- Thu, 12:20: Bart De Strooper: ‘Bright young scientists won’t come to join us in UK’ https://t.co/uDm2UjhNEp Brexiteers, are you proud?
- Thu, 12:56: The Falklands War revisited https://t.co/HBE9DhfPve Very interesting long review of two recent books about the 1982 conflict.
- Thu, 16:05: We’ll never see a cross-party deal on Brexit: tribalism runs too deep https://t.co/85hSpscalv I agree.
- Thu, 17:11: RT @CER_Grant: Sorry to disappoint, but FRA & GER are not serious about an EU army, whatever the rhetoric of some pols. If you talk to the…
- Thu, 17:45: Favourite quote: from the very first episode, the First Doctor’s “If you could touch the alien sand and hear the cr… https://t.co/mLy4VxNAWZ
- Thu, 17:57: RT @a_maehl: Sounds like a 1990s Street Parade event https://t.co/tQIJ6m7lgY
- Thu, 18:10: Amoras deel 4: Lambik, by Marc Legendre and Charel Cambr� https://t.co/ITRBVy6ckU
- Thu, 20:48: RT @CuriouslyEmily: An esteemed colleague told me he hard-boils eggs in the morning, uses them as pocket warmers, and then has them as a li…
- Thu, 22:29: RT @anthonyzach: On the one hand “LOL” but on the other, how much damage has he caused and how many lives has he ruined? https://t.co/0fi6x…
- Fri, 08:38: RT @marclamonthill: White people are amazing. https://t.co/3bxYjT6zO7
- Fri, 09:18: RT @pmdfoster: Of course this will be used to argue a ‘no deal’ will be ‘fine’. All i can say is “see, the sky didn’t actually fall on our…
- Fri, 09:50: On the left is Stuart McDonald (41), the Scottish National Party MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East… https://t.co/5l9e7pdXlA
- Fri, 10:45: Robert Craig: Could the Government Advise the Queen to Refuse Royal Assent to a Backbench Bill?… https://t.co/hpxuj5gFZo
I’m actually rather expecting a Tory/SNP tacit agreement on what would amount to confidence and supply on two conditions:
– that the Tories hold a majority of English seats in the House of Commons; and
– that the Tories and SNP together hold an absolute majority in the House of Commons.
In which case, what the Tories would actually offer the SNP would be devolution of all taxation powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in return for support on EVEL – interpreted to make all supply measures count as “English laws”. Supply for remaining UK-level expenditure would then be dealt with by what we might call a British Council of Ministers.
I would be surprised if such an arrangement didn’t collapse within a few years – but the SNP would probably not mind if the result then was a “Yes” vote in another Scottish independence referendum, and Cameron would probably expect this to entrench the Tories in power in England for another generation (I doubt that it would in practice, but Cameron seems to be quite good at short-term tactics but almost totally blind to strategic consequences).