Re: Local Election Day

1

Going by that research on the actual opinions of swing voters, it seems to me like an incoherent mishmash of ideas is default among the low-information.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 12:50 PM
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These are a notch more engaged than the usual swing voter, I think. But it is hard for them to have any coherent handle on local issues.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 12:59 PM
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Hey, maybe C is just better than you at spotting felons.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 1:04 PM
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I dunno; he didn't seem able to get a read on me and my friend very well, and we're supposedly in his wheelhouse.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 1:09 PM
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You're probably not felons, though.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 1:11 PM
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One thing we saw in the recent mayoral election here is that when a right-wing candidate tries to appeal to those low-information conservative voters by campaigning on hot-button national issues with little local relevance, it doesn't work.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 1:15 PM
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So I take it C has state and national ambitions?


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 1:24 PM
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2: Right, so my theory is Fox et al have oriented them for national politics, but it's buzzwords and animosities rather than principles, so the default incoherence remains for local politics.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 1:24 PM
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8: I agree with that. In one sense, it's much easier to mold and convince and get traction on a single issue or candidate that would not be Fox-friendly. But it's also depressing that they're so unable to evaluate ideas.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 1:28 PM
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I'm totally not going to read this post as "In Texas, even the liberals are racist assholes."


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 2:29 PM
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Guess what about the rest of the country.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 2:38 PM
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B might also be racist - who knows.

Doesn't the League of Women Voters ask that anymore?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 4:23 PM
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A dominated the early voting returns!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 5:49 PM
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Has the UK election been discussed in another thread here?


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 6:02 PM
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Yes.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 6:04 PM
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Yay, A! This has not been how school board elections work here and has kind of convinced me not to run for school board, but I'm thrilled for her!


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 6:23 PM
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Yay for A! I was looking at your paper's twitter feed, but all they had was info about someone named Kyle.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 6:41 PM
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She won by a landslide. B came in second and got the other spot.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 11:00 PM
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Congratulations!


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 11:04 PM
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Congratulations!


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 05- 9-15 11:04 PM
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Has the UK election been discussed in another thread here?

Briefly, in the Thursday puzzler thread. But any discussion only really consisted of "fucking hell, this is bloody depressing" "yes, it is". No one seems to have got much further than that yet.

This is the MP for the other side of my town. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/10/rob-wilson-tory-homelessness_n_7252214.html?1431280808 Really fucking depressing.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 05-10-15 4:33 PM
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I've been reading a lot of stuff that's basically "ha ha Cameron you're secretly the one who's fucked now because you have to govern from a narrow majority and are facing all kinds of backbenchers and problems." And, also, "many of our Conservatives are pretty reasonable." Don't take this seriously, because everything I know about the contemporary UK comes from Top Gear (now cancelled) and blog commenters, but that sounds totally like wishful thinking to me and I'd bet heavily in the other direction. "Cameron's the one who's secretly screwed now" discounts the fact that conservatives these days are fucking crazy. Especially on a Parliamentary system, why not just use power to fuck everything up as much as possible and then hope that the economy's improved enough in a few years so that you squeak out OK? I mean, they literally just did that and it worked so why not expect more of the same but worse.


Posted by: TRO | Link to this comment | 05-10-15 7:35 PM
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Sounds like wishful thinking to me too. If more people have voted them back in after the last five years, then they're going to feel they have a mandate to do anything they fancy.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 05-10-15 11:19 PM
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The "Cameron is screwed" idea really comes from the difficulties he'll have dealing with nationalism. He has almost certainly launched us on an escape trajectory from the EU, with the promise of a referendum. There is no way in hell the other countries are going to give us what would be needed to satisfy the anti-EU people. It looked to an earlier generation of Tories that they could finesse the whole political union thing by simply making the EU into a giant free trade area without any political union. But it turns out that free trade, and with it the free movement of labour, is what makes the EU so unpopular (see UKIP). If you want to get rid of the Polish plumber, you have to leave the EU. And I think that after fifty years in which "Brussels" has become the synecdoche of all Britain's loss of power and influence in the world, that is what is going to happen. Of course, once it does, we will then discover what it is like to be totally without power and influence. Cameron does not in fact want this to happen. But he has painted himself into a corner where it will, because his party is crazy.

And if that happens, the Scots are not going to be too happy, or so everyone assumes.

Screwing the poor, destroying the justice system, etc -- all that he can and will manage, and it won't cause him any problems. But the foreign policy thing does give us reason to feel a little sorry for him.

On the other hand, where's the fucking opposition?


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 12:40 AM
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I've been reading a lot of stuff that's basically "ha ha Cameron you're secretly the one who's fucked now because you have to govern from a narrow majority and are facing all kinds of backbenchers and problems."

