UK Pol - #independenceday

[Max]

Theresa May is such a fan of elections that after 2015's General Election and Labour Leadership, 2016's Referendum and Leadership Election for Labour and Tories, she felt like something would be right in 2017, so she's gone for a general election again to spice things up.

Here is where we can discuss the UK's Last Election.

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I see you are one of the people I know with an optimistic view.

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No. it'll be June Bugs instead.

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He's a lovely

person

, but his voting record is hardly liberal...

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Especially as Spain said they wouldn't block it.

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Given that the lib Dems have ruled out coalition with labour, it means voting lib dem is only worthwhile in Tory/Lib Dem marginals. Odd. (Assuming opposition to the tories).

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You're right in so far as Scotland has never made a difference in a general election. But I think in terms of another IndyRef, this election makes it a done deal. Without this GE May can argue that national unity is more important and so it would have to come in the 2020s. Whereas her argument against a Scottish referendum is shot, because she's holding an early election (despite "now not being the time". The SNP therefore have a case for an IndyRef even if they lose some seats.

The SNP would need to absolutely collapse this election for Sturgeon to not be pushing forward.

We discussed this at UK meet. (I think IndyRef2 will end with the same result barring some kind of crisis)

It's my constituencies emergency party meeting tonight. We're a swing seat, we're hoping the lovely man who stood last time will be able to do it all again. My current MP is a vile piece of work and we're hoping to overturn a 100 vote majority, we have word there won't be greens standing this time who got a couple of hundred votes in 2015.

[Max]

Interesting feedback from today. Nearby Blackburn is being treated as an "important seat", currently held on a 4,000 vote margin. Campaigning in such seats implies that Labour thinks it has to fight anything with a margin smaller than that. (N.B.: Blackburn has a history of BNP voting, so maybe there's fear the post-Brexit push might influence things.)

Currently there's a big question mark over whether last elections local candidate will stand again this time (any candidate from 2015 is allowed to stand if they so wish). He's a super great guy, though he is a "centrist" candidate.

Side note: Greater Manchester was already campaigning for the new Manchester Mayor position, and the by-election in Gorton. (Edit: so while we don't know our prospective parliamentary candidate we have been getting the vote out for Andy)

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This has been a very dull election. I sort of wish we had a sex scandal.

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A royal dying would probably be good for the conservatives, unfortunately. But Theresa May weeing on somebody or something would really liven up the campaign.

But it's local elections today. And I need to go and vote.

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friend's comment:

Blatant anti-Corbyn bias from the electorate in today's results.

I will say that their vote barely changed from 4 years ago. Which is a problem. But this is more a ukip collapse election than labour collapse.

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But it's worth mentioning that these are comsitituencies that generally skew conservative. And so there's not as many votes to lose. And the places the votes have been lost are in marginals, where they've been lost substantially.

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In first past the post that is literally how it works. Third parties act as spoilers for other parties. This isn't a revolutionary theory.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-39799138 No 1 part says John Curtice projects CON 38%, LAB 27%. Vs last election where he projected CON 25%, LAB 29% ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22382098 ).

Same guys predictions, but a ukip collapse in between.

[Max]

So basically either we claim that ukip voters have seeped to labour and tories in equal portion as labour voters have seeped away to the tories. Or we say that ukip voters have tended to switch to conservative.

Without any evidence to the contrary, ockhams razor/fewer assumptions seems right. Especially given then similarity between the two party's platform.

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You said you don't buy that labour haven't really lost vote share. I gave you the exact opposite evidence.

Labour is going to lose, you won't have arguments there. But Labour didn't really lose votes vs 4 years ago. Only a 2% loss. Which as I said, was mostly in marginal constituencies, which is bad for labour.

Remember, only 15% of the electorate have heard the strong and stable slogan so far. Despite the fact it has been said about 20 times in every speech she's given. There's still a lot of bouncing around to happen in the people who pay irregular political attention. (Which may be good or bad for basically anyone)

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This has been the craziest week of politics I have ever seen.

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The Manchester bombing suspended campaigning until further notice. The mood is solemn in Bury today, and even though we're about 10 miles north, people of Bury feel Mancunian first and foremost.

