cut back on who could get housing benefit to limit their own bill. The system is reaching a crisis point where homelessness is rising and looks about to break out as a public issue from this end too. Meanwhile voters are deserting the tories, because they see the dream the tories offered of getting rich and owning their own home, is utterly impossible.

The conservative position is bad for several reasons. The only reason Brexit happened was because conservatives were unwilling to oppose it, because of their own division about EU membership. As a whole, conservative MPs oppose Brexit. They dont want it, they never did. They granted a referendum because they thought the result would be remain. The leave campaigners would never have stopped demanding to leave, even had they lost the referendum, and the remainers should not stop putting their own case either. But the conservatives see electoral disaster approaching, and do not know whether it comes faster by halting Brexit or allowing it to happen.

May is PM because she is the nearest thing they could find to an unaligned candidate. Someone who did not belong particularly to any group. Someone who has always been very left wing for a tory, and arguably would have been more at home leading labour, certainly 'new labour'. She believes in building houses. Yet at the conference just completed she announced £2bn to build a total of 30,000 new homes at a rate of somehing like 5,000 a year. The real number needed is more like 250,000 a year total simply to renew the existing stock at a rate of one rebuild every 200 years, and maybe 500,000 a year for several years to catch up on the backlog. maybe a shortage of 3,000,000 houses currently. So against this background she proposed an extra 5,000 a year built, plus proposing to spend 5x as much money on boosting the scheme to help people buy at current market prices. In other words. help bid up the price of the exiting homes even more so they become yet more unaffordable.

There are easy ways to get more homes built. There is a shortage of land with consent to build upon it. Most of it already belongs to building/property speculation companies, who see no profit in actually building but prefer to speculate on the land price, and sell what they do build at high prices. More land must be allocated for housing. Councils must be given big targets for new housebuilding, with stringent penalties for failing to provide land, whereby anyone wanting to build could override local planning and obtain consent directly (and simply) from government. People want to build homes, and private construction would take of...if only government allowed people to do it. What they have done instead is create a monopoly of land specualating companies which make money but not houses.

Its tory policy. It has distorted the Uk economy for decades and cost us all massively. Just imagine getting back half the money you ever paid to buy your home or in rent.

 

[southeastone]

Margaret Thatcher bribed people to vote conservative by giving away state owned houses or company shares. She even gave away things the state didnt own, by winding up private sector 'mutual' organisations like building societies which had belonged to their members.


Unfortunately for ideological reasons the conservatives do not believe in building houses, .

Thatcher did not "wind up" anything, building societies were indeed allowed to convert to ltd companies with full member agreement so members became share holders, that was good for the members who gained more control but the end of most societies was brought about by the butterfill act which allowed diversification from the original purpose, this brought about the demise of most "building societies" this was done in 2007 under labour.

The Tories built far more houses than labour, we have discussed that many times in this thread, according to official figures labour built just 6500 council homes in it's entire tenure, Thatcher never built less that 17500 homes PER YEAR. Of houses built under Labour only 2% were council, under Thatcher 19% .

Your points don't add up.

 

[Jason]

Surely the Building Societies demutualised in the Blair years.

House building figures are out there. Conservative govts have presided over more house building than Lab.

 

[dandelion]

Conservative govts have presided over more house building than Lab.

How are the mighty fallen.

Thatcher called a halt to building council houses and introduced laws preventing them being built. While they might have built more than labour did subsequently, this is because they were running down the programme which already existed post war. Thatcher waged a war against local authorities to prevent them building more, council houses were in fact built by councils which were not under direct government control. Not until she took that power away from them, anyway.

Do we have figures on how many of the council houses build during conservative governments were built by labour councils and how many by tory councils?

Thatcher did not "wind up" anything, building societies were indeed allowed to convert to ltd companies with full member agreement so members became share holders, that was good for the members who gained more control but the end of most societies was brought about by the butterfill act which allowed diversification from the original purpose,

No. Building societies were mutual organisations which built up capital assets over the years, which belonged to members but which members could not take out. Thatcher changed the law so that members could vote to turn them into companies and issue shares instead, which could then be sold. A simple majority was all that was needed, on a one member, one vote basis. So someone with 1 million pounds invested got 1 vote, and someone with 10p got a vote. Oddly, people started opening 10p accounts untill enough of them existed to vote to demutualise and steal all the real members money. Only a few survived, eg the nationwide, which made it a condition of opening new accounts that the new owner agreed to donate any shares they received to charity. Then the drive todemutualise stopped. It was all about stealing the societies money, and behind that destroying commercial banks non-profit competition for the lucrative mortgage market.

 

[dandelion]

The conservatives are in real trouble. May is attempting to halt brexit, because that is what the MPs who voted her in want. Naturally, the hard brexiteers are in revolt. they still dont want to go public on what is really happening, because it would shatter the party. The plan continues to be to reveal the difficulties of Brexit until the public demands we remain.

