UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[ObserverIE]

I know whenever we have these over-confident snap elections in Canada, the governing party gets turfed. See Ontario 1990 and Alberta 2015.

The relevant British example is February 1974. Labour was in a mess then as well. But the Leadership was more credible.

Brenda From Bristol 4 Leader ASAP

[ObserverIE]

Also decided to plug in the numbers for NI just for fun on a similar calculator. Using the numbers from their 2017 regional election:

DUP 10 (+2)
Sinn Fein 5 (+1)
UUP 0 (-2)
SDLP 2 (-1)
Alliance 0

Hermon will hold on easily in North Down, so you can move DUP down to 9 immediately. Enough Alliance, SF and Green Assembly voters will probably hold their nose to keep Alasdair McDonnell in in South Belfast, which would represent a shift of another seat from DUP to SDLP. I suspect both UUPers will be goosed - Elliott if there's an increased nationalist turnout in FST and Kinahan in South Antrim now that Boxcar Willie is no longer the DUP candidate.

The other marginals will be North Belfast - again assuming an increased nationalist vote - and possibly East Belfast.

DUP 7/9 SF 5/6 SDLP 3 Lady Sylvia 1 Alliance 0/1

Of course, it buggers up the talks on trying to get Stormont going again, but did anyone imagine that the Tory Party gave an actual f*** about that?

[ObserverIE]

Seems like the mail will play a subtle understated role this campaign:

EnglishPete just ejaculated.

Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Eine Führerin (or at least a Cumhurbaşkanı).

Rumours going round that the Tories will put a ban on an IndyRef2 into their manifesto.

[ObserverIE]

Survation for Stop Brexit Alliance (SBA)/Kensington Constituency Poll (25-27 Apr)
Poll 1
Con - 46% (-6)
Lab - 29% (-2)
Lib - 17% (+11)
Grn - 7% (+2)
UKIP - 1% (-4)
3% swing from Con to Lab

Poll 2
Con - 32% (-20)
SBA - 28% (+28)
Lab - 23% (-8)
Lib - 9% (+3)
Grn - 5% (N/C)
UKIP - 2% (-3)
24% swing from Con to SBA

Is this a new political party?

They must be; can't find anything out about them. I would imagine that the Lib Dems would stand aside for them if they're that close to the Conservatives. They may potentially stand in other seats that voted remain overwhelmingly that the Conservatives hold as well. Could make it interesting.

I think it's organised by John Stevens, a former Conservative MEP. I'll defer to Hifly who knows the area best of all, but my understanding is that the local Tory MP (Victoria Borwick) is a hard-line Brexiter, whereas in other similar constituencies the MP was either a remainer (Battersea, Chelsea/Fulham, Cities of London/Westminster, Putney, Wimbledon) or is vulnerable to the Lib Dems (Kingston/Surbiton, Richmond Park) or both (Twickenham).