People are talking to each other, people are sad, but asides from a quiet sense of inconvenience about Victoria train station closing, (replacement bus services suck) Manchester is getting on with things.

The sense of community in Manchester is often very tangible, and for a city of 2.5m people there's a real sense of pride in the city. (Even if we always complain about how much it sucks, we know it's better than Birmingham and London, so). And on Facebook I talked about the IRA bombing in 1996, Manchester is a real community and we need more than a shitty nailbomb to destroy our faith in how wonderful a place it is to live.

I know plenty of people who were in the city centre at the time, a couple have said that it did bring a close to their night out (in the Printworks, an entertainment complex that used to be home of the Manchester Guardians printing press, situated a five minute walk from the arena). Today, I have heard word that the Manchester Arndale shopping centre was evacuated, but that it was a false alarm. So people are a little on edge.

There's been an arrest in South Manchester, rumour being that there was a controlled explosion and a man marched out at gun point, but these are unconfirmed reports. There's a vigil tonight in the city centre that's going to be led by our new Mayor, Andy Burnham, but I already had plans so won't be attending.

As for the terror attack, it didn't succeed, as Manchester isn't afraid.

But it absolutely breaks my heart that anyone could decide to go and bomb a concert full of young girls. The youngest victim named is only eight.

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Apparently they haven't given the details they usually give to authenticate the attacks (e.g. operational details and the name of the attacker) so UK intelligence doesn't believe them.

IS have claimed responsibilities for attacks that weren't them before, the one in London for example where there has been no corroboration of evidence that they were involved at all.

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Damned millenials obsessed with social media coverage.

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Which btw was reckless of the US to leak against the UK's wishes.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/many- ... ttacks-uk/

The UK is a super safe country for terrorism. It's not an islam problem, because compared to the population they take up, they're way less lethal than the Irish.

So basically either Islamist terrorists are REALLY bad at being terrorists compared to the Irish. Or they're not really a threat. Like, a bad year for knife crimes would make a bigger difference to the uk than a successful terror attack.

On a policy level, you focus on the things that make a difference.

Like, what evidence do you have that these refugees are more dangerous than U.S. or UK Citizens?

[Max]

Serious question ABR: what is your solution to the increasing number of mass shootings in the US?

Like these attacks they are American citizens being made violent on American soil, predominantly christians. The difference is there are a lot more of them and as a group they are more lethal. What do you do? What's the policy solution?

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The suspect was known to British intelligence and deemed not to be an immediate threat. There needs to be change in government policy to prevent tragedies like this.

I like living in a country where people are only arrested after they commit crimes, thanks.

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Vigil in Bury tonight. Very tasteful. Very emotional. Lots of crying.

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A friend of mine teaches at one of the schools where a teenager died. They had a really tough day and kids have apparently been leaving classes to cry all day. We had a girl commit suicide at my 6th form college and that was a similar story, I can only imagine that the coverage surrounding this is going to make it all the more difficult to get things back to normal.

I have a few mutual friends with the gay guy that died. I never met him, but gay circles in manchester are so small that it seems so surreal.

Such a giant clusterfuck. And now there's going to armed forces on the street because the numbers of police have been cut in recent years and so they need additional forces.

Campaigning resumes tomorrow and I'm going to go back to the phone banks. Life is absurd.

[Max]

Careful line to tread, today. People asking questions about policing and safety, trying to give diplomatic answers about plans to reverse policing cuts - while not making it look like we're blaming Theresa May AKA Home Secretary for 6 years over her policy choices that she had been warned about repeatedly over the past few years.

Trying to explain that Corbyn isn't an IRA sympathiser and was just trying to establish a peace process in Northern Ireland, like the one we have now.

A couple of people were surprised we were campaigning, I talked a Conservative voter down from being disgusted that we were campaigning by talking about the need to not let one man stop an election.

Nobody talked about the dementia tax.

[Max]

I imagine because a lot of people would find it distasteful to be seen as if you are blaming a terrorist attack on the PM.

This.

