UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[parochial boy]

By the sounds of it, Corbyn's campaign strategy will be to studiously ignore Brexit. That'll work

[parochial boy]

Is there any reason to Think that Corbyn would resign his leadership if labour loses badly? He already survived a vote of no confidence and his supporters are more likely to blame new labour for a massive loss than Corbyn himself

I think this too, "convention" doesn't really apply where Corbyn is concerned

[parochial boy]

Farron has rejected a pact with Labour. Which makes sense if Farron's goà is moderate remainets.

[parochial boy]

A spectacularly bad Labour campaign could see if sink to the low 20's in fairness.

Well, given the current leadership, one of those is pretty much a given

[parochial boy]

Blair and his ilk inflicted decades of damage on Labour. Corbyn hasn't had adequate time to rebuild, especially with ongoing corporate sabotage.

The scary thing is that people actually believe this.

The Labour party has moved on from Tony Blair, the country has moved on from Tony Blair. Get over f'cking Tony Blair, he isn't relevant any more.

The reason ex-Labour voters are now voting for the neoliberal, austerity, Brexit Tory party is not becuase of Tony Blair. It is because of Corbyn's ridiculous brand of dogmatic, anti-imperialist "leftism".

It is because Corbyn's utter incompetence and inability to lead his party.

It is because Corbyn has failed to sell any sort of message to the British people.

It is because Corbyn can't find anything to say about the issues that actually matter to people.

It is because he has at no point looked like a remotely credible leader.

But never mind, if he gets crushed, it will because of a man who stepped down 10 years ago; and we will see the Labour party dwindle into irrelevance, like the Liberals did in the 1930s.

With that, Corbyn will have single handedly destroyed any hope of a real left wing case ever being made and ever being given the chance to govern. Hisis incompetence is discrediting all left wing policies in the eyes of the British public; and making left wingers look incompetent, out of touch, irrelevant and clueless

[parochial boy]

Tories now trumpeting the 'Coalition of Chaos' line again. Either their private polling is showing a closer election than the public polling or they are worried about being hurt by low turnout.

Ftr, there was a report a few weeks ago of Tory private polling showing that about 25 seats could be lost to the Lib Dems.

That's, erm, ironic, given the context that this election is happening in.

[parochial boy]

The LibDems have just nominated an unrepentant racist at Bradford East.

Is that the same guy who use to be their MP?

The one and the only.

Sadly, some of his more unpleasant views are probably quite a good fit for that particular constituency

[parochial boy]

I mean the Greens offered us the pact- and as a condition asked for us to stand down a sitting MP in Bristol East (who's name I can't spell off the top of my head) for the green Candidate.

The Greens have very little to gain from a pact beyond keeping their Brighton Seat

Was the Isle of Wight their best performance in a non-Labour held seat? Surely they could benefit from people desperate to get rid of the, er, scandal-prone Andrew Turner.

[parochial boy]

Who exactly is still voting Labour in Scotland?

[parochial boy]

The English Democrats lose their deposits a lot in England, too, though. (Have they ever retained a deposit in a Westminster election?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doncaster_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

In 2010, when they had an ED mayor. I don't know if there are any others

Re-the nationalists outside of their own countries, YouGov had a poll with the SNP at 11% in a hypothetical poll of the whole UK in the run up to 2015 election, at the time of peak Sturgeon.

That said, those sorts of "what if" type questions probably shouldn't be paid the slightest bit of attention as a general rule, although there are parts of the liberal-lefty cities lie Bristol or London where the SNP probably could get over 5%.

[parochial boy]

Well for starters Corbyn and his inner circle's past associations with very unpleasant individuals and extremist/terrorist groups such as the IRA, Hamas and Militant Tendency alone basically guarantees his unpopularity with virtually every swing voter.

To be honest, I think this might not have as much as an impact as all of your points about Corbyn and his leadership team's incompetency.

Not to say that it isn't something that would turn voters against him, but he has been so useless that the Tories haven't even really needed to call attention to it.

[parochial boy]

FT: EU Raises Brexit Bill to 100 Billion Euros.

From Ian Dale "EU says Britain must pay for entire EU budget until 2030"

That would be like 2 trillion Euros. Of course, no-one ever seems to mind the the Tories making sh!t up.

[parochial boy]

I would've favoured a Norway or Switzerland status, im not opposed to EU migration it been for the most part good, but i dont think that will happen, as the government are trying to appeal to UKIP voters.

What part of a Swiss or Norwegian style deal would you say is preferable to full membership exactly?

The EU has been pretty transparent about the conditions for any deal; as you say, it is certain elements of the Conervative party and UKIP who are creating the confusion, as they seem to believe the EU should bend over backwards to give the UK what it wants.

There are pretty obvious reasons for the EU and EU member states to not give the UK the kind of deal that Brits seem to think they deserve.

[parochial boy]

On who would you trust to protect the NHS:
T. May: 42%
J. Corbyn: 39%
(Survation)

What.

It's almost as if Jeremy Corbyn sucks and no one thinks he can do anything right.

yeah, but given that May's actual record on the NHS basically consists of driving it straight into it's biggest crisis ever....

[parochial boy]

On who would you trust to protect the NHS:
T. May: 42%
J. Corbyn: 39%
(Survation)

What.

It's almost as if Jeremy Corbyn sucks and no one thinks he can do anything right.

yeah, but given that May's actual record on the NHS basically consists of driving it straight into it's biggest crisis ever....

The NHS has been in trouble for years and this is not the fault of one specific person or political party. It is badly in need of reform but the NHS is the 'sacred cow' of British politics such that nobody will dare to begin to make the necessary reforms as the other side will weaponise it and  use it as a political football.