May was chosen to be PM because she has always been a bit of an outsider. The leave faction will not accept a remain PM, and vice versa. The more remain May becomes, the more the hard leave faction will openly revolt. Not least because their best hope to achieve leave is for a collapse in negotiations and the hardest of brexits as the Uk falls out of the EU with no agreements at all. Yet simply bringing down the tory government would not achieve their aim, if labour then picked up the pieces and organised remaining. So they have a bit of a balancing act trying to force the government's hand.

I would guess May started out trying to make Brexit work. But they now know this is impossible. The election was to try to get public support for a Brexit which would be economically disastrous, because they know it would be economically disastrous. If people still wanted it, well fair enough. But the answer from the election was that the tories ended with less MPs, not more. When put to the test, support for the brexit party drained away steadily throughout the campaign and has continued to do so afterwards. Most people who still want Brexit, also want a brexit which works economically, and they always did. Only a minority are kamikaze like Jason.

The europeans see what is happening in the Uk, and that the govrnment cannot decide what it wants from Brexit. The UK is stalling because it knows it cannot successfully leave the EU, but it has no alternative plan. Europeans are preparing for very hard Brexit, because that will be the result of the government having no plan at all. The only plan right now is to delay negotiations and enter an open ended 'transition phase' to nowhere, because no one knows the goal.

Just watched an old recorded TV program, which had a news roundup in it. 'David Cameron's all- conservative new cabinet meets for the first time, promising to be the real party for working people'. What a joke. There's May sitting opposite Cameron, and the camera lingered upon her. Spooky. What a disaster, never vote tory.

 

[Drifterwood]

Interesting debate on 'this week' yesterday. The panelists discussed whether the conservative party is moribund and risks disappearing completely. Aside from the likelihood the party will suffer a loss of support after brexit because it will not meet people's expectations, either soft, hard or remain, it simply does not have any young members. It isnt that people change and become conservatives as they age, but that the reasons people became conservatives in the past no longer exist.

Margaret Thatcher bribed people to vote conservative by giving away state owned houses or company shares. She even gave away things the state didnt own, by winding up private sector 'mutual' organisations like building societies which had belonged to their members. Unfortunately for ideological reasons the conservatives do not believe in building houses, so they never replaced the ones they gave away, and now there are none left. Councils were forbidden to build new ones, even when they were sitting on big receipts from the sales of the old ones. Homelessness is now rising, and local authorities have no homes to put anyone in. For years they have been renting private sector homes for such people, but it is reaching the state where they cannot even get these now. Private landlords are refusing to accept council funded tenants, and can do so because of the massive demand for housing.

The deliberate shortage of housing has hamstrung the Uk economy for years, as the cost of housing has massively shrunk peoples available income. Brits cannot afford to take low paid jobs, because they simply could not afford a home on those wages. State payments for housing benefits towards peoples rent have soared because the rents have soared. Instead of building more houses to reduce the shortage, conservatives cut back on who could get housing benefit to limit their own bill. The system is reaching a crisis point where homelessness is rising and looks about to break out as a public issue from this end too. Meanwhile voters are deserting the tories, because they see the dream the tories offered of getting rich and owning their own home, is utterly impossible.

The conservative position is bad for several reasons. The only reason Brexit happened was because conservatives were unwilling to oppose it, because of their own division about EU membership. As a whole, conservative MPs oppose Brexit. They dont want it, they never did. They granted a referendum because they thought the result would be remain. The leave campaigners would never have stopped demanding to leave, even had they lost the referendum, and the remainers should not stop putting their own case either. But the conservatives see electoral disaster approaching, and do not know whether it comes faster by halting Brexit or allowing it to happen.

May is PM because she is the nearest thing they could find to an unaligned candidate. Someone who did not belong particularly to any group. Someone who has always been very left wing for a tory, and arguably would have been more at home leading labour, certainly 'new labour'. She believes in building houses. Yet at the conference just completed she announced £2bn to build a total of 30,000 new homes at a rate of somehing like 5,000 a year. The real number needed is more like 250,000 a year total simply to renew the existing stock at a rate of one rebuild every 200 years, and maybe 500,000 a year for several years to catch up on the backlog. maybe a shortage of 3,000,000 houses currently. So against this background she proposed an extra 5,000 a year built, plus proposing to spend 5x as much money on boosting the scheme to help people buy at current market prices. In other words. help bid up the price of the exiting homes even more so they become yet more unaffordable.

There are easy ways to get more homes built. There is a shortage of land with consent to build upon it. Most of it already belongs to building/property speculation companies, who see no profit in actually building but prefer to speculate on the land price, and sell what they do build at high prices. More land must be allocated for housing. Councils must be given big targets for new housebuilding, with stringent penalties for failing to provide land, whereby anyone wanting to build could override local planning and obtain consent directly (and simply) from government. People want to build homes, and private construction would take of...if only government allowed people to do it. What they have done instead is create a monopoly of land specualating companies which make money but not houses.

Its tory policy. It has distorted the Uk economy for decades and cost us all massively. Just imagine getting back half the money you ever paid to buy your home or in rent.