He has a smaller majority than before the election - the coalition had 363 seats and the Conservatives now have only 331. He also has an incredibly incompetent whipping operation - look at the mess they made of the Syrian vote. And the big issues in the next couple of years are going to be constitutional change and Europe, two issues on which the Conservatives have historically been very fractious indeed.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 1:50 AM
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Poor people, and people who aren't part of the Tories core 'rural and suburban wankers' base, are fucked, though, no matter what happens.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 2:31 AM
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The UK leaving the EU would be a fucking disaster on a million levels, but it's also pretty fucking personal for me, too.

I remain quite proud of myself for not calling half the people I know on Facebook 'cunts' and telling them I'm going to punch them in the fucking mouth next time I see them, though.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 2:32 AM
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And possible by-election losses to take into account, remember. A majority of 11 after two or three bad by-elections can start to look pretty shaky. Fortunately for Cameron UKIP look like a busted flush which means he's probably safe from anymore defections that way.

And it also means that you have to keep almost all your MPs in Westminster all the time, which is hard work to keep up for five years, on a purely administrative level.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 2:33 AM
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27.2 needs a Like button.

I'm glad to get to see a more substantial discussion. I don't have anything to add, but I appreciate the insights you bring.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 3:15 AM
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It looks like Cameron just alienated the first of those 5 MPs he has to lose before he loses his majority: https://twitter.com/DesmondSwayne/status/597697961737453568


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 3:58 AM
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Swayne is an interesting guy; I think the only MP who voted for war with Iraq who went and fought there.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 3:59 AM
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A few people mentioned it on the 'Thursday' thread, but I think the role of the media needs to be pointed at, too. The Tories basically get a complete pass on straight up lying to the electorate, where the 'we've cut the deficit' thing, which is a bald-faced and deliberate untruth, essentially gets repeated unquestioningly by most of the press.

Everyone knows, and has know for years, that most of the UK press leans Tory. But I don't remember a time when it was _quite_ as bad as it is now, on a basic factual level.

When you've got that, it looks like the swing to Labour needs to more than marginal of error stuff, it needs to be clear and obvious well in advance of the election, in order for the effect of that press bias not to be pretty decisive in the end, and in order for the less blatantly Tory press to be prepared to point out basic facts.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:02 AM
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Also, the poisonous New Labour arseholes doing the rounds in the press at the moment with 'We told you we was right' is fucking sickening.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:03 AM
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I've just learned Desmond Swayne once called one of his colleagues a "mincehead Mr Angry" in an e-mail to the prime minister: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Swayne

It's a pity most of his politics are as horrible as you'd expect: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10580/desmond_swayne/new_forest_west/votes


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:05 AM
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The utter shameless absurdity of all the Blairites going on about you have to Move To The Centre like it's some kind of mantra. Move To The Centre (Blair Blair Blair) Move To The Centre (Aspirational Aspirational Aspirational). I would say cargo cult but that's a slur on sophisticated attempts to come to terms with technological modernity in the post-colonial context.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:10 AM
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For Britain to leave the EU would be absolutely disastrous, as ttaM says. The only person who would benefit would be Vladimir Putin. (For those who were not aware of it, Nigel Farage's principal source of income is from Russia Today, so he is effectively a Russian agent. However, low level anti-EU sentiment is widespread in England even without him stirring it.)

We have to deal with the reality that the Tories will probably last at least five years even if they do lose by-elections, very likely more because it appears that the Labour Party is embarking on another of its periodic exercises in internecine warfare which will distract it from the business of opposition, the Lib Dems are an ex-party and the SNP have already won all the seats they can. They will also implement a constituency redistribution that the LDs prevented in the last parliament. This will of course favour them.

There will be some spectacular barbarisms, such as repealing the Human Rights Act, but this may be less important than it appears in practice, since most of its content will remain in force in common law or other statutes. I think Cameron is using this as a comparatively easy sop to the anti-Europeans in his party, hoping to persuade them that it and whatever window dressing he can cook up with the rest of the EU in negotiation represents a genuinely new relationship. Cameron really doesn't want to leave, nor does Osborne.

Poor people can get ready to be stomped hard. The unspeakable Duncan-Smith is tasked with cutting £12bn from the welfare budget. As people have pointed out, the bulk of the welfare budget is spend on the elderly, which is a demographic thing not of their making, and the Tories will want to avoid cutting services to the elderly as far as possible, because they are seen to be inclined to vote for them. So everybody else will be kicked to the kerb in an orgy of blaming and shaming which will make the last five years look like socialist revolution.

It's noticeable that Cameron hasn't filled his cabinet with the just far right - the new Environment Secretary has a tentative endorsement from Greenpeace. Mostly, he's making as little change as possible, and where he has promoted Tories to fill LD positions, they come from every wing of the party. He thinks he's looking at the very long run. Unfortunately, he's probably right.


