UK General Discussion: 2019 and onwards, The End of May

[parochial boy]

Tbf, I can't even begin to imagine what the Conservatives look like going into any election campaign - who leads? how do they even find a leader who doesn't utterly alienate half the party?

The polls could fly off in any direction within days of one being called

Labour may have its issues, but it seems like a beacon of stability compared to the Tories

[parochial boy]

Notwithsatnding the inevitable controversy-  is it not actually pretty unambiguously The Law that you can't just bring back the same bill in the same sitting multiple times?

[parochial boy]

If it is true that the ouctome of said meeting was that May refused to consider any alternatives to her deal then it looks like it is either No Deal or somehow May gets forced out in the next week...

[parochial boy]

If it is true that the ouctome of said meeting was that May refused to consider any alternatives to her deal then it looks like it is either No Deal or somehow May gets forced out in the next week...

Why would May being forced out have any real meaning?  That does not change the 3/29 deadline and the EU position that the deal has to be passed by 3/29 for an extension to be granted.  The EU is saying nothing about an extension if May is kicked out, or not that I am aware.

Principally, I think because with May in charge it is either her deal or No Deal, which means No Deal. So, regardless of the likelihood, May no longer being PM is a necessary condition for the chain of events that would lead to any outcome that isn't No Deal.

Think of it this way, the EU have said "either you pass the deal or there is no extension" - that is perfect for the ERG types who now have exactly no incentive to vote for the deal

[parochial boy]

So, kicking down the can and waiting a couple months for the same outcome? I guess this is relief but still there doesn't seem to be a solution for the Brexit mess.

That was my thought. How does this lead to anything except exactly the same situation at the end of April? It just makes the nightmare last that little bit longer.

[parochial boy]

Is it worth mentioning that petition now has over 4 million signatures?

It only takes 100,000 to have a referendum here, and even factoring in population differences...

[parochial boy]

The 7 May date was seemingly dropped when it was pointed out that the following day was VE Day.

What would the point of 7 May have been?

I understand 11 April as last possible date for UK to announce EU elections, and 22 May as last day before EU elections. What happens on 7 May?

8th of May is a public holiday in France. So it would have given them a one day "buffer" to more or less get things in place

[parochial boy]

but the number of Tory die-hards (the name Chope comes to mind) who still won't is also relevant.

Presumably he could be convinced to support it with an amendment legalising rape?

[parochial boy]

Out of curiosity, why does the House of Commons seem to do all its voting so late in the evening?

[parochial boy]

Again, with all due respect, you won't actually have to deal with the consequences in New York State.

I have numerous family members that live in London so that's false.

My sister, father, some of my aunts and uncles, etc live in the UK. They immigrated to the UK decades ago from Jamaica.

I stand corrected. They will be affected, though. Why do you want a No Deal Brexit on 12 April with all the consequences that would entail for their lives?

uhh yes, this is important. I'm a British citizen but thank god i also live abroad and have dual nationailty - but my cousin is British and nothing else, and her mother it Slovenian and nothing else and it's f**king terrifying and f**king hearbraking to see a 6 year old girl panicking becuase she thinks it's about to be illegal to live wither own mother. Like, this isn't a game, and I've spent the last three years getting more emotional than I should about what is going on in a country I am only tenously linked to precisely because some entitled etonian cünt's ideological game is having such a dramatic impact on the lives of people who never asked to be who they were, or where they are from.

[parochial boy]

the literal definition of the word "parasite"

I've been on his trains. Well I say on, I mean kicked off of one of his trains for having the wrong ticket after another one of his trains was cancelled because of snow. In April. It wasn't snowing

[parochial boy]

This tweet is downright sickening. How this person gets to run a presidential campaign is a question that deserves to be accounted for.


https://twitter.com/WaywardWinifred/status/1132790657221824512

What is so sickening about this?

I find it abhorrent that a campaign staffer of a Jewish politician would cheerleading for a international leader whose wants nothing more than to eliminate the Semitics from his country.

Have you got some evidence of Corbyn calling for the elimination of Jews in Britain?

Honestly, the antisemitism clearly needs to be addressed, but creating hysterical fictions like this just makes it so much easier for people to dismiss the issue as partisan smears

[parochial boy]

This might be aa bit rambling, and rehash of what others have said already, but I've got a couple of points.

One is that Labour party is supposed to be about things like addressing inequality, solidarity, internationalism, standing up for people who are vulnerable. As we know that Brexit is an attack on all those things, how can it jusitifiably support it while even staying truw to the values of the left?

The other is that I don't think it is helpful to romanticise the leave vote of the "post-industrual working class". For a start, most of them don't actually care that much; Farage may have romped it in Barnsley or wherever - but factor in turnout and only about a third of the people who even voted leave actually turned out to vote for his party.

But on top of that, the structure of the economy has changed so much. Thanks to the decline of the old working class jobs of people working their whole lives on the same factory floors and devloping sense of solidarity through work; that class has basically already gone - and yet, new forms of poverty and insecurity and inequality exist. All of which broadly means Labour's social relevance in those areas was always going to decline, and they were always going to trend to the right; Brexit or no Brexit.

Like, Labour's success in 2017 was so much based on young people, and, I guess this is important, young people in deprived areas (both the "old coal minimg areas" and in say, extremely deprived part of Enfield in London) who work in call centres, or warehouses or whatever (in many ways, I suspect some of the huge swings towards Labour a lot of deprived, service sector based towns on the South Coast in 2017 might reflect this). And these people either didn't vote in the EU referendum; or voted massively against it; and Labour should still be about representing their interests as well.

As a lot of polling has suggested, Brexit was far more down to Tory voters than Labour ones - even before any subsequent "realignment". And because of the huge age factor, you can't help but notice the fact that many of the people living the most insecure lives would have not voted for Brexit (I vaguely remember Gully Foyle's point that, thanks to the structure of home ownership in the UK, the average Brexit voter was almost certainly wealthier than the average remain one).

So in that respect, if Labour sign up to Brexit what happens? Does it win back a few "traditional" working class, at the expense of younger, equally deprived people? Maybe, but in the long run it makes both groups worse off.

And does it win over the lower-middle class homweowner in Lincolnshire who already voted Tory? Well, no....

[parochial boy]

What's the last time the UK had a poll with someone other than Labour or the Tories in 1st? And if the Lib Dems somehow won and Brexit got 2nd, this would be the first time without Labor and the Tories ahead since literally forever right?

A handful had the lib dems in first after the first debate back in 2010. Incidentally, a couple of those were also YouGov, who, notwithstanding their performance as a pollster, - are definitely very good at marketing

[parochial boy]

As much as anything, the number of, um, unforced errors that Labour manage to make is impressive