My gut instinct says that no matter how much staff you have there'll be people slipping through the nets. But people *want* to talk security policy and so talking about staffing is the obvious way to do it. Particularly when the fact that the army has been drafted because of insufficient police staffing, a massive deal. The army are not trained to be acting as police. And not something that should be brushed under the carpet.

Like, Theresa May is ultimately the one responsible for everything that happens within the UK. Remember that if you try to travel to Syria and you'll be arrested. Why isn't IS in Libya given a similar level of suspicion. Travelling via Libya should really be resulting in at the very least a secret service debrief.

And given we blame Michael Gove for our education problems and Jeremy Hunt for health issues, blaming Theresa May for her policy remit is a low bar.

Anyway, yeah. It's a careful line and obviously we have scripts. And we're not really calling to persuade people, mostly, but to know who we need to get the vote out with, but some people want to talk policy.

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Michael Fallon is an idiot.

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It's interesting because young people voted way more in the brexit referendum than normal elections, but many are using 2015 turnout measures to help adjust. From a statistical standpoint I'm excited to see which method has been best.

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The EU is pretty representative of the national governments of Europe. And when Western Europe shifted leftwards, we added a load of right wing Eastern European countries which kept the majority being right-wing.

Like put in right wing governments, get out right wing policies. Seems reasonable to me.

[Max]

Like just a quick glance at the dominance of right wing ideology across Europe from this image (and remember that France will have shifted since then):

https://mobile.twitter.com/PoliticsWolf ... 48/photo/1 (I can't get image embedding to work...)

Long term, governments change and they tend to change to be anti-status-quo. When there's a majority of left-wingers in Europe, the policy will be more left wing. (See the 90s, where employment rights such as the working time directive came into existence)

[Max]

Last night was interesting. But neither party did anything interesting enough to win. Corbyn beating expectations surely can't win votes against a poor May performance, unless it is TERRIBLE.

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A) a beacon of stability, B) looking out for the best in Britain and C) refuses to acknowledge that Britain will be worse off after Brexit.

They can't all be true, but the spin says otherwise.

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We do. We know that Theresa May offers strong and stable leadership. #theresabae

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Debates??? Debates!

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Here we go again.

Terror attack.

Campaign suspended.

But at least they didn't target teenage girls.

Theresa May suspends campaigning, but my god it didn't sound like it.

Apparently we're too tolerant of extremism. Which is weird because I don't know anyone who tolerates it, and the only woman who had the policy remit to do anything was her.

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I think he needs a bit more in the polls and undermining Theresa May in essentially a Presidential-style election is the last push that he needs.

Whether it works or not is a different question.

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I do love a good meme.

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Also, it's obviously meant to be nationalised not -ized. Contemporary British English is pretty unforgiving of the z.

It should obviously be Corbyn's communist teens tho 100% on the money there drench.

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The reason why the UK's less drawn in by online fake news is because we already have tabloids.

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It's a GOTV tactic. Not a persuasion tactic. They persuade by not covering Corbyn's policies, then they GOTV with fear.

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Corbyn has basically offered the most economically attractive and competent vision for the UK in 40 years. I struggle to believe that anyone else would have offered such a popular manifesto.

The Conservative party at this election are basically the furthest right that they have been in a long time. Their nationalist, authoritarian and corporatist message and planning on cutting the state to 35% of GDP (lower than basically any western country).

In opposition to an extreme right wing vision for the country, the choice was the moderate stylings of last election (which failed) or adopting a stronger approach that shifts the British economy in line with other industrialised European economies. Ed Miliband wasn't perfect, he would be a better opposition for May. But the rest of the leadership candidates basically failed themselves by not winning, despite a strong lead (they talk about entryists, but Corbyn was first placed against the rest of the candidates).

Btw, I went to an Owen Smith event in Hull. He implied he had a 30 inch penis. His leadership campaign was marked by repeated allegations of sexism. And his entire stance was "elect me, I'm not Corbyn". He isn't charismatic (nor is Corbyn), but nor is Theresa May. I can't name any sitting MPs that are known that would be good leadership material.

I do like Lisa Nandy though.

