Final thoughts on Thursdays voting?

Please?

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If Pooh had owt abart him he would've told him where to go.

 

Only politicians ( of all sides) can paint defeat as victory.

Young people can be inspired and inspiring.

Theresa May is not particularly good a being a politician despite holding important positions. Ambition over ability.


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Which ever way you vote/think and what ever happens in the future. You'll have a least 50% of the country that thinks opposite... left, right, in's or outs.. should get used it, been like a long while

Whoever wants divide and rule is the winner.

 

https://twitter.com/reclaimthenews/status/873496441188216833

He speaks well


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I couldn't wait to see the headline in today's Daily Mail it reads

TORIES TURN ON THERESA

Reshuffle mayhem - Tory MP's want her out in months- And they insist she dump her advisors NOW.

Absolute quality after weeks of slagging off Labour and Jeremy Corbyn.

Her position is now very fragile. If she doesn't toe the party line she's toast.

I'm absolutely loving it. It's better than listening to Wednesday fans bleating on Radio Sheffield
when they lose in the play offs.

 

Pretty angry actually.

a. Angry with May for calling an election that was unnecessary, for the wrong reasons.

b. Angry with the strategists who thought it was a good idea to run the campaign on a presidential basis, painting it only as a choice between May and Corbyn because they thought that the personal ratings of each would make it a shoe in. None of the rest of the prominent Tory front bench were visible at all and it was clearly a deliberate policy. In the event, when the ratings started closing because Corbyn ran a much better campaign than they thought whilst May didn't even think it necessary to debate and came across badly, they had no answer.

c. Angry that the above policy meant that the front foot was ceded to Labour. They ran a much better campaign than the Tories but the Tories let them. Labour got the media presence spot on, getting Corbyn to whoop in front of adoring crowds to make people think he was a leader, and it was a brilliant strategy and worked very well. In the meantime, while he was throwing around the promise of free money to everyone nobody was available to debate whether these policies were actually in people's interests.

d. Angry that May didn't even think it necessary to debate. Everyone knows that the debates are horrible clusterfcuk experiences where 7 people just shout at each other. Everyone knows that nobody gets anything out of it. But all that will be remembered is that she wasn't there.

What we are left with?

Well a complete bloody mess. We now have a government propped up by the DUP, which is going to put the peace process in a lot of trouble. We are going into the EU negotiations now in 1 weeks' time with the government in the worst possible mess and we are likely to be done over like a kipper.

I have thought about it a lot and just can't decide what my predictions are as to what happens next. Initially I would have thought that May would immediately resign, and reports today suggest she was going to but had to be talked out of it. I can understand why, because it would have left a complete vacuum of power. Labour would have tried to fill it but just don't have the numbers and we would be back in the polls within weeks. But it is clear that she is a dead (wo)man walking. It is just a question of timing. And the timing is what I can't work out. I cannot begin to envisage how long the government will actually last before it falls apart, which is going to make replacing May a matter of some urgency. The tories cannot go back to the polls with May as leader and will want to see evidence that her replacement is polling OK before doing so. But in the meantime, we will have a government that is complete ineffective and so in many ways they will want to do it as soon as possible. Brexit is going to get in the way of any plans because you would think it difficult to go back to the electorate in the middle of it all. But Brexit, to my mind, is dead now. And they will need to take into account the fact that people are sick of elections now.

It is just a complete bloody mess and was all so avoidable.

My best guess, but I could be miles out, is:

a. They will get the Queen's speech through. Brexit talks will start
b. In the meantime, manoeuvres will already be taking place to replace May
c. She could be gone within weeks, as soon as the government is in place and operational.
d. And we could be back in the polls by October.

Alternatively, she could now hang on through the Brexit talks. It depends on whether the government holds out.

Christ, I need to lie down. What a shambles.

The one thing that is clear to me though, which gives me some solace, is that despite Labour running a campaign that was far better organised than than the Tories, despite Corbyn doing much better than many people expected during the campaign and proving to be a very good campaigner, despite the free money for all promises, and despite the tories running such an abject miserable campaign that will go down as the worst election campaign in living memory, Labour's gain in popularity amounted to just 29 seats and they still finished nearly 70 seats short of an overall majority. And everybody is treating that as a victory. That to me proves that this is not a socialist country and never will be. It has been said many times, but the only way that Labour will actually win power is from the centre ground.

The other thing I find very funny actually is the thought that Nicola Sturgeon's pressing too hard for indyref2 has actually ignited an upsurge of unionist voting in Scotland withe result that the tories took 14 seats. Those 14 seats are what makes the maths work in conjunction with the DUP. Without them, we would be looking at the maths only working for a Corbyn led coalition. Therefore, it could be argued that Sturgeon is directly responsible for the tories still being in power. I find that to be a delicious irony.

 

Ah but. Now many people will be shocked at the Tories antics and shacking up with the DUP. I think this makes it more likely that people will vote swap again now at the next election and I personally think the Scottish seats they have just won might now flip to labour/snp again.

Theresa's only got one person to blame. Herself. She should have learned from Cameron's mistake with the Brexit referendum.

She should resign not wait to be pushed.


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There is also the fact that nearly 60% of the country voted for centre left policies and find themselves governed by hard right politicians. The electoral system in this country is buggered. A new era of tactical voting and alliances awaits. The influence of the right and dog whistle politics may be drawing to a close.

https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/873173712039759872


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A lot of what you say DSL is plausible. The only thing I would question is your use of the word " Government".
If May sits down at the start of the EU Brexit talks and opens with " my Governments position is etc etc"
Junker and Co would be quite right in saying "excuse me Prime Minister you don't have a government" and what's more they
are spot on.