I don't disagree that the property asset bubble is deliberately protected. I believe it is done so to underpin the money supply on private sector debt. Your Mr. Corbin wishes to switch to public debt and believes he can distribute the money (or rather the debt) more evenly that way or at least to the people who will vote for it.

MacDonnel declared war on people who profit from property ownership at the conference. I am not a buy to let landlord, but if I was, I would be deeply concerned. MacDonnel may just cause a collapse in house prices by spooking away the landlords. A fall would put more money in mortgage payers pockets in the future, but long term there is less equity for retirement age needs. You win, you lose. But then they know that 70% of older voters are voting Tory, so sod them. Labour is highly targeted at the younger voter. The next election will be an age war.

There is another reality check, Dands, construction is a big industry. They are set up in all ways to build around 160,000 houses a year. There is no tap that can increase this number by even ten percent. Ironically, one of the problems would be a labour and skills shortage caused by Brexit.

 

[Jason]

It seems the UK government will in the next few weeks commit funds to prepare for a mo-deal Brexit. These will be spent from January.

With all the rumours that surround Brexit there's plenty of room for different interpretation. However the simplest view is that May made her big offer in Florence, it has been rejected, and a deal (that is not a punishment beating) cannot be concluded in the time now available.

The pound is down a bit, but only a bit. I think we may actually be at a point where the markets will prefer a planned, hard Brexit. It takes away a lot of parliamentary difficulties because the UK parliament will not have to pass a Brexit deal. While a repeal bill could be frustrated such an action is pointless in a hard Brexit scenario.

I think we are on the brink of a coherent way forward.

 

[Drifterwood]

You are fantasising @Jason. The Tory government is in disarray and they are damaging the economy as a result.

 

[eurotop40]

You are fantasising @Jason. The Tory government is in disarray and they are damaging the economy as a result.

This is what I read:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/07/theresa-may-secret-advice-brexit-eu

 

[Drifterwood]

This is what I read:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/07/theresa-may-secret-advice-brexit-eu

The process looks to be killing Theresa May and I doubt Boris Johnson will be able to stay in the country as some point.

I don't hear the Brexit mob talking about the U.S. Tariffs on Bombardier to protect Boeing. Northern Ireland's last big manufacturer being shafted by the people who were supposed to be putting us first in line. Welcome to reality.

 

[dandelion]

The process looks to be killing Theresa May and I doubt Boris Johnson will be able to stay in the country as some point.p

That would be quite amusing. Boris johnson having to move to europe because he is reviled in the Uk.

I don't hear the Brexit mob talking about the U.S. Tariffs on Bombardier to protect Boeing. Northern Ireland's last big manufacturer being shafted by the people who were supposed to be putting us first in line. Welcome to reality.

Wonder what the DUP think about this.

It seems the UK government will in the next few weeks commit funds to prepare for a mo-deal Brexit. These will be spent from January. With all the rumours that surround Brexit there's plenty of room for different interpretation.

Indeed. It was recently pointed out that since the government has made no preparations for a hard Brexit, Hard Brexit is in fact impossible and no one negotiating should even consider it as a possibility.

I think we may actually be at a point where the markets will prefer a planned, hard Brexit.

No, we are at the point where markets have prepared for a hard unplanned Brexit. The BofE confirmed that banks will be starting to implement their move to the EU in the new year. The car industry will presumably allow current models to run their full life cycle and palce new ones elsewhere. Bombardier will presumably be looking for a new location where the government is capable of protecting them from the US.

I think we are on the brink of a coherent way forward.

You may be right. May seems to be paving the way for the Uk to cancel Brexit altogether. Thats why the hard leave people are jumping up and down trying to mess things up, because they know what is happening.

 

[southeastone]

Bombardier will presumably be looking for a new location where the government is capable of protecting them from the US.

.

Where might that be, it's a Canadian company with part building in Europe (UK), seems the EU can't stop it

 

[dandelion]

I saw an interesting spin on May's slogan that 'no deal is better than a bad dea'l. The argument went that having persuaded the nation that she is serious about her slogan, when she does finally make a dea, whatever it is, l it must mean that it is a good deal... otherwise she would not have made it.

So when she finally comes forward and announces the uk is withdrawing its notice to leave the EU (as government lawyers have advised can be done), everyone will agree this must be a good deal, otherwise she would not have made it.

 

[dandelion]

Latest yougov polling, 47% wrong to leave the EU, 42% right to leave the EU. trend towards remain modest but continuing. The figures started off pretty much the opposite way round when they began asking the question august 2016. https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.n... Trackers - EU Tracker Questions_W.pdf#page=2

 

[Jason]

Latest yougov polling, 47% wrong to leave the EU, 42% right to leave the EU. trend towards remain modest but continuing. The figures started off pretty much the opposite way round when they began asking the question august 2016. https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/uzdpdwbul2/YG Trackers - EU Tracker Questions_W.pdf#page=2

As with your RaboBank comment on another thread, I think you are either quoting bad research or misunderstanding the research. It doesn't mean what you are saying it means.