Chequers proposal is made on 18 April 2017

[catking]

At the height of her own power and popularity in the Tory Party, the Prime Minster outlined what we now know as the Chequers proposal on 18th April 2017 outside of Downing Street and then finished her speech by saying that she was calling an election to get a mandate for her to take the proposal to Brussels.

How different do we think the subsequent election and following 14 months would have gone?

[hedgehog]

Jul 12, 2018 13:35:04 GMT catking said:

At the height of her own power and popularity in the Tory Party, the Prime Minster outlined what we now know as the Chequers proposal on 18th April 2017 outside of Downing Street and then finished her speech by saying that she was calling an election to get a mandate for her to take the proposal to Brussels.

How different do we think the subsequent election and following 14 months would have gone?

Assuming the election was called within a tight time frame, I would expect the Conservatives to have got a clear majority, the Brexiters wouldn't have wanted to rock the boat at the cost of a Corby government and there would be little time to mount a strong UKIP challenge.

[greenchristian]

There's a big question over how the hard Brexit crowd (and their various press organs) react, and how the press as a whole spin the details of the plan. Public reaction to it will be determined almost entirely by how the initial media coverage portrays it.

The election campaign plays out somewhat differently - one major party has committed to specifics on Brexit, and so has to defend that approach (and this plan would need defending against both sides). There will be a significant number of sitting Tory MPs who are not happy with the Brexit plan and who actively distance themselves from both May and the plan. And this happens before May's inability to campaign effectively becomes blatantly obvious. Labour still have the opportunity to fudge their Brexit policy, though not to quite the same extent as in reality.

This can go one of three ways. One is that the Conservatives grudgingly get behind the plan, the media spin the plan as a great approach to Brexit, and May retains her majority (though I don't see it increasing very much). The second is that the press reaction is mixed, and the result comes in pretty close to what happened in reality - with the Remainer demographics swinging behind Labour, the Leave demographics swinging behind the Conservatives, and the Conservatives ultimately falling back a bit. The third option is that the plan is seen as selling out by Brexiteers, there is some very prominent dissent amongst senior Tories, and Labour become the largest party.

In all three scenarios, I think it's a given that the Chequers proposal would get significantly less scrutiny from UK politicians than it has in reality. The announcement doesn't change anything about the EU's negotiating strategy. But the fact that in the event of a Conservative victory we have a coherent starting point at the beginning of the negotiations probably means that the negotiatons go a lot faster.

[Deleted]

Corbyn victory.