Her conceit and that of those around her have taken us to the cusp of a political crisis.
However for me one good thing that has emerged from this whole sorry mess is that it's confirmed what I probably knew all along , you can't pillock the British electorate.!

 

The centre ground is a myth. I spoke to plenty of people. They WANTED these policies.

As for your assertions about free money ...

 

I'm not so sure about that, for a few reasons.

The first is, of course, that people under 35 believed in and supported Corbyn's policies, which bodes well for future elections (from my perspective - obviously not from yours). Tories will say that people get more right wing as they get older, which might be true to an extent, but part of the reason for this is that traditionally middle age has brought along things like home ownership, the promise of a pension and career stability - all things that my generation and the one after me won't necessarily get. Without these sorts of things I don't see that there's any particular advantage in voting conservative, so I'm not sure they'll be able to rely anywhere near as strongly on people of my age to blindly vote for them once we get to our 40s and 50s.

Secondly, I was reading an interesting article about Labour's strategy in this election. The people running their campaign were basically preparing for a loss, and a big one. The main fear was that the conservatives would take away a lot of their more marginal seats, and possibly even a few big ones. To avoid this happening almost all of the party's resources were put into seats in which they already had quite comfortable majorities - it was basically a 'damage control' campaign.

And it worked, to an extent - Labour MPs all over the country were returned to power, often with hugely increased majorities. But the corollary of this is that absolutely no resources were directed towards seats which, with hindsight, now appear very winnable - Hastings & Rye, Broxbourne etc. In the next election they'll be a lot more confident of keeping their big seats in the cities and across the north, which will allow them to really gun at some tory seats in a way that they didn't last time around.

Finally, it's so easy to forget the degree to which Corbyn was up against not only the conservatives, but also much of his own side. Pretty much all of the well-known Labour MPs who appeal to people in 'the centre' have refused to serve on his front bench, and have quite often been actively sniping from the sidelines. If everybody can grow up a bit, and we see the likes of Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umuna returning to front line politics (not necessarily on the front bench, but at least gracing the media with their presence once in a while), Labour could have a real chance to appeal a bit more widely and win far more seats on the sorts of policies that they put forward in this election - moderate social democratic ones, despite what the press would have you believe.

 

I don't doubt it mate. The polls clearly showed that to be the case. They have done a good job in enthusing young people to vote and why wouldn't they when being bribed with saving 30k. I would vote for that as well if I were 18 and going to university and would be quite happy in the knowledge that I had taken a bribe.

The point is though, plenty more people would do anything to avoid voting for such policies. Labour will only win when they can entice not just voters who didn't vote before, but entice voters who always vote, perhaps see themselves as being centrist, or even borderline right of centre but capable of liking the policies of either party. The centre ground. It is about getting people who normally vote tory to switch sides. People who normally vote tory would never vote, for example, to repeal union law and force collective bargaining. They simply cannot win a majority from that far left. There are not enough people in the country prepared to vote for it.

Don't take my word for it. Alistair Campbell would tell you the same. And for all his faults, and bloody hell there are a lot of them, he knew how to win an election.

 

Amazing that the magic money tree can be found to bomb countries or bail out bankers or give MPs 11 percent pay rises.

I'd say Blairism is pretty dead (at least for now).


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Don't disagree with any of that being plausable. Its so hard to judge and if there is another election this year I think anything could happen.

There are already so many variables that we don't yet know the answer to that could affect the outcome, including those you mention but also:

Who is the next leader and what are people's perceptions of them.

How is brexit going

How much of a mess is the government alliance with the DUP.

Also, you have to bear in mind that surely the tories can't possibly deliver a campaign as bad as this one next time. Next time, they will make sure they are ready. Because if they aren't they will deserve to lose power.

 

I think this was possibly the best possible result for Labour, but probably not long-term for the country. As much as I loved the Labour policies and wanted them to win the election, I think the spectre of Brexit casts a long shadow and could easily derail any progress they made. If/When jobs start to be lost then it is just an easy stick to beat them with and could put them out of office for a generation. Brexit is the result of a Tory gamble, just as their current impotence is, and they should be the ones to be tarred with that brush.

The Tories are now basically hamstrung and have lost all power unless they whip all their MPs for every vote. With a majority that small, it just takes a couple of rebels to lose any vote. Would Ken Clark or Anna Soubry (and others) support hard Brexit, or the Rees-Mogg and Gove support the softest Brexit? They could struggle to get the Queens Speech and the budget through, never mind anything that is more contentious. She could even face no-confidence votes every week until enough of the MPs are fed up with her and that doesn't even deal with the potential for a revolt within her own party - which requires a lot fewer MPs to pass.

Basically, the Tories are stuck with the DUP - and many of their manifesto commitments were opposed to those of their partners until the government collapses and now the press are against her, it could all just collapse very quickly.

Brexit is much more likely to be even worse than it was before as the EU know she has less of a mandate and is barely clinging on to power. She could not have made things worse for the country if she had walked into the room, dropped her designer leather trousers and taken a big dump on Michael Barniers chair.

 

No, the best result for labour would have been to win. The problem is that they were too **** to beat ****.

 

If nothing else, this election has succeeded in uniting the Labour Party.

 

Wizard

 

I would agree. Corbyn is going nowhere for the forseeable.

Doesn't mean they will win an election though.