Posted by: Burgal Hidage | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:13 AM
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(For those who were not aware of it, Nigel Farage's principal source of income is from Russia Today, so he is effectively a Russian agent

I didn't know that but it doesn't surprise me - Putin's main effort has been to bankroll the anti-EU right wing in various countries (such as France, Czech Rep etc) and I was wondering when the news of his link with Farage would break. Farge appears on RT a lot but I didn't know he got paid by them.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:35 AM
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If Britain leaves the EU, would it still be a party to TTIP?


Posted by: Burgal Hidage | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:41 AM
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Who knows.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 4:52 AM
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Probably not, as it's a US-EU deal.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 5:10 AM
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I'd expect the Tories would sign up, though.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 5:56 AM
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Oh. if Farage is also paid by RT that would explain why George Galloway tweeted that the Thanet result had been fixed!


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 6:09 AM
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Something to be said for new government: absence of Eric Pickles.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 6:11 AM
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I'm currently lobbying one of my parents to claim Irish nationality, so that I can do so in turn and stay in the metrically-measured, neither-abnormally-curved-nor-abnormally-straight bosom of the EU.

This election represents a resounding victory of my gut over opinion polls, and my gut is pessimistic about the chances of the UK staying in Europe. (Although 25 cheered me up a little.) Basically most people who have strong felings about the EU have strongly negative feelings -they're the ones who will be canvassing and voting - plus the press is probably going to be awful as usual, plus there's plenty of stuff that can go wrong with the EU between now and the referendum, e.g. Greece.

Whereas trying to explain that the only result will be to renegotiate all of our treaties at a huge disadvantage and to make travel a complete ballache just doesn't the same appeal as the ancient hymns of "Blame the French" or "Blame the Germans", or the more modern refrains "Blame the Eastern Europeans" or "Blame the bureaucrats".


Posted by: Seeds | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 6:46 AM
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I really enjoyed 35.

33/35 reminded me of something seen on the twitters:

[loses entire of Scotland to an anti-austerity party]
"Guys, I think we were too far to the left."


Posted by: Seeds | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 6:49 AM
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45: Isn't that right, though? Even if they won every seat in Scotland, they still would have lost the election.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 7:14 AM
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36: Rather than its limited domestic effect (being able to send a few more of those nasty migrant criminals back where they came from without those horrid unelected European judges wagging their fingers and saying NO!), won't the real legacy of repealing the Human Rights Act be the damage done to the legitimacy of the European Court of Human Rights as a continent-wide body if Britain withdraws? Given that Russia is the subject of much the greatest number of cases submitted to the court, you can see how that would please Putin (and regimes in other less-democratic countries that are also currently required to implement ECHR decisions).


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 7:43 AM
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Basically most people who have strong felings about the EU have strongly negative feelings

True, but you could have said the same thing, mutatis schmutatis, about the Scottish independence referendum, and look how that turned out. Plus business would hate the idea, and hopefully this is somewhere where the Conservatives' loyalty to their backers might work in a sane direction for a change.

Getting rid of the HRA by itself wouldn't really change much in terms of the legal situation. The HRA basically says "The European Convention on Human Rights, which we signed up to (and in fact helped write) back in 1950, is now also a part of national law. So if you've got a human rights case, you can bring it to a UK court; you don't have to go all the way to the ECHR in Strasbourg." Get rid of it, and it will just mean it'll be more difficult and expensive to bring a case.
Of course, they could then unsign the ECHR, but they aren't going to; they say they're going to introduce a Bill of Rights which will essentially be the HRA but with a different name.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:25 AM
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Rather than its limited domestic effect (being able to send a few more of those nasty migrant criminals back where they came from without those horrid unelected European judges wagging their fingers and saying NO!), won't the real legacy of repealing the Human Rights Act be the damage done to the legitimacy of the European Court of Human Rights as a continent-wide body if Britain withdraws?

Repealing the Human Rights Act in itself won't remove the UK from the jurisdiction of the ECHR. The effect of the HRA is to make the terms of the Convention part of UK statute, so that people don't need to go to the ECHR to have their rights upheld. The ECHR had jurisdiction before the HRA ever existed. Of course, the Tories would also like to get out of the Convention.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:30 AM
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Or what ajay said.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:30 AM
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Assuming that you can figure out what's going to happen by some triangulation of the interests of the particular subsections of the rentier class who vote heavily conservative (which dominate) and populist right-wing crazies*, why isn't what's going to happen something like "Britain (or maybe England) opts out of those parts of the EU that harm business interests, like the Competition Authority, but maintains all the parts that do. Oh and immigrants can still come into work, but they will need a regime where they are constantly under threat of removal." You can say "oh no the rest of the EU would never agree to that," but looking to the German bankers who dominate the rest of the EU, and everyone else who desperately wants to not close off access to finance through London, to ward off your business-friendly pact seems like a total sucker's bet.