The direct experience of friends and family members suggests that it is in a significantly worse state now that it was even 12 months ago (lack of beds, lack of capacity, surgeries being cancelled at record levels)  - as a direct result of mismanagement and spending cuts by the incumbent government (not even Cameron's government).

You can quibble over what is best for the NHS, but May's government have straight out shown that they aren't actually capable of running it as it is.

[parochial boy]

YouGov poll of London, with changes compared to 2015:

Lab 42 (-2)
Con 36 (+2)
Lib Dem 14 (+6)
UKIP - 6 (-2)
Greens - 3 (-2)

The likes of Wes Streeting (Ilford North) would have a fighting chance on these figures.

Do you have crosstabs for that? I couldn't see anything on the YouGov website.

I suspect that Labour will be holding up much better in Inner London than Outer London.

[parochial boy]

Labour manifesto leaked: Jeremy Corbyn pledges to re-nationalise energy industry, railways and Royal Mail in draft document

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-manifesto-leaked-jeremy-corbyn-10396298

While these are all policies I support, it is really symptomatic of what is wrong with Labour at the moment. Outside of a very passionate core, these are absolutely not the kind of policies that really mean much to most people, and if these are the highlights of the manifesto, it pretty much shows how Corbyn is pandering to his own core support rather than talking about the issues that actually matter to most people's lives

[parochial boy]

BBC gets smacked around every cycle, they are always accused of supporting the ruling party

Did they support Labour in 2005, and the Tories in 1992 and 1997

The BBC doesn't support parties; the concern is that is reporting, which is supposed to be neutral, is often perceived as being more favourable to one party or another.

[parochial boy]

Labour manifesto leaked: Jeremy Corbyn pledges to re-nationalise energy industry, railways and Royal Mail in draft document

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-manifesto-leaked-jeremy-corbyn-10396298

While these are all policies I support, it is really symptomatic of what is wrong with Labour at the moment. Outside of a very passionate core, these are absolutely not the kind of policies that really mean much to most people, and if these are the highlights of the manifesto, it pretty much shows how Corbyn is pandering to his own core support rather than talking about the issues that actually matter to most people's lives

In the case of energy I don't see why it wouldn't matter. Gas/electricity is something we need to survive on a daily basis; if Labour can paint it as a practical issue that will better people's lives (as opposed to nationalization for the sake of it) then I don't see the issue. Unfortunately though, we don't have a particularly good messenger as leader.

Incidentally, the Tories have just adopted an Ed Miliband-style policy of energy price freezes, a policy that was, once-upon-a-time, met with howls of 'Red Ed', 'Back to the 1970s', 'Marxism!' etc.

Even a better (lol) leader like Ed didn't have much success with that sort of messaging though - people are always going to think about jobs, wages and things like that before thinking about the best way to specific industries that they don't even work in.

Labour don't have any sort of meaningful message on how they are going to do things like increase wages and control  housing costs. Also, beyond repeating words like "austerity" (which means little in practice to most people) they haven't explained exactly what their alternative to conservative free-market/neoliberal economics is, or why reversing spending cuts would be good for the economy and good for people's livelihoods.

[parochial boy]

Does anyone actually live in Battersea anymore?

As far as I can tell, every one of those luxury flats is some Chinese millionaires cash safety box.

(Basically, it seems way, way too demographically Tory to vote Labour these days)

[parochial boy]

I think the Blairites would use it as an opportunity to take back control of Labour and most Labour members would probably fall for it to be entirely honest. However, going centrist is just as disastrous.

What is holding back Labour is not their left-wing policies, the polls are very clear that the British people support most of them. The problem is messaging. Corbyn especially and the Labour party as a whole is bad at messaging and Corbyn as an individual is holding Labour quite far back.

What Labour needs is not to become the Red Tory, but to have fresh leadership with better messaging that is straight to the point. They should probably move to the right on issues like immigration to appeal to English voters as well as coming out in favour of English devolved parliament. An important factor that will cost Labour this election is the fact that they have failed to pick up much of the collapsing UKIP vote.

If Blairites get back control of Labour, any chance of a far left split, leading to a small party to the left of Labour? (like say, Linke in Germany). I guess they could get an amount of votes similar to the Greens, and maybe be slightly more competitive than them (I guess they could get 1 or 2 seats with the adecuate candidates and enough effort)

Please can people stop using the term "Blairites". They are a complete non-factor these days, not everyone who isn't a Corbynista is a Blairite.

[parochial boy]

I think the major difference that David Milliband might have made compared to Ed is that he would have argued against the Tory "Labour spending created the recession" fiction; whereas Ed just kind of rolled over and let the Tories dictate what "competent" economic management was supposed to be.

[parochial boy]

Does anyone else see a certain parallel with the situation in Scotland in the aftermath of 2014 and the rUK now?

As in, the leave/Yes votes consolidating around the Tories/SNP, and the remain vote exploding between a multiple of parties, the largest of which (Labour in both cases), see confused an ineffectual.

[parochial boy]

Lol, keep digging Jeremy

[parochial boy]

Very selective data picking. I suggest you go read about the three days work week, the social decay of most British cities (captured beautifully in The Special's Ghost Town), the general feeling that things were falling apart, social unrest as unemployed youth turned football terraces into battlefields, NF running amok, and etc.

Situation was so bad that in one point some thought of overthrowing the government and placing Lord Mountbatten at the top

True, but why would any of those things be a reason to vote Tory? It's not like she reversed de-industrialisation, and her legacy was the continued decline and chronic unemployment/insecurity that may parts of the country still endure to this day.

Ghost Town was released under Thatcher by the way

I hate to say it, but the reason older people vote Tory is because they wish it was still the 1950s and Britain still had an empire.

Never underestimate the sheer weight of Little Englanderism among the inhabitants of moderately prosperous towns like Wellingborough.