Labour have made a promise to block all new oil and gas projects in the North Sea (source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/labour-confirms-plans-to-block-all-new-north-sea-oil-and-gas-projects/).
Significant parts of the press, other parties, and some Labour politicians have strongly opposed this plan and there is speculation that Starmer might change his mind.
This market resolves YES if, at the time the next election happens, this promise is "live" in the sense that it has been made and not scrapped. For example, if they put it in their manifesto and don't explicitly drop it before the election, market resolves YES.
If they attempt a sort of shadow U-turn, and simply not mention the policy again between now and the election (and not publish it in their manifesto) this market resolves NO.
If they drop the promise, then pick it up again, resovles YES. In other words, this market won't resolve early as soon as they drop it; I'll wait for the election. I'm expecting that the manifesto will be the main source of evidence in resolving this - the burden of proof will be on anybody saying that what's in the manifesto doesn't represent Labour's promises at the time of the eleciton.
Any questions, please ask.
How will this resolve if there is a manifesto commitment to block all new north sea oil and gas projects but the teeth are taken out of it, either in the manifesto itself or by them arguing publicly that what they meant was any proposals that are already underway at the time of the election will not be blocked, only "new" oil and gas projects will be auto-blocked, or some other wordy trickery? Are you going to factor in the spirit of the commitment, or are you literally just looking for the phrase "all new north sea oil and gas exploration will be blocked" in the manifesto, and anything else is irrelevant?
@CanlumNodel I suppose the main question here is what the definition of "new" is. I don't know a huge amount about the details of getting permission to start drilling in new locations. I assume it would be reasonable to have some level of "well ok you haven't literally started drilling, but you've got all the contracts in place so we're not going to force you to scrap all that".
I think this market will be pretty much impossible for me to resolve if I don't just go with the wording in the manifesto, because it seems like there's a huge amount of grey area in implementation. Maybe it would be good to have another market for "if Labour promises to stop all new oil and gas exploration, will [insert third-party organisation here] claim that the details of the implementation are very watered down?" or something.
If you can think of a good way to operationalise "wordy trickery" feel free to make a market for it!