Sunday, September 4, 2022

The surprise challenge for Truss on day one: delivering the REAL result of the 2016 Brexit referendum and getting Britain back in the EU

Over the last 36 hours, Team Truss have fundamentally changed our understanding of how constitutional referendums work.  Gone is the outdated concept of "the winner is the side which wins the most votes".  It turns out that instead the proponents of the status quo needn't turn out to vote at all, unless they just happen to fancy a stroll.  If you don't vote, you've in fact voted against change.  Might be news to you, but that's what you've done.

So far, most of the commentary on this startling new rule has focused on the potential impact on any Scottish independence referendum next year.  But in reality, a much more immediate concern is the fact that the result of the 2016 EU referendum has just been automatically reversed.  Here is the new result...

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?  (23rd June 2016)

Remain / Abstain: 62.5%
Leave: 37.5%

So, contrary to our previous erroneous belief, the UK in fact voted by a landslide margin to remain a member of the EU in 2016, and all the tortuous negotiations over withdrawal arrangements since then have just been a very, very silly misunderstanding.  Doh! Doubtless Liz Truss will waste little time in correcting the error and implementing the real result, although it's going to be a bit awkward for her given that a) she'll need Macron's permission to rejoin the EU and she's just insulted him, and b) many of her supporters have been labouring under the misapprehension that her "I accepted the result" comment referred to the previous false assumption that Leave had somehow "won".  But it's just got to be done - people have got to be given what they voted for, even if they didn't actually know they voted, and even if they didn't know how they voted.

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Tomorrow afternoon, unless all the polls, bookies and pundits are completely wrong, Liz Truss will be declared the new leader of the Conservative party.  On Tuesday, much to the horror of the absurd Nicholas Witchell, she will have to travel to Scotland - bloody SCOTLAND - to be appointed Prime Minister by the Queen.

This is obviously a completely ludicrous situation.  We're talking about an individual who is hopelessly unsuited to high office, let alone the highest office in the land.  But if we can bring ourselves to temporarily take this development seriously, there are two interesting implications.  There's been very minimal mention of the fact that Truss will be Britain's third female Prime Minister, which in itself is a psychological breakthrough, because it means that having a woman in the role has been comprehensively normalised and is now deemed barely worthy of comment.  I'm just about old enough to remember Mrs Thatcher bequeathing an all-male Cabinet to John Major, which made the first female PM look like a freakish historical aberration that was very unlikely to be repeated in our lifetimes.  For many years afterwards, when discussion turned to who might be the next leader of the two largest parties, women barely featured as possibilities, or if they did feature it always seemed like a bit of a long shot.  So we've come a long way in a very short space of time.  It must be hoped that from now on parties will always just choose the best leader available, rather than worrying about whether it "should be a woman this time" - although in Labour's case that's extremely unlikely.  They're going to be incredibly embarrassed about the Tories producing three female PMs before Labour have even managed to produce one.

Secondly, it does appear very likely that Truss will be an extremely unpopular leader, both in Scotland and south of the border.  That's obviously good for keeping support for independence high, but it could also lead to complications if the SNP end up using the next Westminster election as a de facto plebiscite.  If Labour appear on the brink of deposing Truss, could some independence supporters have their heads turned by Starmer?

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We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

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9 comments:

  1. Exactly. I’m convinced that Truss doesn’t stand a chance of winning a general election — and if most people feel the same way, then Labour is likely to win over some soft Yes voters. From a pro-independence standpoint, I think that Truss winning the Tory leadership contest is a bad outcome. I hope I’m wrong.

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  2. It feels like there isn't a good outcome for independence available at present because we lack momentum. We lack momentum because of the lame, uninspiring leadership of the SNP elite.
    Compare the present lassitude with the popular optimism of 2013/4 and the contrast is obvious. The activist spirit of our cause has been outflanked, for now, by careerist managerialism.
    Challenging struggles are never won by the 'suits' - we need to get our own house in order if we want to go anywhere meaningful.

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    1. There is some truth in that for sure, but on top of that is the almost complete media blackout. In the run up to 2014 it was all seen as a novelty and something of interest, and there was a level of complacency on the establishment side. The result was closer than was comfortable for them however, and this time round they appear to be starving us of the oxygen of the mainstream media.

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  3. And she was elected PM with less than 50% of party members

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    1. That could prove a very useful nugget if she tries to put a threshold of 50% of all voters into indyRef2…

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  4. What is Scotland going to do about it? More immediately, what are Scotland's politicians going to do? Apart from gamflin their gams as per usual.

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  5. Usually people are delighted when a woman takes on a role in political office normally associated with men but it seems in the case of the Tory party in particular that the women they choose to represent them are in fact spectacular failures both in office and as human beings, that says a great deal about the calibre of the rest of the Tory party that they think this is the best they can do
    I suspect though that the Tories are so merciless with each other that once again they have chosen someone who is an imbecile puppet for the real leaders of the Tories to manipulate to their will and the eventual demise of the puppet to be replaced with another, or indeed the blonde haired muppet version languishing in the wings till his turn comes round again

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  6. When Sturgeon reaches her 10 year anniversary as FM in 2024 and Scotland is not independent will she give all her supporters some carrot cake to celebrate. After all they deserve a special treat for being such gullible fools.

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