Btw, I've not seen people provide actual ideas for what he should have done over Brexit. He did events all over the country, the BBC didn't cover him - they didn't really give Labour any coverage (10% vs tories 30%). Some people say he should have joined the main campaign with the Conservatives, but that didn't work well in Scotland. Also remember that the Brexit campaign was treated as Tory vs Tory for the obvious reason that the only people in parliament who wanted to leave and were high profile were all Tories.

It wasn't as if any other Labour politician appeared in anything except that one leave woman.

The real Brexit failing was nobody (but particularly the BBC) for not explaining what the European Union actually did. You might say that the parties should have done that, but basic education coming from the public broadcaster isn't a big ask. Ignorance won that day.

[Max]

I mean it's certainly more popular than Ed Miliband's, Gordon Brown's and the polling averages have it around on par with 2005 Blair. On the simple measure of change in vote share, Corbyn might increase vote share by a figure comparable to Thatcher and Blair. Against the headwind of the UKIP vote collapse.

It's highly possible that the left can only win in the UK when the right wing vote is split between further right parties like UKIP and centrists like the Lib Dems, which might be post the Tories destroying Brexit - which is bad, but not implausible.

We can't always get a once-in-a-generation swing, and certainly not in two years. Since '45 only one swing has been enough to overcome this deficit. So Corbyn's victory parameters are going to be a good hung parliament or better.

If Corbyn is peforming to low ends of polling, it'll be a miserable day. But if he's performing to the top range, it might be a pretty happy day.

[Max]

I live in a pretty working class area and the young people I know seem unusually hyped. (Like younger siblings of my friends). Some are too young to vote, and my sister who is 30 (so the "young vote") has never voted before and got all of friends to register.

The question is whether there's enough people like her.

[Max]

comparisons are meaningless when the major party vote share is the highest it's been in decades

I mean, somewhat. The UK doesn't have big vote share changes, basically ever. And it's only recently the vote split. So this helps backtrack the numbers in pretty good detail.

In 2015, the Lib Dem collapse basically fell 2:1 for Tories. With about the same outflow to UKIP (slightly more from Conservatives). If we give the votes back accordingly, you have a residual left/right vote of about 40/50 with core Lib Dems in the middle.

Give UKIP 5% and minor parties 5% and suddenly you're at 35/45, which is what the polls that think there'll be a 2015 style turnout are saying it'll be. Give a 3%ish swing that the YouGov method gives and you're at their 39/42, hung parliament territory.

Demographics are obv at play though, young people are concentrated in cities, so they might not help, even if they turn out in droves.

[Max]

https://www.facebook.com/starwarssocialism/

Pretty dece meme page

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I'm scared.

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At least dimblebae can get me through.

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Holy fucking shit

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jezza's gone and bloody done it just robbed the tories of a majority the absolute madman

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Supply deal with DUP maybe

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Newcastle and Swindon are labour swings in line with my 3% hung parliament territory.

Also my ukip 2:1 Tory:labour prediction is holding up well. Perhaps a good evening.

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I'm glad. I know you don't like her Poro. But I think she represents a different voice than anyone else. Whether she's the right young person representative is a different question. But I'm glad she's there.

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This election is so exciting.

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Bury north is labour again. I'm so happy. And I'm gonna enjoy that for a few more hours

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The Tories lost this election.

But they might have won this election also.

Confused?

Welcome to the UK Elections

[Max]

NIGHT ALL. THIS HAS BEEN WILD.

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This might be bad news for NI Peace Process though.

SF and DUP probs will not make deal now, so another election.

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For the NI peace process ONLY SF and DUP matter.

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"Resigned"

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This is starting to look pretty shaky for May.

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By "starting" I mean, I think we might not get past the first queen's speech.

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Ruth davidson can't under tory rules requiring the leader to be a sitting MP.

BoJo is possible, but I wouldn't rule out someone like Nicky Morgan. Scary woman, but she has ambitions.

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No shuffle basically highlights her position, all of her political enemies have to stay close, no room for her allies in cabinet, and no room for demoted MPs to take the back benches,

Will there be another election by the end of the year? Highly plausible.

[Max]

Corbyn on fire today. Top notch bantz

[Max]

I hope ur all enjoying our independence day xoxox