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Showing posts from May, 2017

Will a vote for Theresa May strengthen her bargaining hand?

As the run-up to the UK's snap general election continues, the Conservative party appear content to talk about one thing and one thing only - strong and stable leadership for Brexit negotiations. Throughout the campaign Theresa May has been particularly keen to claim that 'every vote for me strengthens my hand in the Brexit negotiations'. This claim seems to be going down well with voters. But does it make any sense?           In bargaining theory the disagreement point is of critical importance. In the Brexit negotiations we can think of the disagreement point as the outcome if no deal is done between the UK and the EU and so the UK simply leaves the EU in March 2019 and starts from scratch. Most experts seem to agree that no deal would be bad - very bad for the UK and bad for the EU. That means that a deal is essential. It also means that the UK starts from a bad negotiating position.          To put some analysis to this consider the figure below. This plots the pa