*this works well in the US.


Posted by: TRO | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:40 AM
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I've probably misunderstood, then. I thought that as well as introducing a Bill of Rights, the Tories are proposing to make European Court of Human Rights rulings advisory rather than binding on the UK, and threatening to withdraw from the Convention if this veto power is refused. This analysis suggests some of the potential consequences. Are they overstated?

Obviously, the CoE could not accept that the UK would make the ECtHR an advisory body to the UK parliament as this would openly conflict with Art. 46 (1) ECHR. The same goes for the refusal of a binding nature of ECtHR decisions over UK Supreme Court decisions. The idea of withdrawing from the Convention to re-ratify it with the desired reservations would most likely be unacceptable, because this behavior would merely pursue the purpose of circumventing existing ECHR-obligations. Most probably thus, the UK would denounce the Convention (Art. 58 (1) ECHR) or it would be expelled from its CoE membership (Arts. 8, 3 CoE Statute) and would consequently cease to be a party to the ECHR (Art. 58 (3) ECHR).


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:50 AM
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No, but the point is they couldn't achieve that just by repealing the HRA. They have to renegotiate the Convention. Which isn't going to happen, especially not with a membership referendum looming. "What's that Britain, you want to gut one of the signature achievements of the European Union and then fuck off out of it? No thanks, we're good. "


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:54 AM
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You can hardly call it human rights if it doesn't include the right to own a fuckton of guns.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:57 AM
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53: ECHR predates the EU; but it's still important as a part of the general European project.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 8:59 AM
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51: Wouldn't the German bankers be in favor of losing London? The UK leaves, and Frankfurt becomes the EU's financial center.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:04 AM
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They'll save the bankers, but not the British bankers.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:07 AM
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But quite a lot of those German bankers are in London.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:08 AM
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How about you try Polish bankers and German plumbers?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:10 AM
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57 was me.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:11 AM
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56 -- my naive view is that they (by which I mean the German elite) care less about that than the ability to make a fuckton of money and put financial pressure on their domestic minders. This is a naive view!


Posted by: TRO | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:12 AM
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51: Wouldn't the German bankers be in favor of losing London? The UK leaves, and Frankfurt becomes the EU's financial center.

Depending on who exactly you mean by German bankers, not really. Germany as a country got to offload a bunch of financial crisis problems by virtue of the fact that several of their biggest, most screwed, lenders had set up Irish subsidiaries to do their now defunct business in.

And I don't think the Bundesbank, say, wants Frankfurt to become a major centre for derivatives trading (who bails out the CCPs when they fail?)

To the extent that an EU exit makes UK banks less competitive, that's probably a plus for the German banks, but the flipside is that it will be a lot harder for German banks to sell their products to the UK fund management and pension industry, which is enormous. And as ajay says, the investment banking parts of most German banks are mostly in London.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:28 AM
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Taking my turn as Pollyanna, how about an SNP-on-economy party in England that first takes the North and eventually does to Labour what Labour once did to the Liberals?


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:32 AM
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62: But how is any of this affected by the UK pulling out of the EU? TRO's premise is that German bankers are going to force the EU to make concessions just to keep the UK from quitting. If German banks want to keep their derivatives in London, and the UK wants to keep German derivatives in London, then whether or not the UK is in the EU makes no difference.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:35 AM
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That's not my premise exactly -- it's more that the UK conservatives and whoever runs the EU will work together to cut the most elite-friendly possible deal between the UK and Europe, while scrapping those parts that aren't elite-friendly. Whether that deal ends up with the UK inside or outside of the EU doesn't really matter much, but some variant of that deal will get struck and looking to Germany to save the UK from itself seems like a sucker's bet.


Posted by: TRO | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 9:40 AM
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But how is any of this affected by the UK pulling out of the EU? TRO's premise is that German bankers are going to force the EU to make concessions just to keep the UK from quitting. If German banks want to keep their derivatives in London, and the UK wants to keep German derivatives in London, then whether or not the UK is in the EU makes no difference.

No, it really does. Almost all EU financial regulation is set up around institutions either being based in the EU (technically EEA for most rules, but not all) or being passported into the EU as a whole by a member state. If the UK leaves the EU/EEA, then everyone passported into the EU by the UK (an awful lot of firms) will no longer be able to access the single market. Similarly if a regulation like EMIR or MiFID requires an EU/EEA counterparty, a London based firm can no longer do that.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 05-11-15 10:15 AM
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